There’s A Lot Wrong with the Bible’s Story of Lot

Trigger alert — If you interpret the Bible literally or are easily offended by challenging the Bible’s contents, do me a favor and don’t read this.

You likely know the story of Lot, or at least you think you do — set in the city of Sodom, one of the cities the Bible notes as being destroyed by God because the people are deemed immoral and beyond redemption. Some people contend Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because the cities’ men had sex with other men, which is an odd interpretation of the facts, because gay men have nothing to do with the immorality going down in Sodom and Gomorrah. I think Lot is the true sinner who evades divine justice, and the real story just gets more disturbing from there.

Here’s my case:

After Abraham and Lot separate due to bickering amongst their sheep herders, Lot was provided with the choice to find another suitable place to live, and he chose Sodom. Even though, as some Jewish scholars have pointed out, the place was filled with sinful people who were behaving licentiously, and Lot would have likely determined that fact shortly after arrival, he had no qualms about residing there. In fact, Lot set up a household in Sodom, seemingly comfortable with the surroundings, and perhaps behaving in ways that were also a bit shady.

At this point, Genesis mentions the following situation:

“And the two angels came to Sodom in the evening; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom; and Lot saw them…