Oct Day 213 Ezekiel 12:1–16:63

This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.



Today’s pearl from Ezekiel relates to Sodom, of Sodom and Gomorrah fame. Mention Sodom and Gomorrah, and everyone assumes it’s all about the sin that spawned the word sodomy, in that atrocious story in Genesis. But in Ezekiel, God explains what Sodom’s sin really was, and it’s much more applicable to all of our lives than that pillar of salt story.

Sodom’s guilt was that she had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease AND did not aid the poor and needy. That’s much more condemning and a much wider net than the sin of handing over your virgin daughter to the ravenous crowd. I can promise I will never do that, but when God clarifies that the problem with Sodom is that other stuff – pride, excess, ease – that causes me more concern.

Not only are these traits not necessarily seen as sinful, our society strives to have and be these things. To do things that people can be proud of, to have an abundance of food, and to have a life or at least moments of ease. Watch network TV for any amount of time, and the commercials all seem to sell precisely these things.

I’ve seen plenty of arguments or defenses that say wealth or abundance are not the problem, as long as we are concurrently aiding others. But reading this pithy sentence, I’m not sure that’s true. If we in fact have an abundance of food, we have enough to aid more. If we have done things for which we feel personal pride, we have the capacity or time to spend that time doing things to help others, regardless of whether we get an iota of personal pride out of it. And if we have enough prosperity to have any ease, whether that’s a vacation, vacation property, or an overall life of ease, we have enough property to aid more.

It’s as if these things – ease, prosperity, pride, excess, can’t coexist with a life that’s blameless, because all of those things indicate that we’ve kept more than we needed, and at the same time withheld what someone else needed.

You can see examples of these kinds of people in the world, and we hold them out as unattainable models. Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Dalai Lama, Dorothy Day. I’m sure there are hundreds of others. But if I inventory the people I actually know, I know of one, maybe two people who actually live like this.

I have a friend who has literally given someone the shoes she was wearing, because she had another pair at home, and the other person had none. She’s lived in a tent, because she didn’t have enough money. She operates a food program, cooking and growing food tirelessly, and that’s the source of her food too. This morning, I’m thinking about my excess, abundance and pride, and thinking about how I might convert that into aiding the poor and needy. Maybe I can’t become Mother Theresa, but that doesn’t mean I’m absolved from trying.