One of my favorite comic strips is Gary Larson’s “The Far Side.” He has one drawing called “God at His Computer.”
Have any of you seen this? It’s so ridiculous.
God is an old white man with long white hair and a beard. He is sitting up in heaven at his computer. The computer monitor shows him events happening on earth. God sees a man walking down a sidewalk next to an apartment complex. The people moving into an apartment have tied ropes around their piano in an effort to lift the piano up through their large windows. They lift the piano about 10 feet in the air when a man walks under the piano and then God hits the “smite button” on his keyboard.
Ouch!
It’s funny, in part, because deep down we know that this depiction of a God who smites people is completely wrong. It’s a total caricature of who God is.
And yet, there are similar depictions of God in the Bible. And like the depiction of God in the Gary Larson cartoon, those depictions in the Bible of a violent God who smites people are wrong.
Sodom and Gomorrah
Let me give you an example. There’s a story in Genesis chapter 19 about two angels who travel to a town called Sodom. A man named Lot came to Sodom as a foreigner a few years prior to this event. Lot meets the angels and tells them to stay at his house for the night because the men of Sodom have been known to do some pretty nasty things to strangers.
The angels agree to stay at Lot’s house, but just before they fall asleep for the night, all of the men of Sodom surround the house and demand that they “know” the strangers.
Before we move on, I need to make an important point. This story has nothing to do with homosexuality as we know it. It has nothing to do with two men or two women living in a committed relationship based on love and care for one another. This story is about sexual abuse and power against vulnerable people, in this case, strangers who were traveling to the land.
Now, throughout the story, Lot is described as something of an idiot. He’s not very bright. Lot says to the men of Sodom, “Hey, instead of these men who just arrived to the city, I have some daughters. How about you take them.”
All of the men in the story, including Lot, are despicable. The angels in the story respond to Lot’s horrible suggestion with something better – they save the day by striking the men of Sodom blind so that they can’t find the door.
The next morning, the angels told Lot and his family to leave as fast as they could because God was going to hit the smite button on his computer and destroy the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot and his family escaped just before God rained down fire from heaven, destroying Sodom and Gomorrah.
Again, this story has nothing to do with homosexuality. We know that roughly 4-6 percent of the human population is gay or lesbian. So, about 96 percent of the men of Sodom were heterosexual. This story is about heterosexual men abusing strangers and immigrants. In fact, the men of the city become enraged when Lot tries to protect the strangers. They say, “This man Lot came to us as an alien, and now he is claiming to be judge over us! We will deal worse with him than with the strangers.”
In the story, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah not because of homosexuality, but because of the way those towns treated people migrating from one place to another. God destroyed the cities because they refused to show hospitality to vulnerable strangers who were staying in their town.
Can you see any relevance in this story for our modern world?
Politically Inhospitable
Politicians in the United States have been embroiled in trying to solve “the border crisis.” Last year, Democrats and Republicans worked together to create a solution. Democrats compromised with Republicans in order to look tough on immigration.
According to NBC News, the “bill was crafted to reduce border crossings, raise the standard for migrants to qualify for asylum and empower officials to rapidly send away those who fail to meet that standard. It would give the president power to shut down the border if migration levels exceed certain thresholds.” Republican Senator
Ray Lankford stated that the bill was, “by far the most conservative border security bill in four decades.”
But that wasn’t good enough. The Republicans went against “the most conservative border security bill in four decades” because Presidential Candidate Donald Trump told them to be against it. He wanted to continue to run on immigration.
But what if immigration is not the crisis our culture has made it out to be? What if it’s a manufactured crisis meant to make us fear immigrants and scapegoat them? What if the US is acting like Sodom and Gomorrah by acting with hostility against immigrants?
America’s Immigration Opportunity
American University in Washington DC interviewed Dr. Ernestor Castañeda. He specializes in immigration studies and is the founder of the “Immigration Lab” at American University. He argues that the US needs immigration to sustain our economy. As of June 2024, the US “has 8.5 million job openings… but only 6.5 million unemployed workers.”
Castañeda states,
People who are willing to relocate to the United States to build a better life are a win-win for both immigrants and the country. A recent report from CLALS and the Immigration Lab calculates the many economic benefits that immigrants and their families have in the US economy including over a 2 trillion boost through the labor market. A recent report from the World Bank shows the many benefits of immigration across the globe.
The United States doesn’t have a border crisis. We have a border opportunity. Politicians and the media are trying to make us afraid of immigrants when immigrants are one of the keys to sustaining the US economy. As Castañeda states, immigration is a win for the immigrant and a win for the US.
From a spiritual and moral perspective, if the US doesn’t welcome the stranger in our midst, then we are the modern Sodom and Gomorrah. God won’t smite us, be we will smite ourselves as the spirit of hostility overcomes our culture.
One way to manage the spirit of hostility is to heed the warning of Sodom and Gomorrah. Even better, we can follow the Bible’s command that, “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
