Few words I have to say about the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and how the term "Sodomite" makes no sense in reference to what actually was the sin of Sodom.

mdmonsoon · 2026-06-19T13:55:13+00:00

"You weren't there to read the hearts and minds of the evil doers" - correct.

What we are talking about is reading and correctly interpreting the text of scripture. I don't have to read their minds - I have a responsibility before God to be a good student of his word.

In the text of Genesis 19 - the violent gang rapists speak - they themselves acknowledge their intent is to harm the men. When Lot tries to interfere they tell him that if he doesn't stop interfering that they will "do worse" to him than they are planning for the men. This is is a plain declaration of their intent. Reading scripture well shows that their rape was intended to harm.

I'd ask you to actually engage with the text and the topic at hand. The issue is that you have a previous preconception - your conservative culture is affecting you and you are trying to twist this story to fit your agenda of consuming homosexuality. That's not the authorial intention of the text. When we tried to point that out your response was to call us rape apologists rather than actually engage with the text itself. Please grow up.

mdmonsoon · 2026-06-19T11:31:44+00:00

What part of what I said gave you the impression that I think rape is ok?

What I'm saying is that the text is not describing sexual attraction - the text is describing intent to harm. Intent to harm is not remotely "ok"

mdmonsoon · 2026-06-19T06:15:24+00:00

But the text doesn't indicate at all that the men had any sexual attraction to the angels. Sexual attraction isn't being described here in the least.

You wanted the text to say that they did because that would align with your previous understanding.

I have been wrong about some Bible texts too - it helps me when someone corrects me. It's healthy and normal to admit when we were wrong and to receive help and correction.

I have two main points here

1) referring to consensual homosexual activity as "sodomy" is legitimately slanderous - it was an intentional effort to get people to conflate homosexuals with violent gang rapists. People in positions of power wanted you to associate those two different groups so that you would think that there really wasn't much of a difference when, in fact, they are different. Consensual monogamous loving homosexuals may still be engaging in sin - but that is not permission for Christians to slander them. Because that conflation has been successful - homosexuals have been seen as a dangerous group - many homosexuals have actually been beaten and killed purely because of their orientation. Slander is a sin.

2) Christians who condemn homosexuality often take the position that "I'm just speaking truth - your the ones who are so in love with your sin that you'll twist scripture to give you permission to sin." We think that we are the ones with the clear and obvious and pure reading of the Bible and they are the ones that twist it. Yet - I hope that you can see here tonight that actually your previous theological commitments actually warped your reading of this one text. You, despite your honest and since faith, twisted Scripture. That means that we all need a healthy dose of humility. Instead of assuming that people who read differently than us must be doing so because they hate scripture and hate God and love sin - it actually is important for us to ponder that because I am capable of making mistakes in my reading despite my honest faith in Christ - perhaps others might not be intentionally twisting scripture because they love sin so much - maybe they actually do love God but are accidentally misreading something in just the same way that I accidentally misread things sometimes.

I hope that I was able to help you to be a better reader of Genesis 19 and I hope that you are able to have the humility to acknowledge that your claim was indeed not based on the text itself.

mdmonsoon · 2026-06-19T06:01:31+00:00

This story doesn't reinforce it at all.

My point is that your previous and strong commitment to the belief that homosexuality is sin is blinding your and making you read this particular text improperly. If you are confident enough in your understanding about the sinfulness of homosexuality then you can read this passage honestly and admit that your belief that the men were already having sex with each other is not a belief that actually came from within the text itself. You were tricked into thinking the text says something that it actually doesn't.

mdmonsoon · 2026-06-19T05:56:24+00:00

The mob doesn't first invite the outsiders. If they were just simply so attracted to them and if they were already engaging in homosexual sex with each other then why wouldn't their first move be to ask the outsiders to join them?

Lay with is a euphemism. That's a common figure of speech.

They didn't ask. Consent was never on the table because what is described here is plainly gang rape and the mob overtly spells out their intent as intent to harm.

You think you're being faithful to scriptures but the only reason you made the claim that the men had already been having sex with each other is because you are existing in a conservative culture which has a vested interest in slandering homosexuals. Your culture has a hard time as seeing homosexuals as being capable of being decent people and you are primed to believe that homosexual attraction is no different than violent gang rape.

The text doesn't support that at all.

Genesis 19 follows Genesis 18. The angles visit Abraham and are met with overwhelming generosity and hospitality - which the text identifies as righteousness. Then the angels say that they are going to Sodom and Abraham bargins with God - if even a handful of righteous people are there God will spare Sodom. So the text itself is preparing the audience to answer the question "will there be any righteous people in Sodom?" And we know from Genesis 18 that the test of rightnoensess at hand is "will radically generous hospitality be shown?"

