Who is the Real Pre­ston Sprin­kle? Part 3: The sin of Sodom Was­n’t Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty?

This arti­cle is part of a series, click here for part 2
For the relat­ed pod­cast episode, click here
The ref­er­enced doc­u­ment, and my rough notes, are includ­ed at the bot­tom of this arti­cle

Poi­son­ing the Well

In part 2, we saw Pre­ston make many claims about him­self, his com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and his min­istry phi­los­o­phy. One such claim was that he likes to steel­man argu­ments con­trary to his guests’ (and pre­sum­ably his own) posi­tions on sub­jects. You may assume that he would want to robust­ly rep­re­sent his oppo­nents, let­ting the weight of his argu­ments car­ry the day. It is a pas­toral paper, framed as a more aca­d­e­m­ic resource, after all.

That is not the case, as he starts the paper by doing two things of note. First, he intro­duces nov­el def­i­n­i­tions and cat­e­gories that did not exist at the time of Gen 19 nor exist in the Bible. Sec­ond­ly, he throws the title out the win­dow and presents two dif­fer­ent ques­tions that he claims are more applic­a­ble. Both of these points work togeth­er to leave us with­out a clear the­sis for the arti­cle nor with clear def­i­n­i­tions.

Many aspects of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty don’t even come close to play­ing a role in the sto­ry of Sodom. The sto­ry is clear­ly not about ori­en­ta­tion, iden­ti­ty, mar­riage, or even same-sex attrac­tion or roman­tic desire. Instead of ask­ing, “Is the sin of Sodom homo­sex­u­al­i­ty,” we should ask a more pre­cise ques­tion: “Is the sin of Sodom same-sex sex­u­al behav­ior?”

You can see from the above quote that Pre­ston has loaded “homo­sex­u­al­i­ty” with many mod­ern ideas, and see that he has a very par­tic­u­lar way of under­stand­ing the term in gen­er­al. He has placed so much into the term, then extract­ed those things to dis­tract from the ini­tial ques­tion, that he needs to pro­vide rea­sons why those addi­tions are valid for a dis­cus­sion on the Bib­li­cal, not mod­ern cul­tur­al, under­stand­ing of the term.

We also see him intro­duce a new ques­tion based on this dis­trac­tion for the ini­tial ques­tion. Keep this new ques­tion in mind, and see how many con­tra­dic­to­ry ways he answers it. For now, let us look at more poi­son­ing of the well from his intro­duc­tion.

But I would still want to dis­tin­guish [between homo­sex­u­al promis­cu­ity and homo­sex­u­al mar­riage] for var­i­ous pas­toral rea­sons. A gay per­son (or a straight per­son, for that mat­ter) who has sev­er­al sex­u­al part­ners every week should be pas­tored dif­fer­ent­ly than the sex­u­al­ly absti­nent gay Chris­t­ian man engaged to anoth­er man, for­go­ing sex­u­al rela­tions until his wed­ding night.

…we should cer­tain­ly dis­tin­guish between the dif­fer­ent types of “wrong­ness” under con­sid­er­a­tion and let the most rel­e­vant pas­sages shape our pas­toral wis­dom.

We cer­tain­ly should dis­tin­guish between the sever­i­ty of dif­fer­ent sins, both of cat­e­go­ry and mag­ni­tude, yet Pre­ston miss­es on both those mea­sures. There is no cor­rect expres­sion of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, thus the entire cat­e­go­ry is con­demned, whether desire, monog­a­mous action, or promis­cu­ous action.

To present these two as dif­fer­ent exam­ples of “wrong­ness,” with the impli­ca­tion that the “engaged” man is cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly bet­ter, is not only prob­lem­at­ic, but is a mas­sive dis­trac­tion from Sodom. Both men are engag­ing in griev­ous sins wor­thy of ini­ti­at­ing church dis­ci­pline, and if not, then we owe the sin­ful Corinthi­an broth­er an apol­o­gy.

Pre­ston has not intro­duced the top­ic of Sodom’s sin. Instead, he has assert­ed that it is wrong to view homo­sex­u­al­i­ty as part of the judge­ment, and has dis­tract­ed from the top­ic. We are left with a con­fused and unclear intro­duc­tion, a theme that will not dis­ap­pear as we look fur­ther.

The Men Weren’t Gay. Well Okay, it was Homo­sex­u­al Rape. Psych, no one had Sex!

