Years ago the Huffington Post offered an article titled "What Was the Real Sin of Sodom?" Rev. Patrick S. Cheng, PhD, explained that "anti-gay Christians actually have it backwards." The sin of Sodom wasn't same-sex acts, silly Christians. "The real sin of Sodom was radical inhospitality," a sin he says "anti-gay Christians" are guilty of today. Well, that clears that up. I guess we'll have to change all those references in the King James Bible (and the law books) that refer to "sodomy" and "sodomites," eh? Or, at least, redefine them to mean "inhospitality."
The grounds for this change is in the word "to know." Most people have heard the idea that "to know in a biblical sense" means to have sex, but it also means ... "to know" in a normal sense. So, when the men of Sodom ("both young and old, all people to the last man") surrounded Lot's house and demanded "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them" (Gen 19:4-5), they didn't mean "to know them" biblically. They just wanted to get to know the fellows. And when Lot offered them his daughters 3 verses later claiming "I have two daughters who have not known any man," he was using it in that same sexual sense we thought of before but not in the social sense that verse 5 meant. Or something like that.
So, what do we know? Well, in Genesis 18 God and two angels visit Abraham (Gen 18:1-2). Abraham was hospitable (Gen 18:3-8). (Seriously hospitable.) At some point God wondered whether to tell Abraham what they were up to (Gen 18:17) and then did. "Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know" (Gen 18:20-21). Okay, so we're talking about "very grave" sin. In fact, it frightened Abraham. He queries God with "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" (Gen 18:25). And God assures him He will. So the angels went down to Sodom and Lot was very hospitable (Gen 19:1-3). And then came "the incident." So eager were these men of Sodom to get to know these angels that even after they blinded the men, the men kept groping for the door (Gen 19:11). This desire to know these angels was apparently the trigger point, the final straw, as it were. They told Lot to get out of town before they completely destroyed it (Gen 19:12-15). And you know the outcome. If only those guys had offered the angels a cookie or a cup of coffee or something God wouldn't have had to rain down fire and brimstone and annihilate everyone in the place.
This is what passes for reasoned exegesis from a reverend with a PhD. Oddly, the notion that God rained down fire on a population because they weren't hospitable is okay, but the idea that He might have done it for sexual sin is not. I would think that our "reasonable" reverend would be dismayed that God would do that for inhospitality. But, no, as long as the homosexual community gets a pass, it's okay. So we ignore the text as it is written, where "to know" is used in practically adjoining sentences to mean two different things and argue that wanting to know someone just in terms of getting to know them is the equivalent of "radical inhospitality" and worthy of destruction. We latch onto the parallel offered in Ezekiel where "the guilt of your sister Sodom" is described in terms of having "pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy" (Ezek 16:49). "See?" we say, "It was their failure to help the poor and needy" when nothing in the text about the event suggests that was the "very grave" sin of Sodom. Certainly that was sin and that was part of it, but why do we ignore Jude's explanation that Sodom and Gomorrah "indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire" and, "as an example," underwent "a punishment of eternal fire" (Jude 1:7)? Inhospitality? Really? Ezekiel agrees that a failure to help people with what they had was bad, but Jude argues it was this "sexual immorality," this pursuit of "unnatural desire" that was the reason for the fire.
So those who would like to deny the references in Scripture that argue that homosexual behavior is a sin will perform this kind of eisegesis. Eisegesis is the interpretation of a text (as of the Bible) by reading into it one's own ideas. Exegesis is the critical interpretation of the biblical text to discover its intended meaning. So the question here is not "What does the reverend think?" because that's eisegesis. The question is "What does the text say?" If the problem is that the people of Sodom failed to welcome strangers and the text says that they tried very hard to get to know them, it seems really confused. If Genesis says God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for being inhospitable and Jude says it was for sexual immorality and pursing unnatural desire, either it is both or we have a problem. Given that the phrase "unnatural desire" ("strange flesh" in King James) has always been understood (way back to Josephus and Philo) to mean homosexual behavior, "contrary to nature" (Rom 1:26-27), either we have never had the Holy Spirit doing what Christ said He would do (John 16:13) or we have another case of a "scholar" with an agenda reading into the text rather than out of it. As for me, the real confusion occurs when I hear skeptics argue that the real sin of Sodom was inhospitality and that they're okay with that. I can't seem to find anything in Scripture that lists "Didn't offer them a meal and a place to sleep for the night" as an "abomination." Guess I missed that one.
It's eisegesis when you conclude "Evolution took place over 6 time periods according to Genesis" because it's not in there and is only a product of trying to merge Scripture with Science. It's eisegesis when they say, "There are lots of Gods and we will become one someday, too" because it's not in there and is only a product of trying to merge Scripture with the Book of Mormon. It is eisegesis to argue that the sin of Sodom (and surrounding cities) was inhospitality and absolutely not homosexual behavior, because it's not in there and is only a product of trying to defend the behavior today. All sorts of competitors for "the Word of God."
3 comments:
Man i love your brain....
It never ceases to amaze me how dumb people get after so much education.
This is school boy level Hermeneutics.
Rule 1. what the text plainly states, is what the text plainly means. (unless it is poetic)
2. Are the text meaning; supported by other narratives? yes.
People like this must justify all the money spent on their education by; creating convoluted explanations to otherwise simple answers. With these guys; nothing is ever simple. they would have us believe that we cannot read the bible because its meaning is too mysterious for our simple minds. however by attacking our common sense they reveal their true motivation.
They are not interested in the truth; they want to create a new truth, of their own vain imaginations.
One of the things Stan points out : is that the false view cannot be inserted into other text. if the meaning has to do with hospitality, then all other relevant text should convey the same meaning. but the false view only creates greater distortion and confusion.
Bad doctor .....
I'm confused. If they simply wanted to get to know the angels, like neighbors, how is that inhospitality? In that version, Lot is the inhospitable one for not introducing his guests to those people. Shouldn't he have been condemned? Plus, the whole offering his virgin daughters seems even worse than being inhospitable, and yet he gets a pass. How were the Sodomites being inhospitable?
Yes, exactly. The "inhospitable" claim seems specious. The accusation in Ezekiel is not "inhospitable," but selfish, greedy, and unwilling to help the needy.
To be clear, I agree with God that they had that problem, and the "grave sin" for which they were ultimately annihilated surely included that, but those who try to justify homosexual behavior do so in the face of the Jude text and end up, essentially, ignoring both.
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