Category: Christian

The Sin of Sodom & Gomorrah Summarized: A Warning to the United States of America (and a Reason for Hope)

It may be worse then you think and more relevant than you assume

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Since I noticed how Ezekiel summarized the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah earlier this year, I wanted to take a closer look. Ezekiel’s summary was surprising to me, and I wondered, “What did I miss in reading the story?”

I thought it was about sexual sin, and specifically homosexual sin, but Ezekiel doesn’t even mention sexual sin in his summary. This is what Ezekiel says, speaking to Israel:

“You not only followed [the ways of Sodom] and copied their detestable practices, but in all your ways you soon became more depraved than they. As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done.

‘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. They were haughty and did detestable things before me.'”

(Ezekiel 16:47-50) Obviously, the story of Sodom & Gomorrah isn’t what I thought it was.

Like most people, I was taught a simple version: God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality. End of story.

But when I actually took the time read the text carefully, I realized the Bible tells a far more unsettling story, and a story that is far more relevant to our world today than I imagined. The Bible contrasts hospitality and hostility to strangers (angels) to highlight the root of Sodom & Gomorrah’s sin.

I did a careful exegesis of the Sodom & Gomorrah story previously that demonstrates what the primary the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah was, but today I am just going to summarize it. The summary needs to include the context in which the story of Sodom & Gomorrah is embedded in the Bible.

Before Genesis 19 where we find the story of Sodom & Gomorrah is the story in Genesis 18 of Abraham’s and Sarah’s magnanimous hospitality to three strangers who turn out to be “the Lord” and two angels on their way to Sodom. The one called “the Lord” remained behind talking to Abraham, while the two angels continued on to Sodom where Lot sees them sitting in the gateway of the City. Lot calls to them, invites them in, and shows them the same magnanimous hospitality Abraham showed. (Gen. 19:1-3)

The parallel stories of Abraham’s and Lot’s hospitality that mirror each other in the same pattern set the stage for God’s judgment on Sodom. That’s when things go sideways. The men of the town surround Lot’s house and demand that Lot send them out to be violated sexually.

Abraham welcomes strangers with generosity and honor. Lot does the same, but the men of Sodom do the opposite. They rage against the strangers. They threaten Lot because he is a “foreigner”, and they warn Lot they will treat him worse than what they plan to do to the strangers in Lot’s house if he doesn’t comply.

The town’s men resented Lot being there and resented him inviting other foreigners into his house. They formed an angry mob to humiliate and violate Lot’s guests as a warning: you are not welcome here!

As Ezekiel says, the reason for this conduct is because they were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned about others. They did not help the poor and the needy. Worse, they didn’t just turn the foreigners away; they didn’t just drive them out of town; they tried to punish, violate, humiliate, and shame them.

The Lord told Abraham that He was responding to the great outcry against Sodom & Gomorrah due to the grievousness of their sin. (Gen. 18:20) Such an outcry is the response of people when great injustice is done to them. The scene echoes the story of Cain and Abel when Abel’s blood was said to cry out from the ground in Genesis 4. The same word is used for Israel’s outcry under Egyptian oppression in Exodus 2.

God responds to injustice. God responds specifically to the outcries of people who bear the oppression of that injustice, and God judges those who are unrepentantly responsible for that injustice.

The story of Sodom & Gomorrah is a story of God’s judgment on sin, but it isn’t sexual sin that brings God’s judgment. The sin that prompted God to respond was the sin that caused people to cry out under the weight of injustice.

Jesus later confirms that the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah is inhospitality when he warns towns who do not welcome his followers, saying, “it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.” Jesus says this in Mathew 10 when he sent his 12 disciples to proclaim the kingdom of God, and Jesus says it again in Luke 10, when he sent out 72 of his followers to heal the sick and proclaim the kingdom.

The context of these statements was the hospitality (or lack of it) shown to his followers. There is no mention of sexual sin—only refusal to welcome, refusal to listen, refusal to be hospitable.

