Stumble it!
Then God said to Abraham “The cries of the victims in Sodom are deafening, the sin of those cities is immense. I’m going down to see for myself, to see if what they’re doing is as bad as it sounds…” Genesis 18:17-21
The cries of the victims…it reminds me of another crying out that happened that YHWH heard, “the cries of the oppressed who were enslaved in Egypt”…which He had compassion on…and through great and terrible signs brought them out of…God hears the cries of the victims and he reacts in compassion and judgment…but what, praytell, are those cries about? What are they doing that is so bad? Now…before you go THERE to the obvious response…try this one on…
The sin of Sodom was this: She lived with her daughters in the lap of luxury–proud, gluttonous, and lazy. They ignored the oppressed and the poor. They put on airs…”
Or another translation says
Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and underconcerned. They did not help the poor and needy.-Ezekiel 16:49
Woe. Literally woe is me.
As long as I’ve read the Bible I’ve always understood that the sin of Sodom, the sin that prophets pronounce warnings to avoid, that Jesus talks about, that Revelation re-hashes, was something that I never had to worry about…something I never had to consciously avoid…I’ve been able to be detached from the indictment of their wickedness…”Not me…I’m not guilty of THEIR sin”…
But wait… Ezekiel says “THE sin”…not: “one of the contributing factors”…not: “a possible reason”…but under the inspiration of God, he lets us in on the directors cut version of why God judged them, on what exactly the cries were, and who the victims and the victimizers were…
Overfed…and underconcerned…ouch.
I’m guilty of Sodomy.
Lord…will you spare us if there are fifty innocent…if there are forty five…if there are twenty…if there are just ten innocent…would you spare us?
They ignored the oppressed and the poor…
but God, a just God–a righteous God–did not…he heard the cry of the victims…
Sadly, then and now, none of us are innocent and all of us are the victims.
Filed under: compassion, confession, justice | Tagged: compassion, confession, homosexuality, judgement, kingdom, mercy, poor and needy, poverty, social justice, sodomy
I actually “snoped” that one because I knew it couldn’t be true…Are you kidding me? Troubling. That’s troubling I say.
Lord, that we would turn from our wicked ways. That we’d be willing to lose our life and take up Yours. Transformation Lord…into your likeness.
Thanks B – as always. Onward and upward.