I keep hearing that the Bible is evil since it didn't categorically condemn slavery.

I keep hearing that slaveholders in the South used the Bible to support their practice, and that this is proof of the Bible's evil.

It's a funny thing about that, though.

You would think that if someone showed up in a society where slavery was totally ingrained—ingrained in that society's moral philosophy, its law, its conception of what it means to be human, its economy, and its whole social order—and planted a deeply revolutionary and powerful idea that resulted in the relatively quick though gradual and peaceful dissolution of the whole institution of slavery in that culture and many others besides (even if not every culture in the whole world for all time forever), that person would get some credit for having done something very, very good.

You would think that, wouldn’t you?

This is exactly what happened through the life of Christ. Slavery disappeared gradually, without revolt, uprising, or additional economic turmoil beyond that which generally accompanied the fall of Rome.