Debatable: How False is the Modern Day Sodom and Gomorrah Comparison?
Written by Uche Okeleke
The bible story of Sodom and Gomorrah is one many folks find interesting or curious whether you are Christian or not. Just like Lot, whom the story was about, there seem to be more than a handful of morals from this story. The one however for which the story has become most popular on pulpits is the lesson against homosexuality. As a matter of fact, an entire legal term was derived from the unfortunate city of Sodom.
The general understanding goes like this or something like this. That the city of Sodom and Gomorrah was rotten with the sin of homosexuality and God lost patience with the people of that city that He sent his Angels to bring judgment on them. This resulted in fire raining down from Heaven and leaving the city in flames and ruins as Lot and his daughters escaped. Fascinating, isn't it? But was homosexuality really the main sin of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah? I would like to take us through a discussion to answer that question.
We should take our time to read the chapters 18 and 19 of the book of Genesis to help establish some basics here. Was homosexuality going on in town? So it seems. Was that the reason God destroyed the city? The answer to this one is either an absolute No or a "we may never know".
According to bible records, God sent two Angels to do the job of bringing punishment to Sodom and Gomorrah. But before they would carry out their judgment, they would have to confirm for themselves if the reports of the sins of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah are true. Not only that, they also had to stop by at Abraham's to let him know what they were about to do just out of the courtesy of friendship.
There were hence two major occasions where the Angels had interactions about the sins and destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. First was the meeting with Abraham in Chapter 18 and then the encounter at Sodom and Gomorrah with Lot and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah in Chapter 19 of the book Genesis. In none of these encounters and conversations did the Angels specify what the exact sins of the people were. It was just mentioned over and over that their sins had become too much. Because of this, it would be erratic and even dishonest to claim that the sin for which Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed was homosexuality.
Granted, the mob of men at Lot's door were asking to rape the men who were with Lot, we can't say this was the outrageous sin for which the Angels were sent to destroy Sodom. This article is also not attempting to debate whether same sex relations is a sin according to the bible or not, the point I am trying to make is that there is no clear evidence-backed argument for attributing homosexuality to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It could have been for a lot of other sins.
If homosexuality was the only sin for which the city was going to be destroyed, then it may have been spared. The Angels, after God's agreement in Chapter 18 to not destroy the city if he finds up to 10 righteous people, would have easily found 10 people who weren't gay. After all, there were men who were son-in-laws to Lot. And for Christ's sake there were women and virgin girls and boys. 10 straight people would not be hard to find.
There were obviously many more grievous wrongdoings that had become normalized in Sodom for which God was angry aside from the homosexuality by a handful of men and boys.
This is especially because Sodom was far from being the only biblical city marked for destruction as a result of their sins. Jonah was sent to Nineveh to warn them of similar destruction because of a multitude of sins. Again, there was no specific mentioning of any sin. Just imagine for a second the people of Nineveh instead of repenting upon listening to Jonah, beat him up and chased him out of the town and then God brings his judgment on them. It would be wrong to then attribute violence as the only sin Nineveh was guilty of.
In a nutshell, there is no bigger sin in the eyes of God. A liar is not a lesser sinner than a murderer and neither is fornication less severe than bestiality in on God's scale. If he was to destroy a city because of their sins, it could just as well be for any of those sins possible.