Bible Story (Genesis Edition; Part I)

The Sin City

To make it a little interesting, I've decided to make a simple comparison about the story of how 2 different response of welcoming foreigners/strangers in Genesis 18 & 19.

Let's see at how Abraham & Lot, with Sodom & Gomorrah Response

Abraham

All that Abraham did to those strangers in my opinion, is very gentle, warm, and friendly. The way he approached the strangers simply told the readers that he respected them, even though they had never met before and treat them like they're old friends. (Well, it's probably because God and Abraham had been a very dear friend to one another, so that he could recognized HIM, when he saw HIM). The sentence that appeals me is that when Abraham ran to met him (remember, it's uncommon for an old men to run just to greet someone in the ancient context) and bow his head to the ground (A symbol of honoring other people), these gestures are not just about hospitality, but also about respecting others.

And the next thing that we know, Abraham asked for them to stay for a while and have a meal with them. Yep, it's a great hospitality gesture to be showed to a stranger, right? How many of you when you met strangers in your home, you ask them to stay with you and have a meal together? And not just that, Abraham also prepared the food and drink as best as he and his families could. He even doesn't mind cutting his own cattle, the best and the fattest cow that he had, to be given.

But one thing we must kept in mind, even though Abraham is all nice and good host, he was never a naïve person (Peterson, 2017). He knew that a nice stranger could turn into a bad person, or even robber in a split second, and he had the capacities to take them down (remember, he had met and fight with kings, for saving Lot). Perhaps we could take a good lesson from him, that to be a good host, is to realize and be aware that to treat nice to other people, even though it's stranger doesn't mean to lower our alertness to them, but by treating them as good as we can, would possibly turn them to be as good as they can.

Lot

Lot was not so different with Abraham; He bowed to them, and offering them, his hospitality to stay at his home (because Sodom & Gomorrah is not a safe place for foreigners) and having a feast together. He treated those strangers (could be interpret as angels in disguise), with respect and dignity, although he was almost rejected by them. Lot must've learnt a lot from Abraham when they're on a journey together. Abraham must've met and greeted a lot of strangers and therefor, that's the reason why their gestures when they met strangers were quite similar. This is Abraham's legacy to Lot, so that he could survive in every situation.

Lot even didn't hesitate to sacrifice his own daughters when the people of Sodom & Gomorrah asked them to give the angels, to be abused sexually (although it's still a debate whether it's just part of the ancient cultural context or it's really an immoral habit of the city). It's possible that he was proud with his daughter for being a virgin that he mentioned it as a bargain to the Sodom & Gomorrah's people. For short, Lot knew how to treat a stranger properly and even knew how to protect them, if there's a chance that they'll met a hostile situation that they both can't avoid.

Sodom & Gomorrah

There was no doubt that the people of Sodom & Gomorrah were wicked and mean when it came to treat strangers. It's possibly had been their own 'weird traditions' to greet a foreigner that came to the town like that. No wonder, God said that their sin had been grievous, the city was corrupt in every level that even the young and old people were participating and agree with such manner. It has never been a custom in any tribes or nations to treat the guests badly, because we would never want to treat people that we don't know, improperly.

We can never know who these foreigners in the first sight are, and it's possibly that they're important people in their hometown, or strong guys or bandits that were hungry. Or could be any worse than that. That's why some culture teaches the youth or the next generations about how to treat the guests properly and well, so that the chance that the guests will turn against them will be dropped and could even became partners. Not by demanding a sexual activity, like what Sodom & Gomorrah did, and that's what they deserved. The angels blinded them, and that's the symbol of the immoral and corrupt culture in the city; there was no hope for the city, because the citizens had been blinded, intentionally.

And the story was closed by an incestuous sexual activity by Lot and his daughters when they finally survived the catastrophic situations. We could see that although the city was already destroyed and burnt to the ground, there were still some things that remains. The city was so corrupted that the closest relatives of Abraham had been poisoned and adopting their culture (Perhaps it would be better if they were also burnt and die with the city). This is the legacy from the Sodom & Gomorrah.

Perhaps you were all confused right now, when you arrived in this paragraph. 'What? So, the sins of the city of Sodom & Gomorrah is all just about mistreating strangers? That's oversimplifying!" Well, my answer is yes and no. Yes, I know that Sodom & Gomorrah had done a lot of terrible things and just highlighting one of them, is not a good argument to address to problem, that why Sodom & Gomorrah were destroyed by God. But I also said no, because I think you could saw how bad and mean, an individual or even a city, by how you treat a stranger.

Think about it for a moment, although there are still possibilities that this conclusion is generalizing people, but would you want to hang out with people that couldn't treat strangers well? You would see them as a hostile & bad people, right? Would you want to be a part of their family or even marry them, too? Well, in my defense, if I can't treat strangers in a proper manner, then I also can't treat my family members well, right? Because I wouldn't know how to treat other people well, if I didn't have any example or role model from my own family about how to treat them.