Sodom and Gomorrah #5 (Genesis 18:26)
In the previous verses we discussed how Abraham presents his defence in an attempt to save the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. God assents, and while doing so, He tells Abraham the fundamental role of the righteous person in the world.
Discussion
In the previous verses, Abraham brings forward the argument that destroying Sodom will cause collateral damage. Not only this is unjustified, but it will also invalidate the role of the righteous man and the motivation to be one. God accepts Abraham’s arguments, and He adds that for fifty righteous people He will forgive and not destroy the place.
This is the very first time that God defines the role of the righteous.
For their sake alone God will keep the world going, even if their number is as small as fifty in an entire city.
This is a critical point. After all, it is easy to be evil, it is even easier for a person to live their lives without struggling with moral questions. But being a righteous person is hard, probably one of the hardest paths to follow. Being righteous means to strive for a continuous moral awareness. Being righteous is about fighting your own temptations, as sin is craving all of us. Being righteous means to not follow the majority, not to yield to peer pressure. This is particularly difficult when your entire environment looks at morality as something to ridicule, if not to fight against. And being a righteous person in Sodom and Gomorrah was nothing but excruciating.
There are many reasons and excuses to choose the easy path, and why not to follow a moral code. Why go through all this pain? Why fight against our own desires? Why struggle when the obvious path is easy, always calling us, always displaying the temptations we are missing.
In this verse God, for the first time, gives us the answer. If I find a few righteous people, He says, I will save the entire city, the entire world. This is the role of the righteous. To keep morality and therefore our world going, even if the majority succumb to sin.
Very interesting insight about the role of the righteous. But who are the righteous people ? As no one is perfect, we may be moral and sinful and this may alternate, with the POTENTIAL to become a better version of ourselves and get close to being righteous. What is your… Read more »
Thank you Kay. This is a very difficult question, very subtle. So let me start by telling you that I do not know. Every group, religion or sect has it’s own views about it. The Bible never defines it clearly, but we know that the prophets put far less importance… Read more »
It is a very intense blog, a very positive call for being righteous, not because anyone will appreciate our righteousness but because it is the only way to keep our mind healthy and the world going. And it arouses so many questions in my mind. Is your comparison of our… Read more »
My comparison is not literal but rather conceptual. I, for once, do not believe that our world today is more sinful than the world in the past. It is easy to think that the past was better, more righteous, but I do not think it was like this at all.… Read more »
What are our sins? Is it always the big errors, like killing, stealing, lying? Does the Bible describe all possible sins? I think it does not, but its spirit equips us with the necessary tools to feel and figure out by ourselves if a deed is good or bad, if… Read more »
There is no way we can describe all the sins. And the sin of today are not the same as the sins of yesterday, not the same as the sins of tomorrow (well, some sins are, many are not) For instance, in the biblical time it was not a sin… Read more »