I see it all the time on YouTube, Facebook, and just about every other social media platform: Christians being criticized (or responding to criticism) for following a God who seems to allow things like slavery, polygamy, and other institutions that make the average person uncomfortable.
Critics often point to passages like Exodus 21, Leviticus 25, and Deuteronomy 15. Leviticus includes laws on how slaves could be acquired, and Exodus even contains an ordinance about a father selling his daughter into slavery. The New Testament doesn’t seem to be much different, with a message that masters should treat their slaves justly and fairly (Col. 4:1).
And really, that’s the uncomfortable truth: nowhere in Scripture is slavery explicitly condemned.
The same is true for polygamy. Abraham was not overtly punished after sleeping with Hagar. Jacob had multiple wives without any direct condemnation. David, the man after God’s own heart, had numerous wives, and Solomon is famous for having hundreds. None of this is explicitly condemned in the way other sins clearly are.
Meanwhile, actions that seem far less severe to modern readers are condemned in the strongest possible terms. Cursing one’s father or mother, for example, carried the death penalty (Exod 21:17). Idolatry, child sacrifice, and incest are all treated as moral abominations. But slavery and polygamy are strangely absent from that category.
So… What are we supposed to do with that?
The typical response from Christians is to double down, insisting that slavery is evil and polygamy is wrong. And yet the Bible never actually says that in the same way it says other things are evil. Pretending it does only strengthens the critics’ points.
That doesn’t mean God endorses those practices, though. It simply means we’re assuming the Bible treats every wrong thing the same way, when it clearly doesn’t.
If all wrongs fall into a single category, the Old Testament becomes very difficult to make sense of. Some things are explicitly condemned; others are regulated. Still others are allowed to exist while clearly producing chaos and suffering.
So, here’s the thesis I want to argue:
The Bible does not treat every wrong thing as intrinsically evil. Some practices are condemned because they violate God’s nature, while others are regulated because they violate God’s created order. Understanding this distinction helps explain why Scripture explicitly condemns certain wrongs while merely restraining others.
Let me explain what I’m getting at with the distinction between acts that violate God’s nature and acts that violate God’s design. The difference between those two things actually explains a lot of the criticism directed at the Old Testament.
Intrinsic Moral Evil
Certain things would be evil whether they happen in this universe or any other variation that God might have chosen to create instead. For example, it’s impossible for God to lie (Heb 6:18), so to lie is to violate God’s very nature. These violations can safely be considered “intrinsic moral evil” by definition of opposing God’s character. A good example of this is the 10 Commandments:
Commandments 1-4
These ones are most obviously tied to God’s nature. We have:
- No other gods
- No idols
- No blasphemy
- Keep the Sabath holy
These four all tie back to God’s uniqueness, holiness, authority, and role as creator and redeemer in some way. To violate them, therefore, is to violate God’s character.
Commandment 5: Honor Your Father and Mother
This one seems a little less obvious, but it still ties back to God’s nature. Authority structures aren’t treated as arbitrary in the Bible; they’re seen as a reflection of God’s own authority. Therefore, honoring parents isn’t just about maintaining social order, but rather, it’s about recognizing that life and authority ultimately come from God. To dishonor human authority is to ultimately dishonor God’s authority, which is a violation of his nature.
Commandment 6: Do Not Murder
The command not to murder is explicitly tied back to Genesis 9:6, which says, “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made man.”
Murder is a violation of God’s nature because it involves taking the life of one who bears God’s image. God placed humanity on earth to serve as his representatives; to remove a representative is to directly attack something that reflects God himself.
Commandment 7: Do Not Commit Adultery
By nature, adultery violates covenant faithfulness, the sanctity of the marital bond, and the dignity of another person. The evil of adultery isn’t primarily sexual. It’s a covenantal betrayal, and covenant faithfulness is one of the core traits of God’s character.
This does differ from polygamy, even if it’s not obvious at first. I’ll get more into the distinction later in the article.
Commandment 8: Do Not Steal
Nothing in this world belongs to us; instead, it has been given by God for us to steward. If God gives someone $10 to manage, and that money is stolen from them, the thief rejects God’s authority over what belongs to whom. It’s not as direct as idolatry, but it still connects to God’s character as just and faithful.
Commandment 9: Do Not Lie
As mentioned earlier, it’s impossible for God to lie (Heb 6:18), so it’s pretty easy to see how this one violates God’s nature.
Commandment 10: Do Not Covet
This final commandment in the Decalogue is the only one that targets the heart directly. Nothing outwardly happens when a person covets, but it is a root of multiple intrinsic moral evils, including the last several that we’ve looked at (theft, adultery, murder, lying, etc.). It’s not as simple as “wanting something.”