Ezekiel is very specific about the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah:

“This was the sin of your sister Sodom: pride, excess of food, prosperous ease—but she did not help the poor and needy.”

Pride. Comfort. Indifference. Not just lack of empathy, but downright cruelty to the poor and needy – the vulnerable. That is the Bible’s own summary of the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah.

The angels/foreigners in the story of Sodom & Gomorrah are just one category of vulnerable people. Elsewhere, Scripture often mentions widows, orphans, and foreigners together to describe the vulnerable people in the ancient near east who God desired His people to protect and watch over – because God’s heart is to protect and watch over the vulnerable and needy.

Yes, there is sexual sin in the story, but the root of that sin is hostility toward others. In the context of the story as it sits in the greater context of the previous story about Abraham’s radical hospitality, the sexual act is a weapon of the people of Sodom. They use it out of arrogance, out of desire to guard their own wealth and comfort from foreigners, to humiliate, shame, and drive out the foreigners who dared to encroach on on what they had. It is the final expression of a society that idolized comfort, wealth, and lifestyle. Because they didn’t love God, they didn’t love people.

Sodom wasn’t destroyed because it was too permissive. Sodom was destroyed because its people were too proud, too full, too comfortable, and too cruel in their efforts to protect what they had from outsiders.

God heard the cries of those crushed by that system—and He acted.

That’s what makes this story disturbingly relevant today. The sin of Sodom isn’t ancient or obscure. It shows up whenever a society values its own prosperity above allegiance to God and clings to its own comfort, despises the stranger, and silences the cries of the vulnerable to protect what it has.

And that should give Christians (and non-Christians alike) pause in 2025 in the United States of America. God is no respecter of persons. People reap what they sow. God did not spare the people of Israel from His judgment when they repeatedly gave in to idolatry (putting their own interests above God’s interest) and oppressed their neighbors. He will not spare a country or a even a group of believers who do that.

The good news is that God is always, always faithful. He is aways just to forgive those who ask to be forgiven and repent of their ways. I pray that we can be such people.

A Review of Principalities Powers and Allegiances: Submission in Enemy Territory

Untangling submission to authority and allegiance to God

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A friend posted an glowing endorsement of the book, Principalities Powers and Allegiances, by Matt Mouzakis & Will Ryan, that intrigues me because the subject is a topic I have spent some time considering and writing about. The book is an exegesis of biblical passages that have posed challenges to modern Christians like myself: Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:11-17.

These passages instruct Christians to submit to earthly authorities “for the Lord’s sake” (1 Peter 2:13). Mouzakis and Ryan provide background and Scriptural insight that sheds some fresh light on these passages. It is not new light. In fact, it is ancient light that was likely understood by the original readers of those words, but which has been lost in the centuries since that time.

I do not have the book, but I was curious because of my own interest in the tension between faithful adherence to the Gospel and submission to governing authorities, so I asked Google Gemini for a summary of the book. More specifically, I asked for a summary of the exegesis of Romans 13:1-7 for comparison to my own exegesis. (How Should the Church Act Regarding Authority? and more recently Submitting to Authority For the Lord’s Sake Like Peter, Paul, and Jesus Did)

The exegesis of Romans 13:1-7 offered by Mouzakis and Ryan is a departure from modern reading that views government as God’s benevolent institution for all time. They argue that the passage must be read through the lens of the Deuteronomy 32 worldview and the larger narrative of sin and God’s judgment in the book of Romans.

The Deuteronomy 32 worldview, in a nutshell, is that Yahweh, is the sole supreme Deity, and that the gods of the other nations are lesser, created spiritual beings (“sons of God” or elohim). It pulls from the judgment following the Tower of Babel that included the scattering of the people:

“When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
    when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
    according to the number of the sons of God.”

(Deut. 32:8)(ESV)

The “sons of God” are sometimes translated “sons of Israel”, but Israel was not yet a nation at that time. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (whose name was changed to Israel) from which God formed His people were not yet born. God called Abraham out from among the nations and formed a people of God, the nation of Israel, separate and apart from the nations. Thus, Jews identified only two sets of people: the Jews and the Gentiles.