There will be many strange com­ments as this arti­cle goes on, and one of them is this: what type of sex is it when a man rapes anoth­er man? Straight sex? How do we make sense of the lead quote for this sec­tion? As already men­tioned, Pre­ston is import­ing much into his terms. Thus, when he seem­ing­ly makes a con­tra­dic­to­ry state­ment, you must remem­ber that he’s import­ing a mod­ern idea of “ori­en­ta­tion.” Hence, despite the activ­i­ty engaged in, the men are “straight” by Pre­ston’s def­i­n­i­tions. Yet, there are more assump­tions.

Even though all the men were try­ing to have sex with Lot’s guests, it’s unlike­ly that all the men were gay. In the ancient world, it wasn’t uncom­mon for straight men to rape oth­er men as an act of dom­i­na­tion and pow­er. This prac­tice was sim­i­lar to prison rape today. One man may rape anoth­er man to show him who’s boss. It’s not an expres­sion of attrac­tion or ori­en­ta­tion. It’s an expres­sion of dom­i­na­tion. Clear­ly, then, Sodom wasn’t con­demned for sim­ply “being gay”—that is, for expe­ri­enc­ing attrac­tion to the same sex. Some­one can be gay and abstain from all forms of sex­u­al activ­i­ty, espe­cial­ly the type of activ­i­ty pur­sued by the men (and boys) of Sodom.

We can see that his evi­dence for the men of Sodom being “straight,” comes not from the text, but is assumed from prac­tices in the ancient world. Pre­ston sim­ply assumes and asserts this, yet this is a major inter­pre­tive point for him. Even if we grant him both his def­i­n­i­tions and what he’s said about ancient prac­tices, none of that shows that such was the case for Sodom. You can­not use gen­er­al­iza­tions to prove specifics. He then com­pounds his assump­tions by con­clud­ing that Sodom was not con­demned for “being gay” since they did­n’t have an attrac­tion to the same sex. That is not the ques­tion at hand, none of it has been proven in any way, and he admits that homo­sex­u­al activ­i­ty was at play.

This leads to a sec­ond obser­va­tion: the men of Sodom were try­ing to gang-rape Lot’s guests. They weren’t pur­su­ing con­sen­su­al sex­u­al rela­tions with Lot’s guest—bringing them choco­late and flow­ers and ask­ing their fathers’ per­mis­sion to court. There’s noth­ing con­sen­su­al going on in Gen­e­sis 19. Although there is sex­u­al activ­i­ty being pur­sued, it’s sex­u­al vio­lence rather than an expres­sion of con­sen­su­al love. Such vio­lence might have pro­voked fire from heav­en even if Lot’s guests had been women.

Again, Pre­ston is jump­ing to sen­sa­tion­al, yet non­sen­si­cal, state­ments to dis­tract instead of pro­vid­ing evi­dence. The only argu­ment con­tained here is that it was homo­sex­u­al rape, not con­sen­su­al homo­sex­u­al inter­course. Does that change any­thing? No, as both are for­bid­den under the pro­hi­bi­tion of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. It does not mat­ter if you add oth­er dress­ing around a sin, that sin is still sin even if the sever­i­ty or cir­cum­stances dif­fer.

Next, he spec­u­lates that the rap­ing of women might have pro­voked fire from heav­en. He again is going to spec­u­late, might have, rather than let­ting God’s word speak about what did hap­pen.¹ It becomes stranger as he is about to rest much of his posi­tion on the fact that no rape occurred.

The ques­tion fac­ing the church today is whether two peo­ple of the same sex can engage in con­sen­su­al sex­u­al rela­tions in the con­text of a life-long union. The sto­ry of Sodom doesn’t address this ques­tion. It only shows that gang rape is wrong.

Third, no one had sex in Gen­e­sis 19. The men of Sodom tried to rape Lot’s guests, but they were struck blind before they laid their hands on them. No one actu­al­ly had sex in the sto­ry. So when we talk about God’s con­dem­na­tion of Sodom, we can’t actu­al­ly say they were con­demned for the sex­u­al activ­i­ty in Gen­e­sis 19, because there was no sex­u­al activ­i­ty.

Not only do we see a con­tra­dic­tion between his pre­vi­ous quote and this one, but we see one with­in the new quote as well. Pre­ston goes from God con­demn­ing rape, to God not con­demn­ing sex­u­al activ­i­ty because there was no sex­u­al activ­i­ty. A pat­tern has become clear, where Pre­ston employs a 3D strat­e­gy (deny, deflect, dis­cred­it), rather than pro­vid­ing real argu­men­ta­tion.