It’s wanting something in a way that rejects what God has already given.
That’s not broken structure in the same way as slavery or polygamy; it’s a direct rejection of God’s moral order and provision. This demonstrates that the Decalogue isn’t just about behavior, but rather, it’s about whether the human heart reflects God’s character.
The Universal Thread
The Decalogue is an interesting example of moral evil to look at, because it’s one of the few instances of Old Testament law that nearly every Christian agrees is not time-bound. These commandments, and others, also provide contextual clues for key characteristics of intrinsic moral evil:
- They’re explicitly condemned
- Universally condemned (not culture-dependent)
- Never regulated, only forbidden
- Framed as defiling/wicked in themselves
These aren’t bad because they cause problems; they’re bad because they violate who God is.
Plenty of other examples of moral evil exist within the Torah as well: incest and child sacrifice (Lev 18) being more notable ones. Child sacrifice is an obvious one, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s murder. Incest is more nuanced, though, so I want to take a moment to address it before moving on to talk about violations of God’s design.
Incest
I’ve already spent a decent amount of time describing my view on incest in Rethinking Adam, so if you want a more thorough explanation of my position, I’d recommend checking that out. However, this is still a good opportunity to see some of those points in a new light, while looking at different angles as well.
Incest is absolutely a violation of God’s design, just like slavery, polygamy, and even the monarchy (for Israel, at least, as we’ll see later). Genesis 2:24 makes it clear that God intended marriage to be between one man and one woman from different households – to deviate from that is to reject a structure that God called “very good.”
That alone demonstrates that incest violates God’s design, and always has, but I believe it goes deeper than that. I believe incest is a hybrid case: it violates both God’s design and God’s nature.
The Bible consistently portrays God as:
- Faithful rather than exploitative
- Protective of the vulnerable
- Morally consistent rather than chaotic
- Ordered rather than boundary-destroying
Incest fundamentally collapses the moral boundaries that protect those things. Parent/child, sibling/sibling, and generational relationships are not morally interchangeable categories. They exist to protect vulnerability and dependence.
Incest collapses different kinds of relationships into one, destroying boundaries that protect authority, generational order, and trust. Therefore, the wrongness of incest doesn’t come only from “bad structure,” but from violating moral boundaries that exist to protect the vulnerable.
Structural Disorder
As we’ve seen, there are clearly actions and behaviors that are morally wrong because they violate the very nature of God. However, Scripture has plenty of examples that don’t fit this pattern: actions, behaviors, and/or institutions that God doesn’t like, but which aren’t treated as intrinsically evil.
At least, not in the same way murder, idolatry, and others are.
Slavery and polygamy are perhaps the most obvious examples that critics like to poke at, but other cases of structural disorder are the installation of a monarchy over Israel (1 Sam 8) and divorce. We’ll look at all four of these below.
Polygamy
Since I’ve been referencing sexual sin a lot so far, I’ll start by addressing the issue of polygamy. Most of us are familiar with the Mormon and Muslim practice of polygamy (though the LDS church has since taken a hardline stance against it). However, it’s not an issue far removed from the Protestant church, as some of us might have imagined. Especially in recent years, I’ve seen several figures encouraging men to reclaim their “right” to polygamy as God’s “proper” structure for marriage.
After all, Abraham and Jacob did it, and God didn’t condemn it, so… It must be the standard to follow.
This is the sort of argument critics will use as well. The man chosen to be the patriarch of God’s chosen people, Abraham, married his wife’s maid and received no chastisement from God. The same is true for Jacob, who married Leah and Rachel, while additionally having children with each of their maids. So, how are we to respond?
Here are a couple common positions:
Argument #1
Christians often respond to this by saying, “The Law hadn’t been handed down yet. Abraham and Jacob can’t be held responsible for something they didn’t know was wrong.”
It’s a position rooted in progressive revelation: the idea that God reveals his will, standards, and expectations over time. And while there are things that God does gradually reveal, they’re mostly limited to his redemptive plan and covenant structure. If progressive revelation means moral standards themselves changed or people weren’t truly accountable before they were codified, then it doesn’t match the biblical data.
So, overall, this is a poor argument. Cain was punished for murdering his brother, long before the Law existed. And more importantly, David, the man after God’s own heart, had 8 named wives and an unknown number of concubines. Solomon, a man richly blessed by God, had hundreds of wives.
Both of these men lived with knowledge of the Law, yet God didn’t call either of them out for their polygamy. Ironically, David was chastised for his adultery with Bathsheba, and the murder of her husband, but not for taking Bathsheba as a wife after he’d repented of his sin.
