Sodom

Last week I watched a TV special about Sodom and Gomorrah.  The program was geared toward the discovery of ruins in Jordan which may indeed be the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah.  The archaeologists featured were trying to prove (or disprove) the Biblical account.  The show claimed that the sin of Sodom was sexual perversion.  The story is indeed troubling.  God sends angels to Lot.  Lot, thinking they are travelers in need of lodging invites them to his home to spend the night.  The men of the town form a mob around Lot's home and demand that the men come outside in order to have sex with them.  From that Biblical account, it is assumed that homosexuality and sexual perversion were the cause of the destruction of Sodom.

In Ezekiel 16, God speaks to Ezekiel and talks about the sin of Sodom.  The Lord doesn't make reference to sexual perversion. ⁴⁹ “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. ⁵⁰ They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen."

Arrogance, gluttony and greed seem to be the things that led to the destruction of Sodom.  This is my second reading through the book of Ezekiel.  When I've read these passages before, I would think about Sodom and even Israel as those ancient, bad, evil people who turned from God.  At the same time I would tell myself that I would never behave in such a way, and certainly America would never act in such a way.

I went to a Bible study at a nearby church a few years ago.  The people in the Bible study group were studying the book of Jeremiah.  The attitude of the leader of the group was troubling to me.  He said things like this:  "Those awful Israelites.  They were terrible sinners.  They had the covenant, the relationship to God, and they threw it all away.  You and I would never do that.  We would never sin like that.  We (Christians) are Israel now, because they blew it so bad, and we will never sin the way those evil people did.  They lost it all."  I remember being so irritated that I left that night, and never again went to their church.

Although I would have never expressed that kind of antisemitism the way that man did, I found that when I read the prophets, that's what I thought.

But after reading Ezekiel, the sin of Sodom doesn't seem that far from the sin in my own country.  Americans are arrogant, thinking that they can save themselves and everyone else.  We are arrogant in our extreme self-reliance.  We are arrogant in the fact that we think we will survive if we completely remove God from out culture.

Americans are overfed and gluttonous.  Today I had to go to Walmart for groceries.  Covering at least half of Walmart from floor to ceiling were shelves and shelves of food.  It was amazing.  I noticed the people shopping.  All of them were HUGE.  They were bulging and slovenly.  There was a time when I would look at those shelves and be amazed at our prosperity.  The US government calls it obesity.  I call it gluttony.

I have noticed something about being "unconcerned for the poor or needy."  America is outwardly one of the most compassionate countries in the world.  Our poor are not poor at all by any standard.  I have friends who receive welfare who live in huge houses with a TV the size of their living room wall, and satellite TV.  We supposedly take care of our poor and our disabled through Social Security.  But I know from personal experience that the people who really need the benefits cannot qualify.  The truly poor in our society, the people who truly need help don't get it.  In America we make sure that we are VIEWED as a compassionate and generous country, but true compassion and generosity are rare.

Then if you want to add in sexual perversion, all you need to do is watch TV.  My country is obsessed with drugs and sex.

I say all of this to make the point that the things that led to the destruction of Sodom are quite apparent in my own country.

So today when I read Ezekiel I didn't think about that "awful nation of Israel" who really blew it.  I thought about the world, my country, my state, my city, my family and me.  I pray we haven't blown it.  I pray for God's mercy.  I pray for revival.