Genesis 19:30 - 38
Lot and his two
adult daughters were the only survivors of Sodom and Gomorrah. Unwilling to camp inside the charred walls of
Zoar next to the ashen remains of their wife/ mother, the three refugees from
the valley moved up the mountains into a cave.
Genesis 19:31 says
that the family, or at least the young women, thought that the whole world had
been destroyed.
Now, before you
smirk at the poor, dumb, panicky ancient women overreacting, think about how
many times some local calamity has happened somewhere in the world and modern,
educated, globally-informed Christians have declared, “The world is coming to
an end.” Or, imagine you witnessed a
nuclear destroy a city just over the horizon.
Would you think the destruction was only in that city?
The sisters thought
they and their dad were the last 3 people on Earth, but they had an idea.
Come, let us make our father drink wine, and
we will lie with him, that we may preserve the lineage of our father.” (Genesis 19:32)
And they did. On successive nights, the recently widowed daughters
of Lot got their father so drunk he did not
know when she lay down or when she arose (Genesis 19: 33, 35).
There’s no other way
to categorize this. Lot was date-raped by his daughters.
And this is where they
start questioning the victim.
Victim blamers say: He should have known what they were planning.
Logic responds:
Really? He should have suspected that his own daughters planned to have
non-consensual sex with him? That’s a
thought a father should have had? No.
Victim blamers say: He shouldn’t have been so drunk.
Good sense replies: (1) He
wasn’t driving. (2) His daughters gave
him the liquor. His world was ashes, and
the angels were gone, and his own daughters said, “You need a drink.” And (3), He’d just watched everything he’d
worked for his entire life be incinerated, including his wife who was burned
into a towering pile of salty ash literally right before his eyes, and now they
live in a cave.
In that situation, you can’t be mad at the guy for breaking the seal on the mini-bar.
In that situation, you can’t be mad at the guy for breaking the seal on the mini-bar.
Victim blamers
say: He should’ve said, “No.”
People with brains say:
Uh, uh. Wrong expectation. Consent doesn’t mean someone doesn’t say, “No.” CONSENT means someone gives an uncoerced,
fully informed, “Yes.” Lot couldn’t
say, “Yes,” because AGAIN, HE’D BEEN DRUGGED. Alcohol is a drug. He was drugged.
The sick-er twist of
the story is the predators who sexually assaulted Lot were family, his own
biological daughters. They had to know
that what they planned was wrong or they wouldn’t have drugged their
daddy.
When and how could
their moral sensibilities have gotten so twisted that raping their father seemed
like a reasonable response to . . . . Oh.
Yeah. Sodom. They’d embraced the culture and ethics of
Sodom.
In Sodom, sexual
assault was a normalized community activity. (I wrote about it in “Why Sodom Fell”.) Cultural
values devalued family. Lot’s daughters
had heard their father offer to let them be gang-raped to preserve those 2 “angels.” And, the city that had just been destroyed, that
was their hometown, maybe the only home they’d ever known. That lady who’d been burned into a pillar of salty ash, that was their
mother. And, the daughter probably
thought, it was all Lot’s fault.
Corrupted and grieving,
Lot’s children did a terrible, terrible thing to the person closest to them and
most blamed for their pain.
I’m not excusing or
justifying their sexual assault. I’m
only pointing out that this story isn’t a fable or a fairy tale with simple
heroes whose every decision is pure and good or simple villains whose
motivations are dismissively evil for evil’s sake. The Bible tells stories of people who are contradictory and complex because the
Bible tells the truth and people are complex and contradictory.
Stories like Lot and
his daughters are preserved in Scripture so we know that our sins and social
dysfunctions, though no less terrible are by no means original to the human
experience. We’re repeating history,
so the outcomes are predictable, predictive ---- prophetic.
Lot’s daughter got
pregnant by their father, as they had planned.
37 The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab; he is the father of
the Moabites to this day. 38 And the younger, she also bore a
son and called his name Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the people of Ammon to
this day. (Genesis 19:36-38)
The Moabites and the
Ammonites.
The legacy of a family
that was morally and sexually corrupted by Sodom’s sexually and morally
unrestrained culture was the birth of nations whose societies
became synonyms for idolatry, evil, and
opposition to God’s will.
Now look at us. Us
Western civilization. Us Americans. Us post-christianity Christians.
Of course, there are
reasons for our new moral perspective.
Absolutely, there’s justification in our extreme response to the trauma
inflicted on us by the sexual mores of the “righteous.” But do our reasons make it right? Do our sins make it better?
What are we doing to
the moral sensibilities of future mothers and fathers? What kind of future nations are we, are our
children conceiving?
Remember Lot’s
wife. But don’t forget about what
happened to the rest of the family.
---Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T.
Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in
Fairfield, Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth
Networking Organization (SAYNO); and director of rural leadership
development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).
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