The Deuteronomy 32 worldview notes that the “sons of God” (the elohim) rebelled. They demanded the worship that belonged only to Yahweh, and they lead the nations into idolatry and violence. They are the principalities and powers that Paul speaks of who rule the “world system.” Jesus defeated those principalities and powers by his life, death, and resurrection (Colossians 2:15), broke down the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles (Ephesians 2:14), and established his Church for the purpose of reclaiming the nations for the Kingdom of God.

Romans 13 needs to be read in the context of the sweep and arc of the story of God and what He is doing in space and time. Here are the key points of their specific interpretation of Romans 13:

1. The Context:

From Handing Over to Submission

The authors connect Romans 13 directly to Romans 1:21-23, where Paul describes God “handing over” (paradidomi) humanity to the consequences of their idolatry. In the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, this “handing over” included disinheriting the nations and appointing elohim (spiritual beings) to govern them.

The Problematic Authorities:

By the time of the New Testament, these spiritual beings—the principalities and powers—had fallen, becoming demonic forces that oppose God. When humanity rejects God, they are handed over to the “world” and to these spiritual powers, which are associated with the consequences of “sin and death.”

The Assertion:

The Roman government (specifically the Empire under Nero in the 1st Century) is viewed as aligned with these demonic forces. Paul’s message is that because Christians serve KING JESUS, they are no longer slaves to these demonic forces, even while living under their political rule.

2. The Nature of “The Authorities”

The Greek word used for “authorities” in Romans 13:1 is exousiai, which refers both to human governing authorities and spiritual powers (seen in Ephesians 6:12). Mouzakis and Ryan contend that Paul is deliberately using this ambiguous term to encompass the reality that earthly governments are influenced by unseen spiritual powers.

When Paul says the authorities are “instituted by God,” he does not mean God approves or blesses their actions. Rather, God established them as the temporary framework of consequences and judgment that the world is subjected to—a framework that God ultimately controls in his sovereignly.

3. The Ruler as “God’s Servant”

The authors evaluate the terms used for the governing official: leitourgos (minister/servant, v. 6) and diakonos (servant/minister, v. 4).

A Tool of Wrath:

The ruler is called both “God’s servant for good” and an “avenger who carries out God’s wrath” (v.4)(ESV). This wrath is seen not necessarily as God’s positive blessing on good governance, but as the execution of the consequences already outlined in Romans 1—the judgment of being “handed over” to a system that operates by the sword. the “good” is the carrying out of God’s purposes. The government’s function is to maintain basic civic order and punish wrongdoers, which is a necessary restraint in a fallen world, but the government itself is not necessarily acting righteously.

Consistent with this, we can find multiple times in Scripture where unjust nations are identified as servants of God. Isaiah identifies Assyria as the “the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath!” even as Isaiah pronounces, Woe to the Assyrian!” (Is. 10:5-6) Jeremiah called the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, God’s servant. (Jer.25:9 & 27:6) to bring God’s judgment.

The Non-Endorsement:

The term leitourgos neutral. It refers to public servants, generally. It means a tool or agent of God, like Assyria and Babylon were to accomplish God’s purposes in exiling his people. It is not an endorsement of them as God’s representative.

4. Allegiance vs. Submission

The most crucial distinction is between submission and allegiance:

Allegiance is to Christ:

The Christian’s primary and ultimate loyalty is to Jesus and the Kingdom of God. Our allegiance (our citizenship in the kingdom of God) made the Christian community a rival kingdom to the Roman Empire. That is why Christians were viewed with suspicion and called “atheists” (because they didn’t bow to Caesar and they didn’t worship the Roman pantheon of gods). Jesus was crucified, in part, because he was perceived to claim to be the King of the Jews, though his kingdom is not of this world.