Argument #2
Many Christians understand that Argument #1 is untenable, so instead, they say something like, “Polygamy was part of their culture. This restricted God’s ability to completely outlaw polygamy (and slavery), so instead, he decided to regulate it.”
The argument sounds good in theory, until you realize that there were plenty of cultural practices that God forbade. Incest, bestiality, and child sacrifice were all culturally normative at the time, and yet God commanded the Israelites not to defile themselves with these things, for “whoever does any of these abominations, those persons who do so shall be cut off from among their people” (Lev 18:29).
Clearly, God had no qualms being countercultural with some things.
Some might say that polygamy was meant to be a safeguard for single women who wouldn’t have access to certain rights and protections outside of marriage. And while that may be a factor, the point still remains: God could have established a nation that allowed women to better survive in singleness, instead of regulating what most today would consider “sin.”
Polygamy vs Adultery
A very understandable question at this point would be, “Why is adultery condemned so strongly, but polygamy is not?”
We tend to conflate the two, more or less thinking of polygamy of a version of adultery. And yet, there’s a clear distinction between them. One that goes back to heart of why adultery is morally wrong in the first place.
When we were going through the Decalogue, we saw that adultery violates God’s nature by betraying covenant faithfulness. This is why adultery is a viable excuse for divorce: the contract (so to speak) has been broken by one member of the agreement; therefore, the remaining party is no longer bound to it.
Polygamy, on the other hand, is an acceptance of another covenant without rejecting the first. Where adultery destroys covenant faithfulness itself, polygamy stretches the covenant structure beyond what it was designed to hold. Because polygamy does not inherently break an existing covenant in the same way adultery does, it is not treated as an intrinsic moral evil (in fact, the Law assumes people will have more than one spouse in Deuteronomy 21:15-17), and was therefore regulated, instead of outlawed, by God.
But this does not make polygamy “right.” It may not be a violation of God’s nature, and subsequently a moral evil, but it is still a rejection of God’s design for the marital covenant. This article should not be taken as a defense for polygamy as a practice, but rather a defense for why polygamy was allowed in ancient times.
Slavery
Here’s an even spicier topic. Slavery is a practice that nearly everyone in the western world, regardless of their spiritual beliefs, would classify as a moral evil. It’s an understandably touchy subject… And one where Christian apologists tend to lose ground during debates.
Because, in an effort to defend the Bible, we sometimes say more than the text itself says.
I would encourage you to look at these tricky passages for yourself – places like Exodus 21, Leviticus 25, and Deuteronomy 15. You’ll see that “slavery” as a practice is never condemned, like other moral evils, but is regulated to ensure that the enslaved are not treated cruelly. This pattern persists into the New Testament as well (Eph 6, Col 3, 1 Tim 6), where Christian slave owners are not told to release their slaves, but to treat them fairly and justly.
Slavery as a concept cannot be categorized as a moral evil like so many Christians and non-Christians are quick to do. There are ways of practicing it that are clearly evil, and history shows us those far more often than not, but Scripture does not treat the institution itself as an intrinsic moral evil. Instead, it treats it as something that can be either just or unjust depending on how it is practiced.
Romans 6:15-23 says in no uncertain terms that we’re all slaves, either to righteousness or to sin. Verse 22 even goes so far as to say,
But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you have your benefit, leading to sanctification, and the end, eternal life.
If you’re a follower of Christ, you’re a slave to God. And guess what…
That’s a good thing!
Now, some would probably retort, “Well sure, but that’s a different type of slavery.”
Yes, it is. And that’s not the point. The point is that Scripture is willing to use the category positively, which would be very difficult to explain if slavery were inherently immoral in principle. Again, we need to be shrewd in differentiating between slavery as a category and the heinous acts that often take place under the umbrella of slavery.
It’s worth noting that Scripture does place real limits on how slavery can be practiced. Certain forms, like kidnapping someone into slavery, are explicitly condemned (Exod 21:16). And masters are repeatedly reminded that they themselves are under God’s authority. But these are not condemnations of slavery as a category. They are constraints on how it is practiced, while the institution itself remains intact.
Slavery in the Bible
I want to share a few more concrete examples of slavery appearing in Scripture. Some of them might surprise you.
Genesis 24:35 – “And Yahweh has greatly blessed my master, so he has become great; and He has given him flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and male slaves and female slaves, and camels and donkeys.”
Here, the servant of Abraham is saying that Yahweh blessed his master with… Slaves. Would God expand Abraham’s slave collection as a blessing if it was intrinsically evil?
