In 2015, former President Jimmy Carter gave an interview to HuffPost Live saying that ‘Jesus would probably embrace same-sex marriage.’ According to the Advocate, Breitbart, for some reason, dug up this comment and recirculated it, bringing horror to the Evangelical community—nobody more so than glorified homophobic martyr, Franklin Graham, who took to Facebook to ‘remind’ the former President that Jesus murders gay people, he doesn’t embrace them.
I have to respectfully disagree with former President Jimmy Carter on this one. He is absolutely wrong when he said Jesus would approve of gay marriage. Jesus didn’t come to promote sin, He came to save us from sin. The Bible is very clear. God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality. God defines sin in His Word—it’s not up to our opinion, the latest poll, or a popular vote. What is very troubling is that some people may read what President Carter has said and believe it, whether it was this week or from a video 3 years ago that is now recirculating. God loves us and gives us the truth in His Word. He warns us of the serious consequences of sin.
For starters, it confuses me that—of all the sins mentioned in scripture, it’s homosexuality that gets singled out. The bible lists seven specific sins called The Seven Deadly Sins. The Ten Commandments, which Evangelicals want to post in every courtroom, lists God’s ten worst sins. Neither of these lists mention homosexuality. Take the Seven Deadly Sins, for example: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. Nobody exhibits these characteristics more than Franklin Graham and his fellow Evangelicals. Pride: The height of arrogance is deciding whom Jesus loves, and who he doesn’t. Or gluttony: I remember one day watching John Hagee (after Hurricane Katrina), himself an gluttonous man, standing in front of his church with his many chins a-jigglin’ and saying:
"The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade on the Monday that the Katrina came, and the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demure from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment, and I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans."
So God punished an entire city because of a parade, but doesn’t seem to have a problem with an obese pastor flagrantly flouting the “deadly” sin of gluttony. In fact, based in a 2015 article in Christian Today (not to be confused with Christianity Today), one-third of all US pastors are obese. And yet God never sent fire from heaven, charring the parishioners, turning the choir into pillars of salt, and leaving the church in ashes.
For the sake of those who aren’t familiar with the oft-told vengeful tale, I’ll briefly recap. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is told in Genesis 19 but begins in chapter 18 when the author tells us the ‘Lord appeared to Abraham while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day.’ He then goes on to say, “Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby.” Whether or not one of these three men was “God” is never stated directly, but just for funzies, let’s assume that it was God and two angels (Genesis 18:16-33 suggests that God was that third man, though doesn’t say who the other two were).
God tells Abraham he’s had about as much as he could take from “The Cities of the Plain,” which Sodom and Gomorrah were the largest. The “stench of their sins” had reached him all the way into heaven is what he said.
“Cut-to”—in movie parlance—Genesis 19, which opens with two angels entering (or about to enter) the city of Sodom (we’re assuming they were the same two who left Abraham and “Lord” in chapter 18) in the evening, and Lot, sitting at the gate of the city, notices them. We’re never told why they were there, but based on the rest of the story, we can assume it’s reconnaissance.
Lot ‘insists strongly’ the two angels stay with him, fearing their safety, but they don’t get to his house unseen:
Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house.
Genesis 19:4
They demanded Lot send out the men so that they might “know” them. Lot is appalled by their actions, so offers his two virgin daughters to take their place. A proposal which only made the men angrier and they threatened Lot with the same treatment. However, just as the men reach Lot’s front door, one of the angels pulled Lot inside and the men of Sodom were struck with blindness. Yadda yadda yadda, they tell Lot to take his family and get out of town before God rains down fire.
There are several troubling events in this story that Evangelicals never mention during the telling. The most disturbing: Lot, an apparently a righteous man willingly offered his daughters to be raped by a mob of angry men. Meaning, it was homosexuality and not rape, pedophilia or incest that God found repugnant (the incest happens after the fire, in verses 30-36).
If we look for a reason for God’s fury, there isn’t one. God tells Abraham that the ‘stench of their sins had reached him’ but what was that stench? Did it smell like soiled condoms, lube, or sweaty guys at the gym? While Genesis 18-19 doesn’t say, throughout the bible, Sodom and Gomorrah are used to represent sins other than sexual.
So, what if this story has nothing to do with sex?
This has been—and is being considered by scholars. It starts with the verb “to know.” We laypeople have been taught that the word “know” as it’s used in the bible, refers to some sort of sexual act as in, “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain…”
The Hebrew verb “to know” occurs 943 times in the Old Testament. Of those 943 occurrences, only ten refer to “carnal knowledge” such as Genesis 4:1. Genesis 19:5 would be the only place in the entire canon where the word “know” would refer to homosexuality. Meaning, out of the 943 occurrences, 933 of those times the verb “know” means “know.” Nine out of 943 times, “know” means straight sex. One time out of the 943 times, “know” means “gay” sex.
Within this context, it could be written that Lot invited two men into his home at night though he did not have the authority to do so. The men of the city somehow became aware of this and demanded Lot bring out the strangers for interrogation. The outcome would have been tragic as they could have been put out of the city, or worse, tortured and killed. This might also make Lot’s counteroffer more practical. If the men were after gay sex, why would they care about two virgin preteen girls (unless the angels were totes adorbs)?
The result of this translation would lead to the conclusion that the cities of the plane, Sodom and Gomorrah, were destroyed for the sin of inhospitality:
“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.”
(Ezekiel 16:49)
Jesus himself seems to have believed this to be the case when he gave this command to his disciples:
“Whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when you depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of our feet. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.”
(Matthew 10:14-15, Luke 10:10-12)
Which means, the real sin Jesus came to save us from has nothing to do with sex. It was about how we treat the “least of these” among us. Jesus railed against the Evangelicals of his time—also known as the Jewish elite—for the way they treated their fellow Israelites, not to mention strangers. It was the abuse of strangers, harming children, taking advantage of the poor, denying power to the powerless: the very people Evangelicals and Fundamentalists despise above all, that Jesus wanted to save us (and them) from. And this tracks with the stories told about Jesus and the parables he’s credited with.
So the Story of Sodom and Gomorrah means Franklin Graham is in far more trouble than I am in the eyes of God. This is a classic case of trying to “cast the beam out of your own eye before you go after the sliver in your brother’s eye.”
How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Matthew 7:4-5