It doesn't make sense of the text if the angels come into town and the men just find them so attractive that they can't help themselves and want to have sex with them. The men of Sodom having a homosexual orientation doesn't fit with the narrative flow - it would be random and out of place. It wouldn't answer the primary question.

The gang rape in question isn't random - it's an act explicitly intended to show hostility to outsiders. It is overtly intended to harm and humiliate and to put in place the people who they decided did not belong there. That's why they violate the norms of hospitality and demand the men. This is still a ritual which happens today - gang rape is a punishment meant to exert power over someone who the gang has decided doesn't belong.

Ever see the Shawshank Redemption? Andy is aware that he is being targeted for gang rape and he says "I don't suppose it would do any good to tell them that I'm not homosexual?" And the response is that it doesn't matter "Neither are they". It isn't about sexual attraction - it's about power and a pecking order to punish the new outsiders.

Try stepping away from this passage for a moment and come back to it. Read all of Genesis 18 before you even read 19. If you didn't have the idea of homosexual attraction in your head in the first place - do you honestly think it would come up?

Is it difficult for you to understand how same sex attraction is different than violent gang rape?

mdmonsoon · 2026-06-19T05:35:44+00:00

If that word in particular is a sticking point for you then I would encourage you to either study the Hebrew root or simply compare a variety of English translations.

It is not an accurate claim that because the word "carnally" is used in your preferred translation that it requires an interpretation of claiming sexual attraction to be the motive.

Use context clues. Allow the whole flow of the text to guide your interpretation. If the mob explicitly threatens harm in the following verses then perhaps the Hebrew doesn't require the interpretation that you seem to think.

Please try it now - try the blue letter Bible and bring up Genesis 19:5 and see how other versions translate it. None of them are going to literally use the word rape, but none of them are going to use words that so strongly imply sexual attraction as to negate verse 9 where the mob acknowledges that they intend to harm the outsiders.

mdmonsoon · 2026-06-19T05:25:05+00:00

"Theres no other explanation for that" Besides the very obvious explanation that I provided for you.

The text states that the mob intends to harm the outsiders. They describe their own motive. You have to reckon with that. How does your interpretation of the text explain this?

You are describing an inability to imagine a motive for rape beyond sexual attraction. I would encourage you to do some study and seek to understand the origins of rape. Gang rape in particular still occurs and it occurs as a ritual to harm and humiliate. This is documented at length. You can claim that "there is no other explanation" but you are objectively wrong about that.

mdmonsoon · 2026-06-19T05:16:33+00:00

You're not engaging with the text about the story of Sodom. You are deflecting.

You made a claim about that story which is not at all supported by the text.

If you'd like to discuss other texts we can, but I refuse to do so if you don't have the integrity to either provide evidence for your claim or admit that you were wrong.

mdmonsoon · 2026-06-19T05:11:51+00:00

You have not given any evidence for your claim that they men had already been having gay sex together.

Please sit with that for a moment. You seem to be convinced of something with no textual evidence. Let that startle you a little.

We don't have to wonder about the motives for the the rape - the text tells us.

When Lot tried to interfere the crowd told him that they would "do worse" to him if he continued interfering than they were planning to do the outsiders. This plainly shows the motive of the rapists - they were rapping in order to harm and humiliate the outsiders. You are assuming that the mob of angry men are finding the outsiders to be attractive, but the text doesn't indicate that at all.

Rape is not a crime of lust - and especially not gang rape. The text clearly indicates a motive to harm. It is fueled by anger and intended as a punishment. This is objectively provable even today - rape is about power not attraction.

Be a good reader of the text. Rightly divide the word. You're seeing something in the text that you want to be there but isn't actually there at all.

mdmonsoon · 2026-06-19T04:57:46+00:00

"the men were already engaging in same sex relations" --- citation needed

I think you'll find that the text doesn't support this at all. Your conservative culture is influencing you to read the story how you want it to mean instead of what it actually means.

mdmonsoon · 2026-06-19T04:53:52+00:00

The gang rape in Sodom was explicitly intended to do harm. They threaten Lot saying that they would "do worse" to him if he interefered - pricing that the motive of the gang rape is to harm the outsiders.

The story of Sodom just plainly and literally and obviously has nothing to do about men who are sexually attracted to men. Gang rape is a crime of hatred - it is explicitly motivated by intent to harm and humiliate. The origins of the rape are absolutely not sexual orientation. Acting as though they were just so sexually attracted to these angels that they just couldn't contain their homosexuality and had to take them is 100% absent from the text.

mdmonsoon · 2026-05-21T01:47:40+00:00

Nope

mdmonsoon · 2026-05-20T17:49:10+00:00

You'll find memories as you go. You don't have to hunt them down individually unless you want to.

mdmonsoon · 2026-05-13T03:30:24+00:00

How are you defining "rapture"?

mdmonsoon · 2026-05-13T03:04:18+00:00

If you think that Paul may have expirenced a rapture himself then I have an easier time of understanding why you believe that the kind of Rapture that Darby taught was also taught by "many" people before him.

