There’s been something on my mind lately, and since I’m trying to live out my value of radical hospitality, I guess I need to talk about it. It’s hard, and I’ve written & rewritten this thing like 4 times, but I feel like I need to share my hurt, my anger, and just a little good news.
So, there’s a funny thing I learned in divinity school which doesn’t seem to be that widely known… Scholars think that Sodom and Gomorrah’s sin was actually Inhospitality.
Weird, huh? Lots of scholars disagree with the interpretation that they were punished for “homosexuality”… but rather have interpreted that the members of these cities were punished for turning their backs on strangers who needed help, and for trying to take advantage of and rape them. In other words, as the Reverend Patrick Cheng puts it, for “Radical Inhospitality.”
I’m not going to argue biblical interpretation with anyone, as I focused on religious education during my studies, but I will say that if Cheng and other biblical scholar’s interpretation is true, my home, my state of Mississippi, the place I love, is in a lot of hot water with God for our statewide elected officials’ actions recently.
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