And in that lies the problem for me. How can our Holy Creator bless the ownership of another human, who was created each and every one of us in His image with free Will condone such a monstrous thing? A well-treated slave is still a slave.
When one is owned by another they are deprived of life. Maybe not the physical aspect but of the essence of life.
Could it be perhaps that some parts of the Bible are wrong? That the words were written contemporarily and conformed to the culture of the day? I don't know. I don't have the answers.
AHAH!
The Free Will argument.
Man cannot and does not have free will. Man left to himself knows only evil, can only do evil. Man can never come to a saving knowledge unless Almighty God draws him.
John 6:44
No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.
Romans 9:11-24
(for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls), it was said to her, "The older shall serve the younger." As it is written, "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated."
What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion." So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth." Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.
You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?" But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?" Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?
Ephesians 1:4-5
just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,
God Decides who will be saved and who will be left in their sin. Man has no Free Will to choose God or save himself.
A Man can no more choose God than he can sprout wings and fly into heaven.