Homosexuality VS. Incest

[Indy Coug]

It's still incest!

Did I say what Lot's daughters did was right?

[Tick's wife]

I taught this lesson a few hours ago. I used the Ezekiel scrip that PAC mentions and I spoke about those sins as the basis for Sodom's destruction and how we can avoid them in our lives. I made the executive decision that footnotes were not scripture and sidestepped any addressing of homosexuality, instead just mentioning in passing "sexual sin." The better part of my lesson was actually focused on "pitching a tent" toward Sodom in comparison to the actions of the Nephites who gathered to listen to the words of King Benjamin and how they pitched their tent toward the temple. That turned out to be the theme of the lesson, pitching our tents toward the temple and what that means to us in a practical sense. I wrapped it up with the Ballard quote at the end (choosing to edit out the media fixation). I thought it was a successful lesson. Lots in there that I wish we could have gotten to that I never even touched upon.

In fact, I thought most of church turned out successful with a good ward conference and an actual prepared lesson in elder's quorum.

yeah, that is what Tick focused on the most: pitching your tent towards righteous things.

[clackamascoug]

So I'm reading the lesson for Sunday School for today. It is lesson 8 - living righteous in a wicked world. Lot, Abraham's nephew, is a gate keeper for Sodom. The Lord tells Abraham that Sodom is wicked and he must destroy Sodom. Abraham wants to know if the Lord would destroy the land even if he finds 50, 40....10 righteous people. The Lord says no. The Lord sends angels to Sodom. Lot recognizes them. The men of Sodom want to 'know' these men, Lot offers his daugthers (yes, I know, JS translation later states that Lot didn't offer his daughters but protected them) but the men want the men.....then the angels are getting ready to destroy Sodom and Gamorahh (sp) and tells Lot and his family to flee....Lot tells his SIL's to which they mock him and don't leave. Lot leaves with his wife and two daughters. His wife looks back and turns to a pillar of salt...Lot flees with his daughters. His daughters get Lot drunk and lay with the old man and get pregnant because they don't want their lineage to decease.

Hmm, incest!

So which is worst? The Lord destroys a city because men may with men but saves another to perform incest? So is polygamy okay too, since incest is okay?

Incest is worst, IMO but I'm sure it's up to debate.

The reason incest became taboo is because of the problem with birth defects. Prior to the denigration of DNA, procreating with a close DNA match probably was not a problem that resulted in birth defects, and may have been a preferred way to keep the seed "in the family." So back in the day, there was probably no problem with "family fun."

We tend to think of everything around us according to our personal training. Not everyone has been trained to act and think like you and me, so their realities are a bit different than ours.

[SeattleUte]

So I'm reading the lesson for Sunday School for today. It is lesson 8 - living righteous in a wicked world. Lot, Abraham's nephew, is a gate keeper for Sodom. The Lord tells Abraham that Sodom is wicked and he must destroy Sodom. Abraham wants to know if the Lord would destroy the land even if he finds 50, 40....10 righteous people. The Lord says no. The Lord sends angels to Sodom. Lot recognizes them. The men of Sodom want to 'know' these men, Lot offers his daugthers (yes, I know, JS translation later states that Lot didn't offer his daughters but protected them) but the men want the men.....then the angels are getting ready to destroy Sodom and Gamorahh (sp) and tells Lot and his family to flee....Lot tells his SIL's to which they mock him and don't leave. Lot leaves with his wife and two daughters. His wife looks back and turns to a pillar of salt...Lot flees with his daughters. His daughters get Lot drunk and lay with the old man and get pregnant because they don't want their lineage to decease.

Hmm, incest!

So which is worst? The Lord destroys a city because men may with men but saves another to perform incest? So is polygamy okay too, since incest is okay?

Incest is worst, IMO but I'm sure it's up to debate.

The original Hebrews were nothing if not hillbillies. They didn't even live in stationary dwellings.

[creekster]

The original Hebrews were nothing if not hillbillies. They didn't even live in stationary dwellings.

stationary dwellings? Did they have to hobble their hovels at night to stop them from wandering off?

[SeattleUte]

stationary dwellings? Did they have to hobble there hovels at night to stop them from wandering off?

They lived in tents. They were nomads. Herders.

[SeattleUte]

The fact that adults have sat in rooms all over America on Sunday seriously trying to puzzle through, trying to make sense of this passage makes me roar with laughter. Thanks, all.

[creekster]

They lived in tents. They were nomads. Herders.

Yea, I got that. But I am not sure stationary dwelling is really what you meant? I think when they were in it it was stationary.

[RC Vikings]

I thought this was a poll and I was looking for somewhere to vote. I'm going to let you guess what way I would have voted.

[myboynoah]

The original Hebrews were nothing if not hillbillies. They didn't even live in stationary dwellings.

Obviously you know very little about hillbillies.