Submission is Tactical:

The command to “be subject” (hypotassō) is a call for voluntary, orderly yielding to maintain peace, prevent anarchy, and avoid creating unnecessary offense that would hinder the spread of the Gospel. Peter says to submit “for the Lord’s sake”, so that the Gospel message is not hindered. It is an act of discipleship lived out in enemy territory.

Taxes and Honor:

Paul’s only specific instruction about submitting to the governing authorities is to “pay to all what is owed them” (v.7), including taxes. He echoed Jesus in this who told us to pay unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to his disciples to pay the Temple tax. It is a call to fulfill one’s basic civic duty (giving to Caesar what bears Caesar’s image). However, the ultimate message is a remez (a subtle link or hint) to Jesus’s teaching to give yourself wholly to God because you bear His image.

In summary, for Mouzakis and Ryan, Romans 13 is not a command for blind obedience to the state, but a strategic directive for Kingdom citizens to live non-violently and orderly in a world ruled by lesser, fallen powers, while reserving ultimate worship and allegiance for King Jesus.

If you are interested in what the authors have to say about the book, this video features Dr. Matt Mouzakis discussing the process of writing the book and exploring its underlying theological themes in a conversation about writing worship music. Write Biblically Accurate Songs For The Church with Dr. Matt Mouzakis

If you want to read what I have written about the tension between submission to authority and allegiance to God, see How Should the Church Act Regarding Authority? and more recently Submitting to Authority For the Lord’s Sake Like Peter, Paul, and Jesus Did.

Did AI do a good job summarizing the book? I have added to the AI summary I obtained. Did “we” do a good job? If you have read the book, please let me know.

If this helped you, made you curious, or even if you disagree, please feel free to start a conversation in the comments.

Why I Write About Immigration Issues

The truth is complicated, but God’s heart is certain

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Mexican Border

I have friends who keep me honest, and I am grateful for that. They don’t always agree with me. In fact, they often disagree with me on various things, but they remain my friends, and I remain grateful for them.

Anyone who follows me on social media knows that I am virtually fixated on the issue of immigration right now. It may seem like a new thing—that all of a sudden I have become woke, liberal, or progressive. Some people who don’t know me well, I am sure, think that about me. The truth is more complicated than that.

I am a lifelong Republican and conservative by nature. I’m also a follower of Jesus, though, and I find that Jesus defies modern political categories and stereotypes. If Jesus looks to me like a Republican or Democrat, “my Jesus” probably is not the real Jesus, and my politics have likely influenced my view of Jesus.

Many people might look at my posts on immigration and feel like I have abandoned all sense of patriotism and national pride. They might think I have become a hater of the United States of America. Again, the truth is more complicated than that.

I grew up with a love for my country and a strong sense of patriotism and pride. I was educated, like most people my age, on the goodness of the United States of America, celebrating Christopher Columbus and Thanksgiving this time of year with idyllic depictions of pioneers living in harmony with Native Americans as our forefathers lived out their manifest destiny in keeping with a divine mandate from our creator to form the greatest, freest country on earth.

I still believe we live in the greatest, freest country on earth, but the truth is messier and more complicated than I once believed. I am grateful for a strong sense of the goodness of the United States of America I learned as a child, and I appreciate the positives in that idealized memory of America. But it’s more complicated than that.

Humanity is nothing if not messy. We are fallen, sinful creatures. We know that, but our idyllic, comforting images die hard.

The pioneers displaced the Native Americans who were here long before us. They were pushed out of their ancestral lands. They were marched in a “trail of tears” to godforsaken territories where they have had to scrape out a meager subsistence ever since then in the literal dust of the barren, rocky places to which they were consigned.

Slavery is a pox on our idyllic history. That it was supported, promoted, and defended by Christians who sought comfort in the Bible while they exploited, oppressed, and dehumanized people for the color of their skin (and wealth they could generate) is a testament to the utter bankruptcy of human beings – even religious ones.

Let’s be honest about this, also: religious people who use their religion to justify their unjust ways are not doing anything different than non-religious people who are unjust. It’s just more insidious for the fact that they contort love of neighbor to love of self.

