"This was the guilt of your sister Sodom:she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy."(Ezekiel 16:49)
When Christians start throwing Bible verses at each other, especially around the topic of homosexuality, inevitably the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is used to show why homosexuality is bad. Look what God did to that town because the men wanted to have gay sex. The problem is that from Genesis we can't actually tell what sins that caught God's attention were. We know in the end the "men" who visited Lot were accosted by the men of Sodom. Basically they wanted Lot to send out the strangers so that they could be raped.
First off I think we can agree that gang rape, no matter whether being done male to male or male to female is really bad. Should not be tolerated in any way, shape or form. It is also true that their behavior violated hospitality codes of the ancient world, you don't do that to guests.
But Ezekiel tells us what the original problem the one that had God ready to destroy them, the wealthy and prosperous people paying no attention to the needy in their midst. Literally these people were so full, that they had more than enough. They weren't even being asked to sacrifice anything, just to share with others.
Perhaps that's the real warning we should bring from this story to our times. That God's expectations of us, who are very blessed, is to give aid to those less fortunate than ourselves. This is not the only example in scripture about this by the way. God's people get in trouble when they fail to help the poor. And that message needs to be heard even today.
Blessings,
Ed
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