“Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, and excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”
When we think of the sins of Sodom, we tend to think of the overt s*xuel sins that that nation indulged in. After all, one such sin is named after the city. But they weren’t the big things for God. The big thing was their self-centredness. They had no concern for God (being proud, no doubt claiming how they were self-made men) and their using all of their wealth on their own pleasures.
Whenever I read this I think of the modern Western church. It regularly amazes me at how selfish we are, how much we spend on ourselves. I get told again and again how “generous” I am for giving so much. And I look at the amount I spend on myself and I see how truly selfish I am. Yet I do give more than the average person, while doing it on a part-time childcare salary. I look at others and wonder how they can’t see their incredible ignorance. How can they be content to eat out every day when they could be making sure that someone can actually eat that day? How can they be content stuffing their houses with more and more material “treasures” when their treasure vault in heaven has only a few moth-eaten rags in it?
It’s so easy to look at what others are (not) doing and think about how much more I am doing. But that is not God’s standard. God’s standard is loving Him with all my heart, mind and strength and loving my neighbour as myself.
Let us all look at our lives and see if this verse is true of us, if God would condemn us for enjoying luxury when we could be helping others. Are we really any better than Sodom? Or do we simply have better technology, cleaner moral living and more accurate theology?
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