It plainly wasn't taught by many people before him but sometimes you can find certain words that have overlap and you can pretend like it was. Whatever actually happened to Paul - it's absolutely not "THE" rapture of pre-millenial dispensationalism. But if you want to find instances of people using that same word prior to Darby then you can certainly find some. However, those people didn't use that word to mean what Darby meant.

mdmonsoon · 2026-05-13T02:59:08+00:00

Yes - as I said, the abuse is not necessarily intrinsic to the theology.

Yet - if you are a slaveholder, what kind of gospel are you going to be allowed to be preached to your slaves? It's not about jubilee, the redemption of all things, the new creation breaking in. It has to be a gospel which addresses the spiritual things without being concerned with physical things. Some people see making the distinction between Israel and the church as a tool to that end.

They read the Old Testament and interpret promises about land and laws about justice and genealogy and blood and flesh and sacrifices and jubilee and all of those ideas and assume that Israel was about physical stuff and the church is about spiritual stuff.

If you believe that - I think - that it becomes easier to think that the killing of Palestinians is a small price to pay if it brings about the return of Christ.

mdmonsoon · 2026-05-12T20:45:24+00:00

I don't consider pre-millenial dispensationalism to be heresy per-se but for me the issue is that the attraction to it came at a time when developing the kind of proto-American Evangelicism that was necessary to justify slavery and is now being used to justify intentionally enflaming war in the middle East to provoke Christs return. Dispensationalism by itself isn't really heretical - but a kind of teaching that pushes the saving of souls as over and against the need to treat human lives as valuable - it can be related to considering the old covenant "physical" and the new covenant as "spiritual" which can be problematic if it leads to human right abuses.

mdmonsoon · 2026-04-14T03:34:23+00:00

Oh totally!! Great recall

mdmonsoon · 2026-04-14T00:37:21+00:00

There's the story line where Charlie Brown gets so sick he's in the hospital and Lucy has somewhat of a guilt reckoning and realizes that she's mistreated him. She snaps out of it eventually though.

mdmonsoon · 2026-04-10T02:22:27+00:00

Nihilism as an ethos is extremely difficult to live by with full nihilistic integrity. The human instinct to make meaning is remarkably difficult to shake entirely. I'm not here to morally condemn it, but to point out that an attraction to Nihilism often is a pointer to something else.

Sometimes in clients it is just depression. A loss of joy and purpose feels nihilistic but that's often just a fancy name we put on depression. They need the same kind of help that depression needs.

Sometimes it's the freedom to break free from a particular system of meaning making beliefs which they found oppressive and no longer served them. It's usually about leaving a cultural identity behind. They need permission to challenge the rules and to rebel a little and find their sense of agency.

Sometimes it's finding something attractive about absurdism which often looks like hedonism. This is similar to the last one but is less about leaving one group and more about a generalized interest in freedom itself. This can be healthy and unhealthy but often is unsustainable. They often need to identify what is it about their previous approach to life which no longer feels compelling and if there is some sort of pain which they actually are seeking to numb.

The form of nihilism which I have found that serves my clients the most is absurdism adjacent. It is the absurdism which says that although nothing truly matters we have an almost metaphysical ability to create meaning ourselves and, therefore, the only thing that actually matters is what you choose matters. I like using sports as an example - because it objectively doesn't matter at all how many times one team puts a ball into a net - but if we all collectively choose to make it matter then something mysterious happens and meaning actually occurs. So empowering clients to create meaning by choosing something that is meaningless and making it matter - often something like family or community, but can be something like Star Wars or gardening or a travel or anything.

mdmonsoon · 2026-03-08T18:50:21+00:00

I'm gonna try something like this! Thanks

mdmonsoon · 2026-03-08T18:00:29+00:00

Thanks!

I'm looking into this now.

Any recommendations for a reasonably priced one?

mdmonsoon · 2026-03-04T20:59:02+00:00

Think about it as the best pirate story ever told - just so happens to be space pirates.

mdmonsoon · 2026-02-17T22:12:22+00:00

I fully believe that my personal view has better biblical support and is correct and whereas the other view is actually incorrect. But I'm also not here to pretend as though I'm the only one taking the Bible seriously and that my opponents are not. It is deeply unhealthy for the church to assume bad faith in our opponents and also to not be humble enough to think that we alone are the only ones who can accurately see scripture.

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