Yet again, his point is irrel­e­vant con­cern­ing what the actu­al sin of Gen­e­sis 19 was. Pre­ston is ignor­ing some­thing crit­i­cal that he seem­ing­ly often down­plays. That would be that God’s word treats intent to sin, as sin­ful and part of the same cat­e­go­ry as the intend­ed sin. “But I say to you that every­one who looks at a woman with lust for her has already com­mit­ted adul­tery with her in his heart.”

We are two-and-a-half pages in, and Pre­ston has filled them with assump­tions, spec­u­la­tion, phi­los­o­phiz­ing, and con­tra­dic­tions. What would be more help­ful is if he would root things in God’s word.

Explain­ing Away God’s Word

We arrive at Pre­ston’s han­dling of Bib­li­cal pas­sages that ref­er­ence Sodom. Now, I wish he would have made more of an effort to exam­ine the text of Gen­e­sis 19 specif­i­cal­ly, yet I am glad that the Bible is final­ly being drawn upon. What is Pre­ston’s impres­sion of the pas­sages he brings up?

[O]ther Bible pas­sages refer back to the sto­ry of Sodom but nev­er men­tion same-sex sex­u­al behav­ior. Isa­iah, for instance, men­tions Sodom in the con­text of false reli­gion and social injus­tices (Isa. 1:10–17; cf. 3:9). Jere­mi­ah men­tions the same and adds adul­tery to the list, and there’s no evi­dence that the adul­tery Jere­mi­ah had in mind was men sleep­ing with anoth­er woman’s hus­band (Jer. 23:14). Jesus men­tions Sodom with­out ever hint­ing at same-sex rela­tions (Matt. 11:23–24).

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Pre­ston is tak­ing a dis­mis­sive and eva­sive approach. He gives us ref­er­ences but does not pro­vide the text or con­text. He, again, asserts some­thing with­out prov­ing it. The pas­sages are pre­sent­ed as if they are lists of Sodom’s sins, and that “same-sex sex­u­al behav­ior” is not includ­ed. Yet Isa­iah, Jere­mi­ah, and Matthew have noth­ing to do with list­ing Sodom’s sins, and every­thing to do with oth­er’s sins. Sodom is used for com­par­i­son. In Isa­iah, Israel’s unre­pen­tant wicked­ness leads God to say that “they parade their sin like Sodom.” He does not say “These are the sins of Sodom.” It is the brazen way Israel is flaunt­ing their wicked­ness that is being com­pared.

In Jere­mi­ah, God is speak­ing to wicked prophets of Jerusalem who are “com­mit­ting adul­tery and walk­ing in false­hood,” con­demn­ing them to destruc­tion for their wicked­ness, “have become to Me like Sodom.” (cut off, com­mit­ted to destruc­tion)

And final­ly, in Matthew, Jesus declares judg­ment on the city of Caper­naum where great mir­a­cles were per­formed, yet they reject­ed Him. He says “if the mir­a­cles… had been per­formed in Sodom, it would have remained.” Trans­la­tion: not even the Sodomites were as stub­born as you!

It is clear that these pas­sages have lit­tle to noth­ing to do with list­ing Sodom’s sin. Start­ing off with these pas­sages to bol­ster the claim that “oth­er Bible pas­sages… nev­er men­tion same-sex sex­u­al behav­ior,” is sim­ply decep­tive and more poi­son­ing of the well before he tack­les pas­sages that may address the top­ic at hand. Worse, we again see Pre­ston acknowl­edge his error (or sim­ply con­tra­dict him­self) when he says the fol­low­ing.

The one pas­sage [Exekiel 16:49] that actu­al­ly defines the Sodomites [sins] says they were over­stuffed greedy peo­ple who were uncon­cerned for the poor. How iron­ic that some Chris­tians have wield­ed the sto­ry of Sodom to con­demn gay peo­ple while com­mit­ting the very sins that the Bible calls “sodomy.”

“The one pas­sage that actu­al­ly defines…” I’m sor­ry Pre­ston, but did­n’t you just use sev­er­al oth­er pas­sages to argue that they “did­n’t men­tion same-sex sex­u­al activ­i­ty?” Yet here you are admit­ting that those pas­sages did not actu­al­ly lay out Sodom’s sin. This becomes even more con­cern­ing as he omits verse 50, which includes an addi­tion­al sin not men­tioned in verse 49. Pre­ston will tack­le that verse lat­er, but not men­tion­ing it here is a mis­take at best. He will also men­tion anoth­er pas­sage that com­ments specif­i­cal­ly on sin Sodom com­mit­ted, leav­ing his claim of Ezk. 16:49 being “the one pas­sage” as a com­plete lie.

