Despite your comfort with and acceptance of ancient practices of sexual slavery and slave owning, I'm still going to stay on the 'Nuh-uh, slavery is wrong. FULL STOP.' side, regardless of how lovingly ancient Jews were supposed to treat their slaves but absolutely failed to do so in every way. Communism is a nice moral idea that doesn't work in practice. Slavery is a shitty moral idea that doesn't even work in theory.
You'll find I'm pretty well in agreement with you on these points. Slavery is wrong. Communism is a nice idea that doesn't work. There's a reason why I focused on what I did, though, and it actually supports your argument against Capitalism as in its purest sense is just as much a form of worldly slavery.
Despite what you think, I'm not on board with "ancient practices of sexual slavery and slave owning" as you so put it - what I am trying to emphasize, however, is that Torah through the near inescapable existence of indebtedness and the slavery it imposes upon us all in the natural state, is offering freedom and escape
from that slavery by turning it on its head and forcing and transforming the conditions of ownership into something entirely different - redemption and restoration of the person to a fullness in freedom and equality, as well as providing a familial support and inheritance. To the one indebted within the world, who is otherwise with no means of escape, it should be a blessing. It is using the natural to reveal the spiritual truths of the Universe and the fullness of love of our Creator.
"Okay, you really want to buy a man? Guess what, you have to treat them like family, give them a home, feed them, care for them like your own brother, and you can't treat them any differently than a hired laborer." "Okay, you really want to buy a woman? Guess what, you have to treat her with dignity like your wife with esteem in your household, and you can't just use and abuse her like a piece of meat like the other nations." Look at this from a gentile's perspective at the time who's been sold into slavery, assuming one of the small windows of time when the Hebrews actually did as they should have. The other nations would have treated them horribly and abused them and passed them around like a piece of meat, or even shed their blood. The world's slave trade was throughout the nations at the time. Now, if the Hebrews genuinely did do as they were supposed to, what's the better path as a slave? An abused piece of meat, or taken out of that system, brought in and given a family? Remember, the outside nations at the time were doing such abominations as live human sacrifice in addition to the slave trade. Keep that in mind also when re-framing the "genocidal" slaughter of the tribes in Canaan - they, too, were given a choice. Stop their abominations and the shedding of human blood and the dehumanizing of their fellow man and come to HaShem and His better way of living at peace with one another, repent and be redeemed of that indebtedness, or answer for that evil and have the price they placed on their own head collected for all the blood they spilled themselves.
Part of it has to do with semantics and the stigma (rightly so, given its history) of the word slavery. There is no redemption in the world's slavery, and using the word carries a huge weight and stigma. The spiritual intent of Biblical "slavery" is to weaponize that debt system into something that destroys that worldly debt and slavery system itself. This is what's wrong with Free Market Capitalism, and why it's just as much a form of slavery as you've rightly highlighted, and why it's foolish for Christians to defend it. The system is not designed to redeem us or leave us free. It is a system designed to keep us in debt to others so that they may hold leverage over our very lives. People here are trying to buy that freedom by subverting the system and the free market to buy their way out, but so long as we're in the world's system, we're never free. No matter how much financial "freedom" we buy, we're still trapped in the system and a slave to it. We still rely on the labor of others to survive, and our money can still be taken from us. That's not freedom. It's perpetuating the cycle outlined and noted in the article Rebs posted.
Now, read Acts chapter two. What the community of believers were supposed to be doing for one another willingly and voluntarily? That is a portrait of the lessons that should have been learned from Torah and Yeshua about love and what it is supposed to look like. Nothing owed to one another, but love. If actually practiced to the letter, that's how the Hebrew system of "slavery" should have played out if actually executed properly - an abolishment of all slavery with nothing owed between people but love throughout the world, caring for one another. Yeshua paid the price to free us of the yolk of slavery and the debt that comes with us so that we may have a familial relationship through Him with HaShem, and we are to live with one another extending that same love and restoration as we were given.
My argument to Gary was against the easily disproven concept put forth that Christians have historically treated people with dignity.
I know it was. And I know they haven't, because most "Christians" historically have embraced the indebtedness of the world over the their own Messiah and what He did. Still do. The Western system has nothing to do with Christianity outside of superficial similarities, and everything to do with Nimrod's Babylon and the system of the world and its debt tarted up in flowery religious words, only providing the illusion of freedom within an increasingly onerous legal system that no one can live in without incurring a life debt to someone else who wants to keep you indebted and loyal to them at all cost, and without any hope of freedom.
Further, Gary's usage of mislabeling Communism as socialism, and equating "Christian" values with Western legalism and the perfection of Free Market Capitalism and its invisible hand as somehow being outside of that system and better? Somehow, one system is supposed to be better than the other, because "God" and words. I take issue with that, as do you. I wanted to back you up where you could be, and try to reveal a deeper truth in the process.
(If you want to discuss the cruelty/lovingness of the OG God vs God2.0 in the New Testament we can totally do that, but it's getting pretty far off topic.)
And I think I just brought it back not just on topic with the current direction of the thread, but back on point with the original purpose of the thread. Or a reasonable semblance there-of. Hopefully.
There was an attempt, anyway.