The God Box by Alex Sanchez Page A

Genesis 18, the chapter immediately preceding the angels' trip to Sodom, as Manuel had suggested.The passage began with Abraham sitting at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men stood in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the earth, and said, "My lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I fetch a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on..."Apparently, one of the three men was the Lord and the other83two were angels. After a meal, the visitors turned their attention to Sodom, to which they were traveling, and the Lord confided in Abraham his plans for the city: "Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomor'rah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry which has come to me; and if not, I will know."As I read the passage, I wondered, why wasn't the "very grave" sin identified? It seemed odd that the Lord didn't know what was going on in the world and had to check on reports. Wasn't the Creator all-knowing? I kept reading.The two angels turned and headed toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord, concerned about his nephew, Lot, and his family, who lived in Sodom. Abraham drew near to God and began to bargain, reminding him of his divine and righteous nature: "Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked?
    Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt thou then destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"The Lord, apparently persuaded by Abraham, agreed, "If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake."Abraham continued to bargain God down, to forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, and finally ten. Then the Lord went his way, Abraham returned to his home, and I turned the tissue-thin page to the next chapter, 19.As I reread our Bible study passage, the whole Sodom story seemed even more twisted than before.
    Once more I wondered, could all the males in the city, young and old, have been gay? One of my commentaries suggested that the original language could be84interpreted as meaning that both the men and women of Sodom wanted to "know" the angels. But that only furthered Manuel's argument that the story wasn't about homosexuality, but about rape.I also recalled Dakota's point: How could Lot have offered up his daughters? What kind of dad would do that? How could God consider him righteous and spare him?Then there were the verses where the angels tell Lot's family, "Flee for your life; do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley; flee to the hills, lest you be consumed. . ."But Lot's wife behind him looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.God turned Lot's wife to salt simply because she looked back? Wasn't that a bit harsh?Then the story got even more confusing. Lot and his two daughters went to live in caves, and the daughters conspired: "Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring through our father"Wait a minute. Were these the same two daughters that God supposedly spared for being righteous? Yet they got their very own dad drunk and had sex with him without even his knowledge or consent. Wasn't that considered rape?Through their incest the daughters bore two sons, who became the fathers of the Moabites and Ammonites. And that was the full story of Sodom, so often held up as a condemnation of homosexuality.I leaned back in my