I have learned to be honest and not to look away from these contrary images of our history and our past. God calls for repentance, and repentance requires honesty. Repentance and heart change are the only proper response to the evil of idolatry and injustice.

Honesty does not mean I do not love my country, and it does not mean that I am not thankful for being born here. I still believe that the good we have brought into the world is not any less good. It’s just complicated, and I want us to live up to the ideals we ascribe to.

In case you could not tell, I am not an idealist, though I certainly do have idealistic tendencies. Not that I am any different than anyone else. We are complicated and complex creatures; human beings. Despite the polarized simplicity of social media that pigeon holes us into two-dimensional, stereotypical ideologues, people and societies are complex.

On the issue of immigration, my “awakening” happened more than a decade ago – in 2014. During the Obama administration, as I watched the Syrian refugee crisis unfold in the news, I realized that didn’t have a robust biblical view on the subject of immigration. I have written about this often, so please bear with me if you have read what I have written before.

Continue reading “Why I Write About Immigration Issues” →

Trust for Those Who Would Judge the World?

Living out our trust in God by waiting on Him

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Do you trust God? Do you have faith? Those aren’t trite questions, and they don’t discount the desperation behind those who cry out to God for justice, for righteousness, for real change in the world and in our own circumstances.

Where is the justice in this world? The writer of Ecclesiastes looked for justice and observed, “In the place of justice – wickedness was there!” (Ecc. 3:16) I have seen injustice in the American court system myself. I see injustice every day in the news. Just today, I met with people who have suffered great injustice in the local legal aid clinic I run.

The injustice in this world is undeniable, and it can be utterly crushing for those on the wrong side of injustice. In truth, we have all been on the wrong side of injustice at times in our lives, big or small. Truly, the writer of Ecclesiastes was accurate when he said:

“I saw the tears of the oppressed—
    and they have no comforter;
power was on the side of their oppressors—
    and they have no comforter.“

(Ecclesiastes 4:1) Injustice feeds injustice in a seemingly never-ending cycle. (Think about the Hatfields and the McCoys or the Palestinians and the Israelis.)

In our human minds, we imagine that injustice must be met immediately with action and force. Justice cries out for redress. We lament when justice does not come. We pray and cry out to God. When justice does not come for us, we might even be tempted to believe that God does not care or worse – the God does not exist.

The questions I pose, therefore, are not glib or lightly asked: Do you trust God? Do you believe?

When we are tempted to take judgment into their own hands, we fail to trust God if we act on that temptation. We become judge and jury. We usurp God’s justice in the process. (Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord.) And, when become the judge and executioner, we make a mess of it in the process. We warp God’s justice to our conceptions of justice.

“Justice is not God wielding ‘the stick.’ It’s His desire to restore, redeem, reconcile, and mend all that’s broken in the world.” Chris Gresham-Britt

When the world talks about justice, the focus is on punishment. We don’t realize it as Christians that our view of justice is often more colored by the world than by God. Worldly justice is punitive.

If we are going to trust and believe God, we accept what the prophet says: that God desires mercy, not sacrifice. (Hosea 6:6) God desires to save and not to judge. That is why God sent His only Son into the world: not to condemn the world, but to save the world. (John 3:17)

God’s goal is redemption and destruction. God is just, but justice seems to be lacking in the world. Why? Peter says, we need to trust and be patient, as God us patient with us:

“[T]he Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

God is waiting (longing) to have mercy on us! (Psalm 30:18) “[God takes] no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.” (Ezekiel 33:11)

So, God waits patiently, withholding His judgment – withholding ultimate justice. He does this because He desires that none would perish, that all would turn to him and be saved. He waits to be gracious to us.

But we are impatient. We don’t want to wait. We want everything to be made right immediately, especially the injustices done to us, the people like us, and the people we know. “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:8), but a day seems like a thousand years to us when are suffering or see suffering.

We cannot imagine the delicate and complex balance of God’s patience in waiting for people to come to repentance so that He can have mercy and the judgment that He will inevitably allow to be imposed on those who refuse to turn and repent. All the while, God hears the outcries of people suffering the injustices of their own folly and wickedness and the folly and wickedness of others – sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind.

