Loree and the Bible Challenge
A Bible Challenge Indeed!
Today's reading in our 100 days of Bible reading is Genesis chapter 19. If I were picking chapters for 100 days of Bible Reading, I would skip this chapter. It is confusing, weird, and, for a lot of people unhelpful. I would have had us read chapter 18, the story of the Three Visitors, three angelic messengers that come to Abraham to confirm the promise God made to him, that Sarah, his wife who was way beyond childbearing years, would have a son. But were they angelic visitors? The amazing iconographer, Rublev, painted them as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, sitting at the table that Abraham set for them, sharing bread and wine. The three visitors were a Theophany, an appearance of God among men. Its a wonderful chapter, and also gives the background for the disturbing story of Genesis 19.
Chapter 19 is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, a story used by many to say that homosexuality is wrong. But that is not what the story is saying. The visitors say to Abraham, in the NRSV version of the Bible, "We are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord." I like the Common English Bible translation better: "The Lord has found the cries of injustice so serious that the Lord sent us to destroy it."
Cries of injustice. Yes. There is nothing normal about all the men in the city, including boys, coming to someone's house expecting the occupant to throw out his guests to be used by them in any way they choose. That is injustice. It is injustice also, for Lot, the supposedly righteous man, to try to protect his guests by offering his virgin daughters to these men. Either way, male or female, we are talking about gang rape to guests, or to family members of the head of the house. That is injustice. If you look at Lot's anxiety about where these visitors were to sleep, its clear he knew of this behavior, and feared for his guests. This was systemic behavior, and in the story, God decided to deal with it by destroying the city. That's another thing you miss by not reading chapter 18 - at the end of that chapter, Abraham pleads for Sodom, asking God to spare the city if there were even 10 righteous people within it. God agreed. But there weren't 10 righteous people.
I don't know archeologically what happened to these cities. Were they overcome by lava from a volcano? Something happened that caused the writer of this chapter to create a story about God destroying evil. It is a story of wickedness, of evil. It is not a story about homosexuality. No doubt, NO doubt, if Lot's guests included women, the crowd would have wanted them thrown out too. It is a story of an unjust place, and God's anger and disappointment that such a place would exist in the world he created.
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