So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived. (Genesis 19:29)
Tales of brave rescue from the clutches of evil and from impending disaster have always been a staple of popular storytelling. Traditionally, a damsel in distress is rescued from death or dishonor, as in the ancient myth of Perseus and Andromeda, or in a more complicated plot, Helen of Troy. However, it is not always women who are saved from peril. For example, in the popular 1998 World War II movie Saving Private Ryan, the object of the rescue mission was a male soldier stationed behind enemy lines.
In Genesis 19, it is a whole family that needs rescuing. And the rescuers are not soldiers or heroes with winged feet, but angels acting for God.
In the previous article in this series we looked at the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but we passed over the parts about the rescue of Lot and his wife and two daughters. As I said in that article, the destruction of those cities is all about the inevitable destruction that we bring upon ourselves when we persist in evil ways of living. It is also about the destruction of evil motives and false ideas within us when we are willing to be led by God. And in the case of Jesus, it is about his battling and overcoming all the influences of evil and hell that tried to destroy him.
In overcoming hell and evil, Jesus took for himself the power to rescue us from the grip of evil, too. That is what the sections of Genesis 19 we are covering this time (which I recommend that you read using this link) are all about.
People in peril
As objects of rescue go, Lot was less like Andromeda, the innocent damsel in distress condemned to die because of the jealousy of her rivals, and more like Helen of Troy, who willingly engaged in an affair with Paris, the prince of Troy. In other words, Lot was a mixed character, and his predicament was partly of his own making. Of course, Lot can’t be blamed for the corrupt character of the inhabitants of Sodom. However, he would have been in much better shape if he had not chosen to live among them.
This is emblematic of the situation that we humans tend to find ourselves in. We can’t be blamed personally for all the materialistic and evil influences of the culture around us. The culture into which we were born was there before we even existed, and it is a lot bigger than we are. Human culture is a stubborn beast. There is not a lot that we as individuals can do to change it. Every once in a while, a rare spiritual and moral leader comes along who does spearhead a wave of societal change. But most of us will be quite content if we can simply make things a little better in our own neighborhood.
However, truth be told, most of us do less changing of our surrounding culture and more adapting to it. Going against popular trends is difficult and tiring. It is so much easier just to go along to get along. So the vast bulk of the population simply goes along with whatever the flow of the culture happens to be, whether it is good or bad, moral or immoral. And we must admit that we ourselves are often in this category.
Lot in peril
Lot certainly was. It’s not that he was a bad man. He did offer hospitality to the two angels, in contrast to the men of the city, who wanted to abuse them. At the angels’ suggestion, he even pleaded with his intended future sons-in-law to try to save them from the imminent destruction of the city.
Lot was not a bad man. Rather, he tended to be apathetic and resistant to his higher impulses. This is symbolized by his settling down in the low-lying city of Sodom, instead of in the highlands where his uncle Abraham settled. It is shown in his willingness to live in such a corrupt city. And it is seen in his character as the story unfolds.
In the story we covered in the previous article in the series, when the men of the city were surrounding his house and demanding that his guests be brought out to them, Lot took a brave stance against them. Well . . . sort of! What he actually did was attempt to barter with them, offering them his two virgin daughters instead of his guests. I don’t know about you, but at that point, I don’t think I’d be very happy to have Lot as my father! And as we’ll see in the next article in the series, the daughters later got their own rather twisted comeuppance on him.
Lot’s character of apathy and taking the easy way is also shown in today’s story. First, when the angels urged him to flee the city, he hesitated. He did not want to leave his home and his familiar surroundings, even in the midst of rank abuse and threat of destruction. The angels had to grab him and his family by the hand and practically drag them out of the city. Then, when the angels told him to take his family up into the mountains to get clean away from the destruction of the cities in the plain, Lot not only hesitated, but argued with them, begging them to let him go to a nearby town instead of up into the mountains, which he was somehow convinced would lead to his destruction—contrary to what the angels were telling him. The angels let him take this halfway measure; and for Lot’s sake they spared the little town of Zoar from the destruction raining down all around it.
Ourselves in peril
All of this is just a little too familiar if we put ourselves in Lot’s shoes. Most of us are not great heroes or charismatic spiritual leaders. We are ordinary folks with our ordinary human feebles and foibles. Instead of standing out from the crowd, we tend to go along with the crowd. When we see something wrong going on around us, we tend to figure that it is someone else’s problem, and we just mind our own business. Inevitably, we find ourselves gradually adopting the easy values of the culture around us.
Just like Lot.
And like Lot, when we hear a call from God to leave behind that rather lazy and accommodating spiritual and moral life, we hesitate. “What’s the big deal?” we say to ourselves. “Everyone does it, and they seem to get along okay. It can’t be all that bad. Besides, don’t I deserve a bit of harmless pleasure?” This is what we tell ourselves as we continue down a road that will lead us to our own physical, moral, or spiritual destruction. It is much easier just to continue in our old familiar habits.
