Sodom And Gomorrah

Sodom and Gomorrah's judgment in Genesis 19 is one of the more well-known stories of the early Bible in some circles, and as straightforward as it is, there are many ignored or precise issues associated with it.  Many have heard of how angelic beings visited the area after negotiating with Abraham for the lives of the inhabitants to be spared if only 10 righteous people live there, the land being scorched by fire from God.  This destruction by fire is a foreshadowing of the annihilation of the mind and the reduction to ashes of the body that awaits unrepentant sinners in hell (2 Peter 2:6, Matthew 10:28), something more important than the other exact circumstances of the story by far.

Why did God destroy the region, though?  Genesis 19 itself describes a very small window of interactions between the visiting angels and how local men sought homosexual sex with the strangers and threatened to rape them and do worse to Lot, a righteous person--or comparatively righteous person, for he offered his own children to be raped instead of the angels--who partially opposed them.  The New Testament elaborates on how Lot was tormented by what he saw occurring around him (2 Peter 2:7-8), but he was by no means an exemplary person otherwise in Genesis 19, and these verses do not specify many things about what else actually happened in Sodom and Gomorrah.

In Ezekiel 16:49-50, example sins of Sodom are arrogance and apathy or inaction towards the poor and needy.  It is true that this passage does not mention the city's most culturally associated sin, that of homosexual behaviors.  Theological liberals sometimes say or assume that because of this, homosexuality must not be a sin at all, and thus it supposedly could not have been a reason why Sodom and Gomorrah deserved divine judgment.  This does not follow.  Focusing on one category of wrongdoing does not logically necessitate that there is not another involved.  Also, the Bible does teach that homosexual behaviors are immoral, although they are absolutely not the worst sexual sins no matter what evangelicals pretend because of their own assumptions.

Mere homosexual behaviors were not the only sin of Sodom and Gomorrah or even the worst of them, but as something that both violates Yahweh's moral nature (Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:26-27) and that deserves death--the acts, not subjective desire (Leviticus 20:13)--they would not have been irrelevant to the destruction of the cities.  Of course consensual homosexual acts are not as severe as nonconsensual sex of a heterosexual or homosexual kind, which is like or worse than murder (Deuteronomy 22:25-27)!  Of course neglecting or otherwise dehumanizing the poor is a sin that the Biblical deity despises (Exodus 22:25-27 and Deuteronomy 24:10-15, for example).  None of this means that either interpersonal homosexual expression is not sinful or that homosexuality had nothing to do with the sins of Sodom.

Like all Biblical narratives, the story of how Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed is not in any way the central or primary way that the Bible reveals its moral obligations.  Stories only tell what is supposed to have happened.  Alone, they do not detail Yahweh's justice or what specific motivations or actions are sins that make inflicting justice necessary.  Homosexuality, like rape, is a capital sin, but it is Mosaic Law and not the stories of the Bible that clarify this.  Yahweh's comments and retribution in narratives hinge on his moral nature as detailed in the Torah (Romans 7:7).  It is not the other way around!  The sins of Sodom and Gomorrah were more plentiful than any one thing, but both the theological conservative and liberal stances on this issue are, once again, incorrect on this matter.