Protect And Survive

In the past I have worshipped in churches where the belief
was that sodomy was the sole sin of Sodom, and Gomorrah.
Not a word was spared in any sermon on how inhospitable
at any other level those two cities might have been.
Equally denied into silence was the perversity of the story
where the proof of Lots hospitality to his protective angels
simultaneously doubled as a fathers weakness
in giving a baying drunken crowd the virginity his daughter.
In the church the sole focus was on how well the angels
protected Lot, the better for him to make his exit.
When Lots wife looked back she froze in grief
for her lost daughter. Her condemnation was even greater
patriarchal defensiveness against being human and tender.
In the churches I once attended they feared all talk
of Lot consenting to his daughter being pushed
into brutal under age sex, even though it is integral
to the story. Their biggest unspoken fear was how
Lot lived through a survivalist environment by sacrificing
his family, because it reversed their idea of hospitality,
where strangers were always more worth sacrificing
to protect the loyalty to family and tribe. Never mind
that the gospel truth of about learning to love our enemies.