Day 8 – O’Keefe – the issues in Sodom
Mr. Parrott has taken a leading role in Maryland referenda on immigration and also on marriage. The most-quoted passage in the Bible supporting Mr. Parrott’s position on marriage is also about welcoming strangers. So if he overlooks the command to welcome strangers (or immigrants), he loses all credibility on marriage.
In Genesis 18 and 19, there are two stories about patriarchal figures, Abraham at Mamre and Lot at Sodom. The passages are parallel. Both Abraham and Lot receive guests, and promptly offer hospitality. Both offer to serve the travelers. Both offer to bathe the travelers’ feet. Both provide a meal. Both offer a place to rest. Both passages include reference to their wives, and both wives get in trouble. Both men bargain – Abraham with God, Lot with two angels. Both men are to become the fathers of nations.
When you see the parallels, it is simply not possible to overlook the issue of hospitality. The stories deal with a motif that is familiar not only in the Bible but in literature around the world: the stranger at the door who turns out to be divine.
Both Lot and Abraham provide models of hospitality. They were pro-active, offering to help. They provided for basic needs promptly. They treated their visitors as if they were celestial – which was good, because they were. And the key difference between the stories of these two men on that day is about a failure in hospitality. Lot’s neighbors violate the laws of hospitality, among other problems.
So what did the people of Sodom do wrong? They had a pattern of activity that offended heaven. The angels’ investigation turns up evidence of three obvious crimes: rape, specifically homosexual rape, and assaulting guests. (1) The non-consensual sex does not seem to be a key problem in the story, however horrifying it is to us. Lot does not come off looking good, but he is rescued, not punished, after he offers his virgin daughters to the mob in order to protect his visitors. (2) The traditional interpretation of the passage focuses on homosexuality, and the word “sodomy” comes from this story. (3) But certainly, a large part of the evil is the assault on strangers, the sins against hospitality.
The last thing the townspeople do before the angels intervene is to shove Lot, threaten him, and make some kind of anti-immigrant remark. Boom.
Given the extensive parallels between the two stories, it does not make sense to try to dodge the issue of inhospitality in the story. Nor is it merely that the men of Sodom had the bad luck to try to rape two angels: the treatment you offer strangers is the treatment you offer God.
When the story is over, the corpses of those guilty of inhospitality and homosexual rape are scattered over the desert.
It is not honest to take a lesson about marriage from the passage and ignore the lesson about welcoming strangers – including immigrants.
Mr. Parrott?
