In Honor There Is Hope

The other option is to read such tirades as wholly directed at Other People. Judgement is never for Us, only for Them. This is one of the main points of LB and indeed of the entire pseudotheological framework of premillennial dispensationalism on which it is based.

This approach -- judgement for Thee but not for Me -- also helps to account for the current antigay mania of American evangelicalism. In a couple of Paul's other rants, he includes "sodomites" in his bestiaries of badness. Even if we accept, for the sake of argument, the dubious assumption that Paul misunderstood the story of Sodom, and therefore used this as a synonym for "homosexuals," it doesn't follow that "homosexuals are bad" is the main lesson that heterosexuals should be gleaning from such passages. But if you read such passages looking for any excuse to exempt yourself from the apostle's condemnation, this offers an ideal escape hatch. Preaching against self-love, ingratitude, love of money or love of pleasure can be a two-edged sword. But if you're heterosexual, and you're preaching against homosexuality, then you're safe. You've found the ideal target for self-exempting, self-justifying self-righteousness.

Judgment is for Other People.

"But if you're heterosexual, and you're preaching against homosexuality, then you're safe."

I'm so glad to see this pointed out. Attending any of the serious social or spiritual concerns the bible tends to focus on involves, too often, both a conscious acceptance of our own failings as well as admonishments to change our own behavior. The bible's far too likely to tell us that we're too interested in wealth, not doing enough to help other people and overly judgmental, and nobody likes to hear that.

On the other hand, if we scrounge through the bible to find some obscure condemnation of a behavior we've never even wanted to commit, then suddenly our souls are clean, we don't need to change who we are and, best of all, there's someone else distinctly more 'sinful' than us we can point a finger at.

Of course, the bible speaks out far more fervently against this kind of judgmental lambasting than it does homosexuality, reminding us that condemnation and judgment are God's affairs, not ours, which renders this attitude about as 'christian' as whacking strangers for the KaliMa, but all shapes and sizes, right?

Martin: The Bible is quite clear that homosexuality is not the reason the Sodom was destroyed, but rather it was they they didn't feed the poor or clothe the naked:

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. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.

(Ezekiel 16: 49-50 NIV)