Pre­ston again does not argue for his posi­tion, but now ful­ly com­mits to the 3D strat­e­gy by employ­ing “dis­cred­it.” I will say that Pre­ston does not direct­ly make the fol­low­ing claim, but frames it in a way that very direct­ly con­nects two ideas in the read­er’s mind. Pre­ston does attack Chris­tians for “com­mit­ting the very sins that the Bible calls ‘sodomy’,” but it is what he places that next to that makes it more note­wor­thy. “How iron­ic… Chris­tians have wield­ed the sto­ry of Sodom to con­demn gay peo­ple while…” The impli­ca­tion is that call­ing out the sin of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is to com­mit the sin of ‘sodomy.’ Pre­ston is, admit­ted­ly through posi­tion­al impli­ca­tion, flip­ping the script 180 degrees.

It’s embar­rass­ing­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal to con­demn homo­sex­u­al­i­ty while indulging in Sodom’s pri­ma­ry sin. 6,000 chil­dren die dai­ly from hunger and pre­ventable dis­eases, and you’re wor­ried about Prop 8? [Cal­i­for­nia con­si­tu­tion­al amend­ment that out­lawed homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. Struck down by cor­rupt courts] https://web.archive.org/web/20141015061635/http://facultyblog.eternitybiblecollege.com:80/2013/08/sex-at-sodom-was-it-homosexual

Yet this is not the only time Pre­ston has made an argu­ment like that, as you can see from the above quote. This time, he puts con­demn­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and “indulging in Sodom’s pri­ma­ry sin” even clos­er, leav­ing the impli­ca­tion as… less of an impli­ca­tion.

The Nephe­lim are the Answer!

Let us now turn our atten­tion to the pas­sage, Jude 7, that he exclud­ed ear­li­er. How does he explain “just as Sodom and Gomor­rah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immoral­i­ty and went after strange flesh.”

The Greek phrase is sarkos het­eras, which lit­er­al­ly means “oth­er flesh.” Some read­ers assume that this “oth­er flesh” means same-sex sex­u­al activ­i­ty. Iron­i­cal­ly, the sec­ond Greek word, het­eras, is where we get the first part of our com­pound word het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty—that is, a sex­u­al attrac­tion toward the oppo­site, or oth­er (het­ero), sex. The sex­u­al immoral­i­ty of the Sodomites had to do with going after “oth­er flesh” and, quite plain­ly, not the same flesh. To inter­pret “oth­er flesh” as a con­dem­na­tion of same-sex sex­u­al activ­i­ty goes direct­ly against what the Greek actu­al­ly says. If Jude had had same-sex inter­course in view, he most like­ly would have said “same flesh” rather than “oth­er (het­eras) flesh.”

empha­sis added

Here we find a com­ment so manip­u­la­tive, that it still catch­es my atten­tion every time I read it. “Iron­i­cal­ly, the sec­ond Greek word, het­eras, is where we get the first part of our com­pound word het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty.” That is not how argu­men­ta­tion, trans­la­tion, or def­i­n­i­tions work! You do not pull an ancient Greek word out, see what com­pound Eng­lish words con­tain it, and then use that to define the intent of that Greek word in a sen­tence. This is an explic­it attempt to inject a false con­nec­tion into the read­er’s mind. The Eng­lish word “het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty” has noth­ing to do with what a dif­fer­ent Greek word means in the con­text of Jude 7.

“Oth­er” is a com­par­a­tive term, so the real ques­tion is, “What is the ‘nor­mal’ that makes this flesh ‘oth­er’?” Let us look at Pre­ston’s expla­na­tion.

In light of verse 6, it seems rather clear that the “oth­er flesh” of Jude 7 refers to the angels that the Sodomites were try­ing to have sex with. Jude 6 refers back to Gen­e­sis 6:1–4, where angels had sex with humans. Jude 7, then, con­nects this sto­ry with the sto­ry of Sodom, where the men of the city were try­ing to have sex with angels, which Jude describes as oth­er flesh.

