Day 5 of #16days : Do not conform

As the saying goes, you cannot make a purse out of a sows ear. Folks, this one is difficult to read, think about and write. Lot was Abrahams brother and he lived in Sodom and Gomorrah. Genesis 19 picks up right after Abraham has pleaded for the lives of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. God has 'sent' two angels to the city to see if even 10 'good' people can be found. Lot met them at the gates (where he was sat as a Judge) and insisted they stay with him in his home. 2 Peter 2:7 suggests that Lot was a righteous man, distressed by the depravity of the city he lived in. Perhaps the righteousness is credited to his position of Judge. Perhaps he was trying to make a difference. Lots of 'perhaps'....

4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”
6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

Middle eastern hospitality places a lot of honour on the guest. However there can be no defence of Lot's actions here and God steps in to save the daughters from the same certain fate we later see with the unnamed concubine in Judges.

10 But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. 11 Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door.

It is not just our modern 'sensibilities' which find these actions abhorrent. Lot should never have placed such an awful interpretation of hospitality above the safety and honour of his daughters. Lot and his daughters may have escaped destruction in the city but their story goes from worse to worse if you can believe it, culminating in Lot's daughters taking advantage of Lot while drunk and becoming pregnant with the forefathers of nations who would always be sat in opposition to God's people.

I've looked at many commentaries about this sorry story and come across not a single one which satisfies. Sometimes the reason something happens really is unknowable. In these situations as Christians we have to lean on what we know to be true about the character of God. In Psalm 18:30 we are reminded that His ways are perfect and He is a shield for all who take refuge in him then in Isaiah 55:8-9 that His ways are higher than ours. I cannot understand this story though I can take a couple of suggestions.

Lot lived in this city as a Judge, 'perhaps', to his mind as a form of missionary. But he became so far assimilated that when it came to it, he was just as depraved as the city he was 'distressed' about. 1 Peter 2:11 and Hebrews 11:13-16 reminds us that we are but strangers on this earth, waiting as we are for 'home'. Romans 12:2 says not to be conformed to the ways of this world and Lot became conformed in the most awful way.

Patriarchal norms are a way that people are conformed to the ways of this world and all suffer because of it. Rape culture, femicide, VAWG, FGM, child marriage and more are all evidence of this, with women and girls the primary victims as we saw in Lot's story.

So does God care? Yes and I believe He's been warning us about anti-conformity from the very beginning.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day Three 16 days - Exploited

Exploitation: "the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work" The exploitation of women and girls represents the ultimate outcome of multiple layers of inequality. Women and girls are more likely to be in poverty, less likely to have an education, more likely to have suffered abuse at the hands of family members. Girls who have no access to school but need to work end up with no autonomy over workplace so are more vulnerable to being exploited by 'recruiters'. They are therefore disproportionately represented in modern slavery - 99% of victims of sexual exploitation are women and girls. One of the reasons modern slavery continues to proliferate is the gendered power imbalance which is upheld by patriarchal structures globally. Culture, some religious beliefs, laws, societal norms and gender roles all contribute to this power imbalance and this is clearly demonstrated in human trafficking where women are dehumanised to the extent t...
Read more

Thoughts on Elders - pronouns and tradition

Let me first start by saying that the only skin I have in this particular game is that I love to pick away at threads where I feel that patriarchal systems have sought to supress and 'keep women in their place' through an interpretation of the scriptures. I don't personally want to be an elder, nor do I think I necessarily fulfil all the requirements regardless. I do however believe that the church family and wider church is poorer for this prohibition and that is my motivation for this whole blog really.  That off my chest, for this post I wanted to put down in writing some of my thoughts on this so far. Also, they are just that, my thoughts so far and for this post I've landed on 'pronouns' and 'tradition'. I've come on a journey from a complementarian stance to a mutualist/egalitarian stance and I hope I am still learning and developing all the time. I've talked to MANY people about this and funnily enough it was a recent discussion about the ...
Read more

Thoughts on Elders - "For Adam was formed first, then Eve"

I'm back with more (personal!) thoughts on Elders. This time about 1 Tim 2:13 "For Adam was formed first, then Eve". See my previous post here focusing on 'Pronouns and Traditions'  based on 1 Tim 3:1-12. I think for some who have a complementarian stance, the linguistics of the passage in 1 Tim 3:1-12 are not so relevant an argument, it's more about what they see as the original principles of male headship, ergo male only elders. So if you truly believe that male headship is correct, then of course the linguistics of chapter 3 are irrelevant because you'd only see the explicit language as confirming the male bias. So headship. First up two things, I think it's interesting that male headship is not mentioned until Ephesians 5:23 (when Paul first used the term 'kephale'). I also think it's interesting that Jesus didn't mention headship at all and when he did talk about marriage, he said it in the context of the Eden blueprint of a husban...
Read more