Taboo #3: Sodom wasn't about homosexual relations...

I read Taboo, so you don't have to.

"I'm not sure about Sodom, but the rest of Scripture is clear."

On page 79, Mike Novotny wants to be too cool for school by attempting to disprove that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah had anything to do with homosexual relations. Skip back a few pages and you'll find his reasoning.

"Let's start with Genesis 19, the story of Sodom. Do you know it? Sodom stinks. God says its stench wafts up to heaven and turns his stomach. God send angels in disguise to investigate. A man named Lot welcomes them into his home, but that's when the men of Sodom pound on the door. "Where are those men?!" they demand. "Bring them out so we can have sex with them." When they try to break down the door, the angels step forward, strike the sex-crazed mob blind, and rush Lot's family out of Sodom just as fire falls from heaven and destroys them all. And if you grew up in church, that's all the proof you need. God burns up gays. Case closed, right?"

Yeah, men having sex with men is pretty bad, Mike.  

"Not exactly. Type "Sodom" into a Bible search engine, and you might be surprised. For example, Ezekiel 16:49, "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy." Arrogance. Price, Selfishness."

Mike leaves out verse 50, "They were haughty, and they committed abominations in my presence, and so I removed them when I saw it." Leviticus 18:22 specifically refers to homosexuality as an abomination.

"Jesus' brother says in Jude 1:7, "Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion," and I'd call gang rape immoral and perverted, wouldn't you?"

👏gang 👏 rape 👏 by 👏 men 👏 on 👏 men 👏 

"So did God destroy Sodom because its men were arrogant, proud, selfish and perverted, or because they were arrogant, proud, selfish, perverted and gay? The answer: we don't know."

Mike would rather sow uncertainty into the minds of his readers than to simply state the full counsel of God is that homosexual relations are an abomination to Him. This is a twisted form of winsomeness.