I just read Genesis 19 today and I feel as though we have been missing the point of the Sodom and Gomorrah story for many years.
One of the most dangerous things we can do, as Christians, is to take the Bible at face value and to take the Bibles as those around us present it. That being said, don’t take my words in this blog for face value. Discuss and pray through them and discover things for yourself.
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is a story that is known by just about everyone in the western world. It is engraved in our social context. But I think that it is one of the things in the Bible that the Christian community, as a whole, has gotten wrong for many many many years.
Sodom and Gomorrah is the story of “wicked” cities that God passed his judgment on by destroying. The story starts in Genesis 18 when three men appear at Abraham and his wife Sarahs camp site. Abraham gives the men food, drink, and rest. It is latter revealed that these men who appeared at the camp site where angles sent from God (Genesis 19:1). God decides to sent two of his Angels to Sodom because he has heard that everything that goes on there is wicked (Genesis 18:20-22). Once the men are gone, Abraham begins to question if God would destroy the city of Sodom if fifty innocent people could be found there (Genesis 18:24). God says back that if he can find fifty innocent people there then he will spare the entire city (Genesis 18:26). Through Genesis 18: 27-33 Abraham begins to lower the number, first with forty-five, then forty, then thirty, then twenty, and finally ten. God tells him that he would spare the city from destruction if he finds as little as ten innocent people living there and with that, chapter 18 closes.
When the story picks back up in chapter 19, two of the angels are in Sodom. They meet a man named Lot there who immediately welcomes them to his house for food, rest, and hospitality. The Angels at first refuse but Lot persist in his kindness until the Angels give in to his offer. Lot prepares a massive feast for them and they begin to get ready to turn in for the night. As they are getting ready to retire, then entire male population of Sodom form a mob and surround Lots house.
Genesis 19:5 says “They shouted to Lot, Where are the men who came to spend the night with you? Bring them out so we can have sex with them.“
Lot steps outside to reason with the men and even offers his two virgin daughters to the mob if they spare the men (Genesis 19:6-8). But the mob refuses and tells Lot that they will do worse to him if he does not surrender the men to him (Genesis 19:9). The Angels then pull Lot back into the house and bolt the door shut while blinding the men of Sodom so that they could not find the door. The Angels tell Lot to get his family together and to flee the city without looking back.
Genesis 19:24-25 reads “Then the LORD rained down fire and burning sulfur from the heavens on Sodom and Gomorrah. He utterly destroyed them, along with the other cities and villages of the plain, eliminating all life- people, plants, and animals alike.”God kept his promise to Abraham by keeping the innocent people of those villages and cities, Lot and his family, safe (Genesis 19:29).
But now the question is this: What was Lot innocent of? For what reason did God destroy Sodom, Gomorrah, and it’s surrounding villages?
Well…I don’t think it was due to Homosexuality.
Lets think about what the men where trying to do as they surrounded Lots house. They where trying to GANG RAPE two innocent men to humiliate them for no reason at all. I don’t think that homosexual aspect had anything to do with the decision of God. I think it all had to do with they fact that what they tried to do to those men is inhuman. It goes against love, peace, and mercy. Is is in fact loveless and merciless. It is a act of hate just for the sack of hate. They wanted to degrade these men and make them feel worthless by humiliating them with the act of gang rape. They tried to make two men who where made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) feel like they where trash.
But don’t take my word for it. Take the words of God.In Ezekiel 16: 48 God states his reason for destroying the cities very plainly: “Sodom’s sins were pride, gluttony, and laziness, while the poor and needy suffered outside her door.”
It seems that God would disagree with most fundamentalist Churches that state that Sodom and Gomorrah where destroyed because there where gay people in them, doesn’t it?
In fact it seems like Homosexuality had nothing to do with it at all. God was fed up of people who had means to feed the hungry but refused because of their selfishness. God was fed up with their arrogance and their pride. GOD WAS FED UP WITH THEY FACT THAT THE PEOPLE OF SODOM AN GOMORRAH WHERE TREATING THEIR FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS IN A WAY THAT WAS INHUMAN. The last straw was the attempt to gang rape two innocent men for no reason but to have sinceless fun fueled by their hate.
So the next time someone says that God destroyed cites because there where gay people in them, don’t buy it. The Bible is very clear and there are much bigger issues at hand in this story if we only have eyes to see them. God did not destroy a city because of gay people. God destroyed a city because the people of that city treated human like trash. And that is something that God does not tolerate and that we should not tolerate as Christians.
I will close with some Biblical Irony: Isn’t funny that a lot of Christians treat the gay community in the same awful way that they people of Sodom and Gomorrah treated those around them? A lot of Christians treat them like they are inhuman and twist a story about people getting destroyed for treating people in a inhuman to justify treating people in an inhuman way. Think about it.
