When God considered destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, He did so in response to the outcry against those two cities.
Then the Lord said, “How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin!” (Genesis 18:20).
When Cain murdered his brother, Abel, God established a universal principle: blood spilled on the ground cries out to Him.
“Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!” (Genesis 4:10).
Just as the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah reached God’s ears, so did the cry of Abel’s murder.
Imagine how God feels, hearing the cry of all injustice occurring on Earth in 2025. Here are some way to think about this that I found on the Internet.
- The sheer volume of cries would be immense, given the world’s population and the multitude of injustices occurring globally.
- The diversity of injustices would range from personal betrayals to systemic oppression, from individual acts of violence to large-scale conflicts and environmental destruction.
- God’s all-knowing character would mean not just hearing these cries, but fully understanding the context, causes, and consequences of each injustice.
- God’s perfect love and justice would mean feeling deeply for each victim while also seeing the potential for redemption in perpetrators.
Pope Francis could have been describing Lot – or 2025 humanity – when he wrote: “[Sin] is a blindness of the spirit, which prevents us from seeing what is most important, from fixing our gaze on the love that gives us life. This blindness leads us little by little to dwell on what is superficial, until we are indifferent to others and to what is good.”
Are we perhaps like Lot, so accustomed to the sin surrounding us that it would take an angel to remind us that God is outraged—and that we should be too?
Rescue and Resistance
The old saying “the man is the message” applies to Lot. His family, particularly his sons-in-law, found it difficult to believe him because of his behavior.
Then the men said to Lot, “Have you anyone else here? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city—bring them out of the place.
For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.”
So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, “Up, get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the city.”
But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting (Genesis 19.12-14).
Victor Hamilton has an insightful opinion about Lot and his sons-in-law.
“Should an individual who offers to surrender his daughters to a group bent on assault be taken seriously by the future husbands of these women? Should a father-in-law, saved only because he’s pulled inside his own house, now be viewed as a bearer of vital information?”
Reflections
This brief but tragic passage serves as a reminder of two important points:
(1) We should remain vigilant against becoming complacent with the sin that surrounds us. Let’s not desensitize ourselves to the world’s problems or pretend they don’t exist.
God has called us to be salt and light, and that is the role we must fulfill in this world.
(2) We must ensure that our witness accurately reflects God’s character.
As Rudy Ross often emphasizes, kindness may be one of the most effective ways we can begin to mirror God’s character to the world today.
YouTube Discussion
Rudy Ross, Bruce Kirby, and I discussed this passage on YouTube today.
Real Voices 