Even when circumstances and God’s inner voice do manage to overcome our resistance to change, we resist major change. The mountain of true, wholehearted spiritual life looks too forbidding to us. We can’t be that good! So we backpedal and make excuses for changing as little as possible while still saving our own skin. We trade one addiction for another. Maybe the liver is almost gone, but the lungs can take it for a while. We stop engaging in open battles with our partner in marriage but continue a campaign of griping and complaining with a resigned sigh. We realize that sooner or later the fights will break up our marriage, so we ratchet back to what we figure we can get away with.
And so it goes, for so many different areas of life. God calls for major change. But we drive a hard bargain, attempting to save whatever we can of our old habits and lifestyle. We re-enact Lot’s story over and over again, with as many variations as there are of individual personalities and personal bad habits.
The truly amazing thing is that God still wants to save us! God still wants to rescue us from the pain, sorrow, and destruction that we are bringing upon ourselves through our apathetic ways. This is the wonder of God’s love for us. Even when we are trying to get away with as much as we can, God continues to reach out to whatever good impulses are left in us, no matter how small, and uses them to pull us to a place of greater spiritual and emotional safety. Those angels did not insist on having their way. They respected Lot’s character and his freedom, and did as much for him and his family as they could.
Jesus vs. us
This is where Jesus was, in the deepest meaning of the story of Lot’s rescue.
If you read the Gospels—especially the Gospel of John—it becomes crystal clear that Jesus had the highest ideals and aspirations for humankind. He was not one to settle for halfway measures; he sought a total commitment from his followers. He told them, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). And to the rich young man who was proud both of his own moral perfection and of his worldly wealth, Jesus said, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Matthew 19:21). There are no halfway measures here!
Yet those high ideals and aspirations were always running up against the reality of the apathy and low moral state of the actual human beings Jesus encountered. He managed to gather only twelve who would follow him closely enough to be his full disciples, and even then, one of them turned out to be a bad apple. What about that vast mass of human beings swirling all around him, most of whom were simply interested in getting along in the world with the least pain and trouble for themselves?
God reaches out to us where we are
The great mercy of God for us fallen, apathetic, compromised human beings is that God reaches out to us exactly where we are, no matter how low our state. We can see this in Luke 5:27–32, where Jesus reaches out to sinners and the corrupt wealthy alike, saying, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
This was a mission that required great inner struggle on Jesus’ part. His ideal was to lift everyone to the highest state of perfection. But the mercy within him prompted him to engage in a divine rescue mission even to the lowest and least worthy of human beings.
Doesn’t this mean that God is offering a powerful hand of rescue to each one of us as well?
(Note: This post is a revised version of a talk originally delivered on May 23, 2004. To start at the beginning of the series, please go to the article, “What Child Is This?”)
For further reading:
- The Logic of Love: Why God became Jesus
- Love, Mercy, and Evil
- Is it Easy or Hard to Get to Heaven?
- Ezekiel 18: God’s Message of Hope . . . If You Think there’s No Hope for You
- Heaven, Regeneration, and the Meaning of Life on Earth
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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 
Hey Lee,
In your article you talk about God wanting big change for us in a positive direction but we often don’t go that far and instead make just enough change to avoid serious suffering. This kind of sounds like a situation in my life but I am not sure if it is or if it is something else entirely. I’ll explain the situation and maybe you can help me figure it out.
For most of my life I have been into weight lifting. When I first started proper training in my late teens and early twenties I built muscle and strength pretty fast. I got to the point where I was stronger than most people in the gym and I had a lot of arrogance and conceit about it. I tended to look down on people who were not as strong as me. Over time I developed back and knee problems and had several injuries regarding my back and knees. This prevented me from training as hard and as heavy as is required to make strength gains. So I had to scale back my training to not hurt myself and lost a good bit of my strength in the process. Now in my late twenties I still train but not the way I once did. I don’t go as heavy as I used to and am not as strong as I was in my early twenties as a result of this.
When I was at my strongest I couldn’t see how arrogant I was. It is only now looking back that I can see how I was. I think God allowed me to get those back problems to limit my strength to humble me. I am still not perfect in this regard. I am sure if I was to regain my previous strength or surpass it, I might be in danger of going back to my conceited ways. The only difference is now I recognise it whereas before I was oblivious to it. Right now I am not as arrogant as I used to be but that’s not because the arrogance is gone, it’s just because I have nothing to be arrogant about. Since I am not doing my heavy lifting I don’t “turn heads” like I used to.
Right now I am doing a lot of physiotherapy stuff to try and fix my back and knees so I can return to the heavy training and regain the strength I used to have. It is awesome being strong and I like it. However I am worried that my arrogance might flare up again if I get strong again. So should I try to get strong again or should I abandon the whole thing entirely because it is too spiritually dangerous?