[Katy Lied]

I've been musing over these same passages:

1. Lot got away with aLOT in the eyes of the Lord. I think of all the outrage toward Joseph Smith because of his financial dealings, and his polygamous unions, and I wonder: where is the outrage toward these OT prophets with their incest and their murder and their unrequited greed and their deceit and their sexual practices that were surely disruptive to their families and their kinship groupings. And the apologetics out there will say "but that was a different time and place," about Abraham, but judge Joseph Smith by today's standard.

2. Even if you take the position that incest was common back then, or murder was justified according to some proto-mosaic law, there are clear instances in the OT where someone broke their law but didn't get punished. Reuben should have been burned for having sex with his step mother. Levi and Simeon should have gone on trial for being mass murderers. Abraham prostituted his wife out to an Egyptian and a Canaanite ruler. Jacob stole Esau's birthright. Ephraim took Manasseh's birthright even though Manasseh (unlike Esau) was worthy of the blessings of the eldest son. And yet, when we study these dastardly acts, our usual reaction is a collective yawn (except Tick's Wife, and SU who is remarkably consistant here.)

3. Lot is an interesting case. Was a weaker, more inclined-to-evil man ever raised up with such good fortune? It seems that Lot's greatest asset is his relationship to his uncle Abraham, which protects him from expansionist Kings and destroying angels alike. When Sodom was destroyed, Lot seemed the perfect candidate to be destroyed as well. And yet, through Lot's incestuous sexual union with his own elder daughter, comes the lineage of David, the greatest of the Israelite kings.

4. (Note on S&G: earlier during the battle where Lot gets carried away captive, the bible talks about them getting stuck in slime pits in the area, much like the La Brea tar pits, I would imagine. I wonder if the fire from the sky and smoke and ash relate to a natural phenomenon that also causes tar pits. Or maybe the tar pits caught fire.)

5. Islamics consider Lot a prophet, unlike the Jewish and Christian version of Lot. The Koran contains no trace of Lot's incest story.

6. According to more than one source, the jewish version of the story (Midrash) has a more forgiving view of Lot's daughters than of him. Some say his daughters punished him by sleeping with him, in a "you thought you could sneak away to Sodom and indulge your evil lusts independent of your family responsibiliites, well now your sins have hit home" way. Others say that there is no way Lot could not have known he was sleeping with his daughters, tipsy or not. Especially the younger daughter on the second night. I just wonder where they got all that wine?

[Solon]

I've been musing over these same passages:

1. Lot got away with aLOT in the eyes of the Lord. I think of all the outrage toward Joseph Smith because of his financial dealings, and his polygamous unions, and I wonder: where is the outrage toward these OT prophets with their incest and their murder and their unrequited greed and their deceit and their sexual practices that were surely disruptive to their families and their kinship groupings. And the apologetics out there will say "but that was a different time and place," about Abraham, but judge Joseph Smith by today's standard.

I'm with you on the drawbacks of presentist interpretations, but Joseph Smith lived in a time with much stricter (lip-service to) morality than today. I think he gets off pretty easy compared with what the Victorians would have done to him.

I also think you drive home a good point. It's really hard for modern people to relate to Old Testament (or even New Testament) stories. Either you end up focusing on just a couple of things that haven't really changed ("oh yeah! we also believe that it's wrong to commit adultery) and jettison the rest, or you're left shaking your head at how foreign and distant these people and places are to us.

I prefer to enjoy the stories for what they are and what they meant to their audiences (and how they were interpreted in antiquity), but I understand how modern sensibilities require didactic purposes for the entire book. However, I think this is best served in the poetry components of the Bible.

[Indy Coug]

I think what is a more interesting discussion is what God has considered to be "morally acceptable" and how that has varied over time. I think someone that tries to paint God as being unchanging in this regard is going to fight a losing battle.

[PaloAltoCougar]

The fact that adults have sat in rooms all over America on Sunday seriously trying to puzzle through, trying to make sense of this passage makes me roar with laughter. Thanks, all.

And yet you've acknowledged elsewhere that the OT is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, works in literature, irrespective of its truthfulness or historical accuracy. Why should it amuse you (to the point of roaring laughter) then that mature adults take interest in parsing through seemingly weird or irreconcilable passages of that work?

Comments like the one quoted provide support for my suspicion that you're a kind of cultural Charlie the Tuna, one who likes to surround himself with the trappings of class and sophistication, but for whom such things are a veneer that is gossamer-thin.

[creekster]

I think what is a more interesting discussion is what God has considered to be "morally acceptable" and how that has varied over time. I think someone that tries to paint God as being unchanging in this regard is going to fight a losing battle.

So then how do you explain it? Does God change? Or are some of the things we think are moral imperatives erally jusdt situational rules that don't matterm uch eternally? Or are those rules really inconsequential to God and simple artifacts of man's struggle to articulate the divine?