But, we do not see as God sees, and we do not know as God knows. Judgment is God’s business. It is not our business to judge the world. (1 Corinthians 5:12) That is where real faith comes – to leave the judging to God and to love the world as God loves the world, which is His instruction to us.

The whole law is summarized in two principles: love God, and love your neighbor. (Matthew 22:37-40; Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 5:14) That’s it. Just do it.

If you see a hurting neighbor, don’t judge; just help. Like the Good Samaritan, cross the road (go out of you way) to help your neighbor. Bear one another’s burdens. By doing these things, you will fulfill the law of love. (Romans 13:8-10)

In the end, justice will come quickly, but will God find faith on earth?

Do you trust God? Show it by loving others and leave the judgment to God. Do you have faith that God will bring justice? God’s justice is always colored by his desire to be gracious and compassionate. Be a vessel of God’s justice that is tempered by mercy and love, and love your neighbor.

An Exploration of God’s Hiddenness in the Bible

The Bible on the hiddenness of God

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Divine hiddenness is an argument suggesting that God does not exist. According to J.L. Schellenberg, if a perfectly loving God exists, He would desire a genuine relationship with every person He creates. A loving relationship requires, at minimum, awareness that God exists, so a perfectly loving God would make Himself known. Some sincere and willing people who want to know God are unable to find sufficient evidence that He exists to believe in Him. Therefore, either God does not exist or He is not perfectly loving.

I don’t buy it. I think the argument is flawed, but other people have provided robust responses to this argument, so I am not going to attempt to provide a counter argument here. I am also unconvinced that arguments are the best way to achieve understanding.

On that ground, I am intrigued by the hiddenness of God, and I am intrigued that the Bible is forthright about the hiddenness of God. The Prophet Isaiah says it plainly: “Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.” (Is. 45:15)

The entire Book of Job is about God’s hiddenness. Job assumed that God existed and had blessed him until he lost everything. When Job sought God in the desperation of his circumstances, he lamented, “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I do not perceive him… I cannot behold him.” (Job 23:8-9)

David, who is held up in the Bible as a man after God’s own heart, lamented the hiddenness of God at various times in his life: “Why, O LORD, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1); “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Ps. 13:1); and “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?… I cry by day, but you do not answer.” (Ps. 22:1-2)

Those last words were famously echoed by Jesus on the cross. Imagine, Jesus, who demonstrated and expressed the deepest and most intimate relationship with the Father, experiencing the utter absence of God at the moment of his greatest need.

I saw early in a world religion class in college when I wasn’t a believer that the Bible purports to be about the unfolding story of God’s encounter and revelation of who God is to mankind. Elsewhere, I have written about how God found in Abram a man who was able to grasp that the God of the universe is not like the gods of the provincial tribes and nations with which Abram was familiar. (For example, Abraham, Isaac and Paradigm Shift; and The Story of Abraham and Isaac Revisited: Introduction)

The revelation of God unfolded slowly as God needed to dispel notions of divine arbitrariness, capriciousness, brutality, and uncaring of the gods that Abram and ancient humanity understood. The gods of human imagination are no gods at all, and God is noting like ancient Near Easterners imagined.

While it is true that God is completely OTHER, the true God who made the heavens and the earth desires the benefit of and reciprocal relationship with the pinnacle of His creation. How does a God who is so completely OTHER than His creation communication Himself?

Consider a God who could make our universe with its vastness and detailed complexity down to the minutia of the precise intricacy of living cells and the unseeable building blocks of the physical world, like neutrinos, that are so small they can pass through your body and the core of the earth without hitting another particle. How does such a God who created such a world reveal Himself to finite creatures who live on a tiny planet in a tiny solar system among more stars, planets, and whole solar systems than such a creature can even imagine – how does such a God reveal himself to delicate, ephemeral creatures with limited perspective?

Continue reading “An Exploration of God’s Hiddenness in the Bible” →