Genesis 32:10 – “I am unworthy of all the lovingkindness and of all the truth which You have shown to Your slave; for with my staff only I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.”
Jacob expressly calls himself the slave of Yahweh.
Exodus 4:10 – “Then Moses said to Yahweh, ‘Please, Lord, I have never been a man of words, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your slave; for I am one with a hard mouth and a hard tongue.’”
Like Jacob, Moses refers to himself as Yahweh’s slave.
Leviticus 25:46 – “You may even give them as an inheritance to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves. But in respect to your brothers, the sons of Israel, you shall not have dominion over one another with brutality.”
God allows Israelites to keep certain people as permanent slaves, while a different standard is in place for slaves who are also Israelites. If slavery was universally evil, you would think the more lenient standard would be applied to everyone, or that the practice would be outlawed altogether.
Leviticus 25:55 – “For the sons of Israel are My slaves; they are My slaves whom I brought out from the land of Egypt. I am Yahweh your God.”
God explicitly calls the sons of Israel his slaves.
Job 31:13-15 – “If I have rejected the justice of my male or female slaves
When they filed a complaint against me,
What then could I do when God arises?
And when He calls me to account, with what will I respond to Him?
Did not He who made me in the womb make him,
And the same one fashion us in the womb?”
I find this to be one of the more fascinating accounts of slavery in the Bible. Job is talking about his slaves, how he has no excuse if he mistreats them, because they’re all made by God. This same Job is called a man that was “blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil” (Job 1:1). God even reiterated these attributes to the satan, when all the sons of God came to stand before him.
Yet, despite being a blameless man who turns away from evil, Job doesn’t see any reason to stop owning slaves. Instead, his concern is making sure that they’re treated well.
Where Does this Leave Us?
I want to make one thing clear before someone accuses me of downplaying evil: None of this should be taken to minimize the real suffering slavery has caused throughout history. The question here is not whether slavery has been abused, but how Scripture categorizes the institution itself.
When critics bring up slavery in the Bible, it’s usually in reference to the institution, not the individual ways it was practiced. To say that God hates slavery is an overstatement that too many Christians trap themselves in. Instead, it’s better to stick with what the Bible actually says: Slavery was tolerated and regulated by God, despite going against his design, because the category is morally neutral, but the expression of it can be (and often is) evil.
Israel’s Monarchy
In 1 Samuel 8, Israel demands a king to judge them, just as it was in all the other nations. God’s design didn’t involve Israel becoming a monarchy; they were to be a theocracy, led and governed by God himself, primarily through the Judges. To deviate from this design was to reject God as their king (v. 7).
However, the demand is granted, and Israel is allowed to operate under a monarchy. It’s one of the clearest examples of God giving people over to their desires, even if the outcome is different from his original plan and purpose. This deviation from God’s design creates a host of problems and hardships, which Samuel lays out for the Israelites (vv. 10-18), yet the people insist on having their way.
All of that leads us to a very interesting question: Is it morally evil to reject God as king?
I would argue that it’s not. The text frames this primarily as a rejection of God’s kingship in a structural and covenantal sense, rather than explicitly categorizing it alongside intrinsic moral evils like idolatry or murder. In the case of the Israelites, the issue was not a matter of rejecting Yahweh so that they could worship other gods. This was a matter of governance – of kingship in the most literal of ways. It’s unwise to reject God’s design, just like it’s unwise to reject his grace (see my article on the Unforgivable Sin), but it doesn’t intrinsically bear a moral quality.
That makes Israel’s demand for a human king a matter of structural disorder, instead of a moral violation. God even used the monarchy to further his redemptive plan, establishing a covenant with David, stating that his throne would be an eternal throne (1 Chr 17:11-14). That’s not to say it was an ideal system. The unified nation of Israel only had three kings (Saul, David, and Solomon) before it was divided into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. However, despite the consequences, the practice itself was never condemned by God.
Divorce
The opening verses of Matthew 19 tell us about the Pharisees questioning Jesus on the topic of divorce. In response, Jesus said, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (v. 6), but the Pharisees press the issue by asking why Moses commanded them to provide a certificate of divorce. Jesus’ answer is fascinating to read:
Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.
Already you see that not every “wrong” carries the same weight. To circle back to a previous point, cursing one’s father or mother was never okay to do. Moses didn’t permit people to curse their parents because their hearts were hard; that action held a moral quality, and could therefore be judged as such.
Divorce, on the other hand, violates God’s design of one man and one woman cleaving together to become one flesh. To violate that design is wrong, in that it goes against God’s intent, but it doesn’t carry moral weight in the same way as cursing one’s parents.
