how great the father's love: lot and the visitors revisited

"According to the text, is Lot a righteous man or not?"

This was one of the questions we asked students at our Bible school's oral examinations last month.

Not unlike our initial study of the text together last February, most answered in the affirmative: Lot was righteous.

Why?

"God saw him among all the people in Sodom", said one old man.

That seeing, within such a great sea of humanity, must attest to something of Lot's righteousness.

"Lot would do anything to protect his visitors," said another man. "He proved he was righteous by giving his daughters in place of the two men to the men of Sodom."

This answer took me aback a bit, for it is the opposite of what I had argued in the original lesson. Yet this man did make a compelling association in support of his position: Lot's offer of his daughters was like that of Abraham to Isaac, the one whom the story in Genesis 22 introduces as "your only son, whom you love." Thus, rather than an act betraying the daughters' worthlessness in their father's eyes, Lot's offering was likewise of the "beloved".

Another woman was less convincing. In her judgment also, Lot was righteous. However, when pressed, she, unlike other students, did not modify her stance to admit that Lot may have been wrong at least in his willingness "to bring out" his daughters to evil men.

"Lot knew that God was going to rescue him and his family anyway. That is why he offered his daughters."

Although her reasoning is not unlike that which the author of Hebrews offers up with regard--again--to Abraham when he "offered up Isaac" because he "considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead", it elicits one critical objection.

"If he knew," said I, "why then did he not simply give the men his visitors?"

Though through hesitation, her answer amounted to the belief that visitors are more important than daughters--actually, than anyone. That is why Lot would not think of bringing them out.

It is true that visitors are particularly vulnerable people; they can navigate neither the space nor the conventions of a place as its residents, and are therefore at the mercy of the residents. This is, in fact, Lot's primary claim to righteousness in the text: he, as a resident alien among resident Sodomites, alone shows hospitality to the visitors who come to the gates of the city.

Yet there is something else, I believe, that the text invites us to consider.

Guests are not only those who come, but those who are. Long before the two angels arrived in Sodom, Lot the father had charge of guests, whether he deemed them so or not. That he would bring them--his daughters--out for rape is not as much a thing exposed by Lot's righteous impulse to protect those who have come as it exposes his failure to care for those who are daily in his midst.

Lot's dilemma may also reveal an African caveat in the text. Izithunywa, the Xhosa word for messengers--the two angels who come to Sodom--often stands in the context of mediums who divine causes for human misfortune via spiritual messengers, the ancestors. And, not unlike the daughters and the men who have come under the shelter of Lot's roof, the spirits of the dead "compete" with one's living dependents for the attention of present-day Lots, those African fathers and mothers heading households.

"This is the way of keeping us poor," says a young, Xhosa pastor.

How? In a context of poverty, people cannot afford to hold extravagant, expensive feasts in honor of deceased elders (a typical response if one dreams of a given ancestor). Already there is not enough to support the daily, adequate nourishment, not to mention education, of many children.

"Where will that money come from?" says the pastor. "Yet you will find that there is always money for that thing."

There are always children to sacrifice for the sake of important visitors.

"So what do you think Jesus would have done if he were Lot? we asked the students.

"I think he would have offered himself", one brother replied.

How great this Father's love for us, his children.

Therein lies the righteousness in the text.

-Joe

Texts referred to or quoted in this entry: Gen 19:1-14; Gen 22:2; Heb. 11:17-19; 1 Jn 3:1