Daily Lesson for August 28, 2020

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Ezekiel chapter 16 verses 48 though 50:

48 As I live, says the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. 49 This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it.

If you ask the man on the street why Sodom was destroyed he will probably tell you it was because of homosexuality.  But let me tell you something I hope you already know, the average man on the street doesn't have a clue about the Bible, what's in it, and the why of what happened in it.

But Ezekiel did.  He was no average man on the street.  He was a Prophet -- a true seer and knower.  And Ezekiel knew why Sodom fell. 

For Sodom's crime was not loving and consensual relations between same-sex persons.  It's crime was rape -- rapacious sexuality, and economy, and utter lack of mutuality or care in its city.  It was a city founded upon exploitation of labor, of bodies, of women, of aliens, and of the poor.  It was an economy and society tolerant of abject abusiveness and utter carelessness.

So, the next time the man on the street starts talking about Sodom -- because usually you don't really have to ask him, but he just starts talking -- ask him two things:

1) How often he reads the Bible

2) Why he doesn't talk about what the Bible actually says about Sodom, rather than what he thinks it says

And the answer to those questions are probably:

1) Little to none

2) Because blaming everything on the gays is a lot easier than dealing with the real sins in Sodom and also in us.

NOTE: We are reading the whole Bible through this year.  Over the weekend we will read Ezekiel 18-24.