At this point, some of you are probably thinking of a saying you’ve heard at some point: “God hates divorce.”
That’s phrase is generally attributed to Malachi 2:16, but I want to show you something interesting about that verse:
“‘For I hate divorce,’ says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘and him who covers his garment with wrong,’ says the LORD of hosts. ‘So take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously'” (Mal 2:16, NASB95).
“’For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless” (Mal 2:16, ESV).
That’s a pretty big difference, isn’t it? The first translation says that God hates divorce, while the second is referencing a man who hates his wife and divorces her.
The difference comes from a genuine ambiguity in the Hebrew grammar of Malachi 2:16. The Hebrew text can be read either as “For I (God) hate divorce” or as “For he who hates [his wife] and divorces her…” Modern translators increasingly favor the second reading because it fits the grammar and the context more naturally. I agree with that and would encourage you to read the preceding verses for yourself.
You’ll also notice in Matthew 19 that Jesus doesn’t speak on the moral quality of divorce specifically. Instead, he said, “whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” And while this is mostly in response to hillelite divorce, the point remains:
The moral emphasis of the passage is not in response to divorce, per se, but in response to abandoning one’s wife because of superfluous and shallow reasons.
In Scripture, divorce does not function as an automatic dissolution of the marital covenant, which is why the moral weight falls on unfaithfulness rather than the legal act itself. And since divorce doesn’t break the marital covenant, it’s not a form of unfaithfulness that necessarily violates God’s nature.
Of course, that’s not to say that divorce (without good reason) should be considered an option. Only once the marital covenant has been broken through adultery (Matt 19) or abandonment (1 Cor 7:15) can a divorced person be re-married without committing adultery themselves. Jesus made it very clear that the covenant of marriage shouldn’t be trifled with – but he also doesn’t categorize divorce as a moral evil in the way he does adultery or murder.
A Clarification
At this point, I assume some of you are thinking something like, “Are you claiming polygamy, slavery, or divorce aren’t wrong?”
That’s not what I’m saying at all. My claim is simply that the Bible isn’t as reductionistic as we are; just because something is “wrong” doesn’t mean it’s “evil.” It certainly can be, but it doesn’t have to be. And I think the biblical pattern makes this pretty clear:
| Intrinsic Moral Evil | Structural Disorder |
|---|---|
| Forbidden outright (Exod 20; Lev 18) | Often regulated (Exod 21; Deut 15) |
| Always condemned verbally (Prov 6:16-19; Isa 5:20) | Exposed through consequences (Gen 16, 29-30; 2 Sam 13-18) |
| Violates God’s nature (Heb 6:18; 2 Tim 2:13; 1 John 1:5) | Violates God’s design (Gen 2:24; Matt 19:8) |
| Never presented as acceptable (Hab 1:13; Rom 1) | Temporarily tolerated (1 Sam 8:6-9; Deut 24:1-4) |
| Always destructive (Rom 6:23; Jam 1:15) | Often destructive over time (1 Kings 11; 1 Sam 8:10-18) |
Intrinsic moral evils are confronted directly because they contradict who God is, while structural disorders are often managed over time because they reflect the broken conditions of the world God is working within.
This is where a lot of confusion comes from. We often approach the Bible as if it were a timeless rulebook, where every command carries equal weight and every silence implies approval. But that’s just not how the Bible presents itself.
The text presents a story:
- Creation
- Fall
- Covenant
- Failure
- Redemption
Within that story, God moves people toward the ideal. When you see tensions like things that are allowed but not ideal vs. things that are condemned outright, they’re not contradictions, but stages in progress.
Seen this way, God’s sovereignty doesn’t look like immediate control over every detail. Rather, he’s purposefully directing the story over time, which means he works through human choices, cultures, and institutions, gradually shaping history toward his purposes.
People are still responsible for their actions; structures can still be distorted. And yet, God works within both, not by forcing everything into perfection immediately, but by guiding the story toward redemption.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, most of the tension surrounding passages about slavery, polygamy, and other difficult topics comes from a simple assumption:
The Bible treats every wrong thing the same way.
But it doesn’t. As we’ve seen, some things are condemned outright because they violate God’s nature. Others are regulated, restrained, or simply allowed to exist because they violate His design, not His character. When we collapse those categories, we end up forcing Scripture to say things it never actually says, either by softening what it clearly condemns or by condemning what it merely regulates.
In my opinion, this is where both critics and Bible defenders tend to miss each other.
Scripture isn’t trying to give us a perfectly flattened moral system where every issue fits neatly into the same category. It’s telling a story about God engaging with a complicated, disordered world and patiently leading it somewhere better.
