The Story of Lot and Sodom

[fred conty]

Originally Posted by Uriah_Betrayed

Not to be confrontational but does this mean Jews of that time were given an easier burden than us modern day Christians. After all I doubt God would let me into heaven if I was a drunkard who committed incest just because I believed 100 percent that God existed.

Uriah Betrayed,

About the Jews having it easier than christians, we only have to look at the hundreds of laws that they were under to understand that the Jews had anything but easier than the christians.
Upon looking at their lives, every part and partical was regulated by some type of law.
From what I see, I don't envy them.

As far as Lot going to heaven after committing sins, it isn't because of sin anyone goes to heaven but it is because of the mercy and forgiveness of God. In this world God's mercy and promise exist, in the next world his justice. Anyone could be a drunken sot (which by the way Lot was not), and still get to heaven if they invoke sorrow of their sins, and trust in the loving mercy of our Father in heaven. There is no end to his mercy now when he sees a son admitting his mistakes. As a matter of fact, he will go the extra mile and run to that son to welcome him back for he loves that much and more. Noone, no matter what they have done in the past should ever doubt but rather trust God's promise.

Just a thought.

[Uzziah1]

Uriah Betrayed, in response to my contention that the story of Lot being raped by his daughters while he was in a drunken sleep in a cave, so that they became pregnant by him so that they gave birth to the progenitors of the Moabites and the Ammonites, is really a picture of God's people "marrying" the Dead Man with Wine for Blood, Christ, in His Church, generaqting His Gentile Church ...

Originally Posted by Uriah_Betrayed

I'm sorry but that streches Christian interpretation of the OT far too thin for my taste. First I do not like to think of the gentile Church as the same lines as "the offsprings of incest", nor would I compare the Eucharist to an orgy...

Finally isn't the point of the scene where Lot sleeps with his daughters to show what horrible people the tribe of the ammonites came from giving Judea an excuse to why they're allowed to conquer and exterminate them?

Re your second contention: The NAB footnote added by the NAB OT Committee infers that the OT Committee felt that the story was a piece of fiction added to the Bible text to poke fun at the Ammonites and Moabites by ridiculing their origins.

But that does not say anything about the spiritual meaning of the story. In other words, Why did the Holy Spirit see to it that this "political joke" was included in Holy Scripture?

So, re your first contention ...

Much of the OT is really about Christ -- at the symbolic, or allegorical, level. In Luke 24, when Cleopas and his acquaintance are walking on the road to Emmaus, Christ appears to them and explains how the OT refers to Him again and again and again. When He appears to the Apostles later in the same chapter, He opened their minds to the same truth

So, it is useful to ask, ESPECIALLY in the cases of the of the bizarre, incomprehinsible inclusions, "How could this refer to Christ?"

There are a LOT of difficult stories like this in the OT, and they all make sense as references to Christ.

Example: Judges 19, the story of the Levite of Ephraim. There a seemingly selfish Levite pushes his own concubine out of the door into the hands of a wild band of sex-crazed bisexuals, to save himself, and they rape her all night, literally to death. The Levite then recovers her body and cuts it up into pieces and ships the body parts to the tribes of Israel.

What in Heaven's Holy Name is a horrible story like that doing in the Bible?

Answer: It is a picture foreshadowing the sacrifice of Christ, and the distribution of His sacrificed body in the form of the Eucharist!