Hi, I’m Wayne Jones, and welcome to re·Christian, a critical and satirical reconsideration of Christianity, the Bible, and God. This is episode 6: “Sodom and Gomorrah.”
There are some famous cities in the Bible, cities so famous that if you’ve never read all or even any of the Bible, you’ll still probably recognize the names. Bethlehem. Nazareth. Jerusalem. (By the way, those are, respectively, the cities where Jesus was born, grew up, and was crucified.) You may not have ever heard of Sodom and Gomorrah though, but there is much that happens in the story of these cities that illustrates not only the way the good Lord works, but also the mechanical literary style that crops up frequently in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament. The short version of the story is that Sodom and Gomorrah are two cities that God ultimately destroys completely. But it’s the reasoning and the method and some of the details that make it all so perverse and that reveal so much about the obsessions of the writers of the Bible.
The first thing is the reason God destroys the cities: because the people there are “wicked” (Gen 18:23). But the telling fact is that this label of wickedness is not because of murder or arson or violence or any crime at all, it seems. The wickedness is due to sex and particularly gay sex. And so this is an early example in the Bible of the obsession with sex and sexuality, of the tendency to judge it, of the need to control it, and, yes, the impulse to destroy it when it is not of a kind that God and his assorted minions approve of. This obsession with sex continues to this day, to one degree or another, in all Christian denominations. Gay sex is wrong. Sex when you’re not married is a sin. Engaging in sex for anything other than procreation is frowned upon. These are the rules, again, promulgated and enforced depending on which Christian cult you happen to be a member of. That’s of course all bad enough, but the truly galling part is the hypocrisy that the rules are often wrapped up in. Gay sex is an abomination, unless you’re a televangelist who inveighs against it on stage but pays a male escort to fuck you in the ass, for example. Or, children are our greatest gift and hope for a better future, unless you’re a pedophile priest employee of the Catholic Church and the senior management will just arrange for a transfer if you happen to get caught.
Sodom and Gomorrah are like old-tymey versions of Las Vegas or Amsterdam. What happens in Gomorrah, stays in Gomorrah, so to speak. That secrecy and protection work well today, but in biblical times God always found out about what was going on and, sometimes, did something about it. And God’s actions, and the actions of some of the inhabitants of the two cities, are so completely fucked up that it defies comprehension that it’s all recorded in what’s sometimes called the “Holy Book.” This is the book that people pass along from one generation to the next. This is the book that those televangelists hold aloft as they preach, the soft-covered onion skin flapping over the side of their hand. This is the book that regular Christians read, or try to read, or read part of, or—after a miraculous intervention and epiphany—read in its entirety during the course of one year.
One of the main players is a man named Lot, who allows two angels to hole up inside his house. Word gets around and eventually all the men of Sodom surround the place and issue their demand: “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them” (Gen 19:5). Yes, it’s just that subtle. And Lot’s reaction is perverse. He doesn’t stand his ground. He doesn’t tell them to go away. No. He goes outside and talks to them and—yes, this is in the Bible—offers his two virgin daughters to them instead. His offer is refused because, well, you know: when you want gay sex and someone offers you two women instead, it’s not much of a counter-offer.
At this point, things get supernatural. The two angels/men pull Lot back inside the house. “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” (Gen 19:11). Handy trick, that. They then tell Lot to save himself and his family, because the intention is to destroy the entire city. They escape to a nearby city called Zoar. And when everything’s clear, God has at it:
24 Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. 25 Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. (Gen 19:24–26)
This is, let’s say, a bit extreme—though over-reaction when he’s angry about something is kind of God’s trademark.
There are three more points I’d like to make about the Sodom and Gomorrah story, two about the narrative and one about the writing style. Perhaps one of the best-known details is that as Lot’s wife is fleeing, she looks back, and for that God turns her into a pillar of salt. This is both bizarre and illogical. A pillar of salt? Why not just burn her up with the sulfur he is using for the rest of the city? And did she turn into a pillar and then immediately dissolve, or turn into a pile of salt? Is it possible for a pillar of salt to remain erect and standing? The more important thing though is God’s assumption that when she looked back at her burning city, she was lusting for its former pleasures. But I can easily imagine either just the opposite (she’s happy to see it crisped) or she wants to view this cataclysm and make sure that it’s not moving too fast toward her, as anyone would who is running from a fire. This is another example of God assuming the worst of his creation (admittedly he’s often right in doing so), but this instance was fifty/fifty at best.
The other narrative detail is about Lot’s daughters, you know, the ones he was ready to throw to the sex-crazed horde at his door. Here is how it is reported in Genesis:
30 Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. 31 One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. 32 Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”
33 That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up … [the other daughter does the same the following night].
36 So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. (Gen 19:30–36)
Technically speaking, it is possible for a man who is passed-out drunk from wine to be made to achieve an erection and ejaculate, all without waking up. Unlikely perhaps, and in defiance of informed consent, but still physiologically possible. But is this the daughters’ only choice? Could they not move somewhere else, or take a trip or something (Vegas? Amsterdam?), instead of fucking their own father?
And finally I want to mention the often awkward and mechanical style often exhibited in the Bible. It seems to be that this comes from the original texts from which the Bible was translated into English, because many modern-day editors would make many corrections and suggestions even in the Modern English version in, for example, this passage about a conversation between God and Abraham, Lot’s uncle:
20 Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous 21 that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”
22 The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. 23 Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? 25 Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
26 The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
27 Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, 28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?”
“If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.”
29 Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?”
He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.”
30 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?”
He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”
31 Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?”
He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.”
32 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?”
He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”
33 When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home. (Gen 18:20–33)
This would be hilarious if they weren’t talking about the threshold of good men that had to be reached before those men would also be killed because of the actions of the bad men in town. I’m not sure if God just got a bit perturbed at Abraham’s ludicrous repeated questions, and that’s why he left, or if they have both silently and mutually agreed that nine is the threshold. If there are only nine righteous men in Sodom, then unfortunately they will be victims too as the rest of the city and its wicked inhabitants are killed. Alas, this is how God operates. Christians, dear Christians, this is in the book on which your religion is based. This is the God you are worshipping when you go to church. This—well, you get the idea.
And that’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. Please check the show notes for a full transcript and for how to contact me.