Marcia Ellen, whose Weblog regularly has some of the most creative material I've seen among the AOL Journals (with cool graphics, too), raises an interesting question. In the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, why did God want to destroy the city? In her discussion, she makes the interpretation that, contrary to traditional Christian views, the great sin of the city was unbelief rather than homosexuality.
The book of Genesis, where the story appears, is fascinating. I'm partial to a reading of Genesis that sees it as a two-sided learning process, where Yahweh and the humanity that he created in his own image are learning to adjust to each other.
Prior to the destruction of Sodom, Yahweh appears to Abraham as a traveler and tells him what he is about to do. Then Abraham bargains with him to see how many righteous people it would take to persuade Yahweh not to destroy it. (Genesis 18: 16-33)
This story is the first time in the Bible that "justice" is mentioned. We read that Yahweh is thinking that he wants Abraham to be just. But it's not God who tells Abraham he has to be just. It's Abraham who tell God that he has to be just.
When Yahweh says he's going to destroy Sodom, Abraham's response is along the lines of, "What?!? You can't do that! That's not right!!"
One way to read this part of the story is, maybe it had never before occured to Yahweh that he should be just in dealing with human beings. (There was that nasty incident about the Flood prior to this.) But he created people in his own image. And they came up with their own ideas of how things should work.
God agrees to Abraham's bargain. Abraham still loses the city. But he tried.
2 comments:
Interesting (as always!)
Also interesting was the battle the kings of S&G fought together and lost in Gen 14. I'm not sure how, but this is also an indication that God was not with S&G for a long time. That and the fact that each time S&G are mentioned in the book afterward, the issue is unbelief, not homosexuality. In the Bible, God rarely if ever comes down heavy on sins of sexuality. But the sins of unbelief are treated harsh.
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