Quick
trivia question: For what sins was the Biblical city of Sodom condemned to
destruction?
If you lean toward a populist understanding of this Genesis
19 story, your immediate reaction might be to say, “For being homosexuals!” due
to the fact that the angry mob of men outside Lot’s door demanded to have
forcible sex with his two visitors, angels in disguise. If you’re
more influenced by current Biblical scholarship, your answer might be, “For
violating the ancient laws of hospitality, because any injustice to strangers
is seen by God as a horrific act!”
I submit that a reasoned response to both those approaches
should be: Slow down, cowboy, and read the question again.
For
what sins was the Biblical city of Sodom condemned to destruction?
The simple fact is, when Sodom was condemned, no acts of
forced angel rape or violations of sacred hospitality against those angels had
yet taken place. The decision to destroy
Sodom had been made before the angels
arrived there. God had already sat with
Abraham and announced his intentions, and Abraham had already negotiated with
the Lord, convincing Him to spare the city if one hundred righteous men could
be found, or even fifty, or even thirty, or even, in the end, ten. That caveat notwithstanding, the destruction
decision had been made already. Anything
involving the angels who visited Sodom was a secondary incident, and any
conclusions drawn from their story by either populist or progressive Biblical scholars
is simply inference.
For my part, I take neither view. I prefer a stance far more conservative than
those of the progressives or even of the traditionalists. More on that below.
Word
Play
As a linguist, I’m intrigued by the origins of words we
adopt; as a Christian, I’m especially intrigued by those with etymologies
rooted in Scripture.
Take the word “onanism,”
for example. It’s fallen out of
fashion recently, but the word derives from the story of Onan, an Old Testament
character who “spilled his seed on the ground”
during sex with his brother’s widow, refusing to provide his dead brother
an heir. This act of defiance sounds a lot more like the Roman Catholic Rhythm
Method of birth control than anything else, but “onanism” took on a life of its
own in the late 1700s and started to refer exclusively to male
masturbation. Since the Bible has no
direct spiritual legislation about male masturbation, the term “onanism” became
a handy tool for preachers keen on suppressing it. Presumably, female masturbation was not a pressing
concern of the era.
Like “onanism,” our current use of the term “sodomy” as
referring to anal sex also might be only tangentially connected to its source story. Even if one accepts the populist interpretation
of the text, “sodomy” would literally be an act of desiring (although not actually having) sex with angels (think nephilim and the days before Noah). It might also refer to the other atrocities
tied to the text (e.g., to offering one’s own daughters to be raped, or to drunken
incest, which Lot’s daughters performed soon after).
But if I really wish to redefine the term “sodomy,” I’d be
better served investigating what the Lord originally found so vile about the
people of that city … male and female, not just the guys. I could spend all day drawing conservative
vs. liberal inferences from Genesis 19, but why do that when I have other
parts of Scripture that tell me directly what the Lord says it means to “be
like Sodom”? Permit me to abandon modern
liberalism, to abandon modern conservatism, and to get downright reactionary on
you. Let me travel back to the days of
Ezekiel and Isaiah.
Being
Like Sodom
The destruction of Sodom left a lasting imprint on the
Hebrew culture. The prophets used Sodom
as an example of wickedness for scores of centuries after the story was first
told. Interestingly, the prophets never
used it as a symbol of homosexuality or violations of hospitality. Let’s listen to Ezekiel’s take on what it
meant to be like Sodom:
“Now this was the sin of your sister
Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned; they did
not help the poor and needy. They were
haughty and did detestable things before me.
Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.” (Ezekiel
16:49-50)
Holy smokes, sulfur, and brimstone! Right there, the Lord
reveals his exact motivation for destroying Sodom! The Lord slew them to a person because they
were:
- arrogant – they were awash in their own sense of superiority and self-esteem
- overfed – while the rest of the world was on tight rations, they stuffed themselves
- unconcerned – they presumed no retribution for their arrogance and gluttony
- did not help the poor – their wealth stayed with them, and the poor languished
- did not help the needy – the oppressed, the handicapped, the sick, the lame, they all went unnoticed
What made them haughty?
What acts made them detestable?
The very ones listed above, with nary a mention of inhospitality or
angel rape.
How does one escape being like a citizen of Sodom? Isaiah joins Ezekiel by telling us clearly in
his prophecy’s first chapter, where God urges Israel to turn from the ways of
Sodom by doing those things Sodom wouldn’t do:
“Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers
of Sodom … Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed. Take up the
cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” (Isaiah
1:10, 17)
So Scripture does, in fact, tell us the sins of Sodom, at
least the ones worth mentioning explicitly: arrogance, being overfed, being
unconcerned, not helping the poor and needy, being haughty, not doing right,
not seeking justice, not defending the oppressed, failing to take up the cause
of the fatherless, not pleading the case of the widow. Add to that a reference in Jude 7 about sexual immorality, too, and you have an exhaustive list, and a powerful
condemnation. It leaves nothing to
inference, nothing to guessing. It is
the word of the Lord.
Our
Modern Sodom
When I hear U.S. evangelical preachers claiming that America
is becoming a modern-day Sodom, I agree with them. Sure, they make that declaration for all the
wrong reasons … they assume they’re talking about gay marriage, background
checks on guns, socialism, and other modern horrors. But in Scriptural reality, we become more like
Sodom every time we or one of our leaders makes a move to hurt the poor, the
fatherless, and the oppressed. Worse, we
become as blind as the residents of Sodom every time we buy into the
anti-Biblical notion that a nation should not strive to provide social justice
and welfare to its most vulnerable inhabitants.
Ignore the poor? That
is a Sodom Mindset. Despise the hurting? That is a Sodom Heart. Go through life with the assumption that the less
fortunate must deserve their plight, somehow, some way? That is the same error made by Job’s friends,
and Isaiah and Ezekiel see it as the mark of a Sodomite.
Please, America, know this:
- Every time a U.S. politician makes cuts to programs that feed the hungry … we see a true Biblical act of sodomy.
- Every time a legislative body moves to hamper a minority’s freedom to vote and participate in government … we are seeing sodomy.
- Every time a well-fed person of power works to limit school lunches for the needy, we are seeing sodomy.
- Every time a candidate berates the poor as lazy at her 3,000-dollar-a-plate fundraiser, we are seeing sodomy.
- Every time a politician says that private charities and not public largess should care for our elderly, our veterans, our disabled, our mentally ill, and our starving children in fatherless families, we fall deeper into the errors of history’s most sinful city.
I hear the pushback.
There are those who would say, “But welfare makes people lazy!” And I will answer, Yes, there are poor people
who cheat, just as there are rich people who cheat, just as there are working
class and middle class people who cheat.
But I ask you this: If there are even one hundred people on public
assistance who are there righteously, would you spare them your wrath?
What if there were only fifty such people?
And please, don’t be angry if I continue, but what if there were
only ten such people? Would you spare
the system your wrath if there were only ten such righteous people being saved
by the public generosity of our nation?
Or would you destroy the righteous with the wicked?
I pray you, Lord, that we save our nation from modern day
Sodomizers.
Marana
Tha,
Cosmic Parx / YoYo Rez
