Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Genesis XVIII-XIX: Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

God was hearing the gossip about Sodom and Gomorrah and wanted to destroy them, but Abraham protested. He was bothered by the fact that God would destroy a city without first determining whether there were any righteous inhabitants. He shouldn't have been surprised, though, because this just seems to be God's style, but luckily, he managed to convince God not to destroy the city if 10 righteous people could be found there. On arrival, the angels found Lot, a so-called good man, but apparently literally every other person in the city wanted to have sex with the angels. They crowded around Lot's house demanding the angels, so he offered up his virgin daughters. Somehow, his disgusting offer to have his young daughters raped was kosher with God and the angels, but fortunately, they intervened and blinded those in the city so that they couldn't find the door to Lot's house (seems like a very strange way of solving the problem). Lot, his wife, and his daughters are allowed to flee the city and move to a small town named Zoar. Fire rains down from the heavens killing everyone and everything in Sodom and Gomorrah (I suppose we know God's stance on capital punishment: always). Lot's wife missed the sex or her house or thought she heard something behind her or something, idk, but she turned around and got turned into a pillar of salt, which I don't ever begin to understand. Lot and his daughters leave Zoar after a while and live in a cave. The daughters realize that, with their husbands dead, they have no way to carry on their line, so they each get their father drunk on different nights and get with him. Apparently, incest is much more acceptable than homosexuality, so God doesn't murder them, but honestly, I'm just glad that someone made it out alive.

God isn't the only one to mete out unfair punishment; the United States' justice system is marked by its ironic injustice. People of color, especially African-Americans, are arrested at alarmingly high rates compared to whites. White people are actually drug-users at higher rates than African-Americans, but African-Americans are arrested considerably more. These disparities exist in all realms of American life, but the justice system is especially plagued.

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