Did God allow me to get those back problems because he wanted me to totally quit working out because it makes me too prone to arrogance? And is me still working out, but avoiding the things that hurt my back and knees, me making a small change when I should make a big one such as quitting the gym entirely?
Is it possible for me to be strong and humble at the same time?
Truthfully I don’t think I could quit working out entirely because it does a lot of good things for me and I like it for reasons beyond arrogant ones. I’ve been lifting for so long now (ten years) that it has sort of become a part of me.
What’s ironic is the pastor at one of the churches I sometimes go to used to be into powerlifting. But he ended up quitting powerlifting because he thought it was making him too arrogant. So it is a similar situation that I am in.
I know that ultimately only I can answer these questions for myself but any help or insight you can give would be helpful. Thanks.
Hi Bob,
Good to hear from you again. Sorry to hear about your struggles with the weight lifting and repetitive motion injuries. Those are a real bear. And honestly, it’s unlikely that you’ll get back to the strength level you had in your early twenties anyway, both because your body has put limits on how hard you can work out and because you’re not as young as you were, and you’re not getting younger. That’s the bucket of cold water.
But on the positive side, the Greek ideal of “a healthy mind in a healthy body” is still a good one thousands of years later. Even Swedenborg repeats it in his theological writings as a good principle to follow. Allowing the Devil to stop you from exercising in the way you enjoy, and that keeps you fit and healthy, is not a good solution to the arrogance problem.
Put plainly: No, you don’t have to stop lifting. You just have to do it with a different attitude.
Personally, my physical activity of choice is cycling. I usually get out once or twice a week, sometimes more, and lately I mix some walks in with it also. Being a older man, I’m not going to be winning any races. There are tons of younger guys that are way more fit than I ever was. But I enjoy it, and it gives me fresh air and exercise to keep my body going given that my regular work is all sedentary at the computer. So part of my motivation is to keep myself healthy enough that I can keep working and being useful and productive for many more years. In my case, that work involves serving people’s spiritual needs, so it is worthy and worthwhile. But any kind of work that serves people in good ways is worthwhile, and worth keeping your body and mind healthy so that you can remain useful and productive for many years.
So . . . don’t let the Devil talk you into giving up your exercise routines. That’s just another way of tearing you down by taking away an activity that keeps your body fit and strong, and that you enjoy. “Denying yourself” in the biblical sense does not mean persecuting yourself and not doing anything fun. It means getting your ego out of the things you do. It’s denying your self, meaning ditching your self-centered, arrogant ego.
Rather, my suggestion would be that you don’t do your weight lifting to try to be stronger than everyone else so that you can feel like you’re better than other people. Rather, do it because it keeps you fit and healthy, and in shape to provide useful service to the people around you in your household and neighborhood, and to the people you provide goods or services for in your regular job, whatever it may be.
Plus, seeing healthy and fit people is actually good for people. Seeing beauty, including both male and female physical beauty, has a positive effect on people’s psyche. Why are movie stars so often very beautiful women and very handsome men? It’s not some dark and dastardly marketing trick. It’s because people enjoy seeing good-looking people. Keeping yourself fit and good-looking is a positive for the people around you in itself (minus the arrogance about it). Wouldn’t you rather see healthy, good-looking people than unhealthy, slovenly people? Good health is good all around.
As for the arrogance, as I said earlier, it’s unlikely you’ll get back to the strength levels you had in your early twenties, so there won’t be so much fuel for your arrogance anyway. But beyond that, just becoming aware of your arrogance is the first step toward dealing with it. When Swedenborg gives a step-by-step guide to spiritual rebirth, recognizing and seeing the faults in ourselves is one of the first steps:
For the whole step-by-step guide, see:
What does Jesus Mean when He Says we Must be Born Again?
You’ve taken the first steps, which are firstly recognizing that arrogance is not a good thing, and then identifying it within yourself and criticizing yourself for it. Now it’s time to take responsibility for it and move on to the next steps.
Part of not being arrogant is practical: There are always going to be guys who are stronger than you are; you’re never going to be the top guy. (Sorry to break it to you!) If you get on that treadmill, it’s going to be a never-ending rat race of trying to climb the ladder, and always having people above you to be jealous of, and below you to look down on. That’s just not a good place to be in.
But on the positive side, there’s what I talked about earlier: Doing it for the enjoyment, and because it helps you to have a sound mind in a sound body. Study after study shows that people who are physically healthy also have clearer, better-functioning minds. Physical weakness and disease affects the brain also, and that affects our ability to think clearly as long as we are still living here in the physical world, in our physical body.
You are aware of the old motives of arrogance and being better than other people that used to drive you. Now it’s time, not to quit working out, but to substitute better motives. Instead of thinking about how you can be stronger and better than other people, think about how you can use our healthy body and mind to be helpful and do good things for other people both in your regular job and in your everyday life around your household and neighborhood.