Genesis 19 … Clobbering the Clobberers #03: Regenerating Genesis (06/26/16)
Another popular passage among the condemnatory conservative Christian crowd, these verses speak of the critical portions of the infamous tale of Sodom & Gomorrah, and state the following “But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house; and they called to Lot, and said ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them’ … Then the Lord rained on Sodom & Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of Heaven.” (see Genesis 19:4-5 + Genesis 19:24)
On its face, it is easy to see why so many conservatives use this passage to justify their personal condemnation of homosexuality, and yet when we look more closely at the texts, a very different picture emerges …
First of all, it is important to note that it was “all the people to the last man” who committed the sin that led to the destruction of those cities – men who were almost exclusively HETEROSEXUALS!
Secondly, the implied sin in question in this passage was NOT homosexual love or homosexual relationships (or homosexual marriage, or even homosexual sex), but rather was the intended RAPE of two fallen angels by a horde of heterosexual men. As such, the crime here was not a crime of passion or lust at all, but rather the perversion of a sexual assault – a crime of rage & domination.
Thirdly and finally, and for Christians most importantly, the Bible itself makes it clear that homosexuality had nothing at all to do with the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah. Indeed, the book of Ezekiel notes that those two cities were destroyed for not assisting the poor and the needy who lived therein, while Jesus later stated that they were destroyed not due to any prevalent homosexual lasciviousness, but rather because their inhabitants were soaked in the sins of gluttony and rampant materialism.
“This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were proud, and committed abominations* before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it.” ~ Ezekiel 16:49-50
“Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day that Lot left Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from heaven and destroyed all of them.” ~ Jesus Christ (Luke 17:28-29)
*Please remember that the Old Testament has a long list of sins consider to be “abominations”, among them sowing discord amongst others (Proverbs 6:19), dishonesty (Proverbs 12:22), arrogance (Proverbs 16:5), and unjust persecution (Proverbs 29:27) – all of which are committed by conservative Christians themselves every time they publicly condemn homosexuals to be sinners &/or homosexuality to be an “abomination”!
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