A Rather Explicit Warning to Christians

Warning: this blog post discusses a graphic portion of the Biblical text. It is most certainly not a PG post. It also contains a graphic warning for all Christians to observe.

While they were enjoying themselves, all of a sudden, perverted men of the city surrounded the house and beat on the door. They said to the old man who was the owner of the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him!” The owner of the house went out and said to them, “No, don’t do this evil, my brothers. After all, this man has come into my house. Don’t do this horrible thing. Here, let me bring out my virgin daughter and the man’s concubine now. Use them and do whatever you want to them. But don’t do this horrible thing to this man.”

This is a messed-up scene, huh? A bunch of men, attacking a house so that they can have their way with some visitor to town. This is, on a scale of 1-10, probably a solid 11 in "what the heck is going on?!" I mean, the owner of this house doesn't want the crowd to have the guy, so he offers up his own daughter and the visitor's woman. This seems like a series of events worthy of some divine judgment, correct?

This did, in fact, bring judgment; the whole "entire town rapes visitor" thing is the camel that broke the camel's back and led to the annihilation of Sodom and Gommorah. But I didn't quote from the famous Genesis 19 passage at the beginning of this post. In fact, the above passage of Scripture is not describing a "pagan" town. No, the event I quoted above happened in a town called Gibeah, home to part of the tribe of Benjamin. As in, the Israelite tribe of Benjamin.

This heinous event mirrors Sodom almost perfectly, and it happened among God's people. And it gets worse.

The owner of the house, while the visitor is presumably asleep, takes this visitor's lady friend and throws her out of the house, just to satisfy the sexual desires of these men. They rape her, and she is finally left to collapse in front of the door of the house as the sun comes up. When her husband found her, there was no response (Judges 19:25-28).

I believe that God's current people, the Church, should look back to this event as a warning. Those of us in the Church can be quick to point fingers at injustice, all while passing over our own sin (which is often the same sin we condemn others for).

It is biblical to call for all to repent, turning from sin. We must not forget that we, too, are called to repent.