We are going to set aside the ques­tions sur­round­ing Gen­e­sis 6:1–4, and just grant the “angels had sex with humans” posi­tion for the sake of argu­ment. Would that mean Pre­ston has a point? Not even close, and again, it is so far off as to be a dis­trac­tion or manip­u­la­tion. It is anoth­er case of miss­ing an anal­o­gy. We do not need to go as far as to exam­ine the Greek, which does show the missed anal­o­gy, to prove it. Sim­ply look at the two sto­ries. In one, angels are pur­su­ing and hav­ing sex with humans, yet in Sodom, it is the men pur­su­ing the angels. It is a com­plete rever­sal.

More damn­ing, what do the men of Sodom have to say? “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have rela­tions with them.” The Sodomites did not know they were angels, and pur­sued them think­ing they were men. The “it was angels” defense sim­ply does not work. That leaves us with a ques­tion, what is the “oth­er­ness” of the flesh?

This is where verse 6 comes in use­ful, as it says the “angels who did not keep their own domain, but aban­doned their prop­er abode.” Regard­less of your inter­pre­ta­tion of Gen­e­sis 6:1–4, we can see that there was a nor­mal domain for the angels, and they aban­doned what was prop­er for some­thing improp­er. Like­wise, the men of Sodom gave up the proper/natural flesh, for flesh that was “oth­er,” i.e. improp­er and unnat­ur­al. (see Romans 1:26–27) Thus, not only is Pre­ston’s inter­pre­ta­tion false, but when put in prop­er con­text, Jude 7 is strong sup­port for homo­sex­u­al­i­ty being a pri­ma­ry part of the judg­ment of Sodom.

The Miss­ing Verse

Final­ly, Pre­ston tack­les Ezekiel 16:50, which he exclud­ed when he cov­ered verse 49. How does he han­dle it? He starts off by mak­ing an over­ly com­plex argu­ment about “abom­i­na­tion” being in the sin­gu­lar as an expla­na­tion for why peo­ple think verse 50 is talk­ing about homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. This is because Leviti­cus 18:22 and 20:13 (the Levit­i­cal pro­hi­bi­tions on homo­sex­u­al­i­ty) are the only times in Leviti­cus that “abom­i­na­tion” is sin­gu­lar in the Hebrew.

I say it is over­ly com­plex not because it is an inher­ent­ly bad or use­less argu­ment, but because he bypass­es the obvi­ous rea­sons why peo­ple make the con­nec­tion. The fruit of this over­com­pli­ca­tion can be seen when he says:

[I]t assumes that the read­er will hear “an abom­i­na­tion” and imme­di­ate­ly jump to Leviti­cus 18:22 and 20:13, and then map these pas­sages and the sin­gu­lar “an abom­i­na­tion” onto Gen­e­sis 19. That’s a lot danc­ing around required for a read­er

First, that is not a lot of danc­ing for a read­er, and it is less danc­ing around than Pre­ston has done thus far. We are sup­posed to be cross-ref­er­enc­ing pas­sages.

Sec­ond, no one, out­side of a schol­ar, con­nects things like that. Do peo­ple con­nect Ezekiel to Leviti­cus? Yes. But he’s ignor­ing the main point of con­text peo­ple use for mak­ing such a con­nec­tion. That would be the sto­ry of Sodom itself, where there is homo­sex­u­al­i­ty involved. To be char­i­ta­ble, we will define that activ­i­ty as “pre­med­i­tat­ed, attempt­ed, homo­sex­u­al rape.”

Even Pre­ston, writ­ing 11 years ago sees a con­nec­tion between Ezekiel and Leviti­cus.

of all the books that Ezekiel draws upon for his the­ol­o­gy, Leviti­cus is at the top of the list. That is, Ezekiel depends on Leviti­cus for his eth­ic and the­ol­o­gy more than any oth­er bib­li­cal book

https://web.archive.org/web/20141015061635/http://facultyblog.eternitybiblecollege.com:80/2013/08/sex-at-sodom-was-it-homosexual

Now that is not to say we take his words from over a decade ago as his cur­rent belief. How­ev­er, it shows that he under­stands that it is log­i­cal to con­nect the two, and that log­i­cal con­nec­tion only grows as you study the book of Ezekiel.

Pre­ston’s Con­clu­sion

We now come to Pre­ston’s clos­ing thoughts on Sodom, before he moves on to his “pas­toral impli­ca­tions.” I think it is impor­tant to take his con­clu­sion as a whole, so here is the entire con­clud­ing para­graph.

Now, if the men of Sodom had actu­al­ly raped Lot’s guests (angels appear­ing as men), they would have vio­lat­ed Leviti­cus 18:22 and 20:13. Same-sex gang rape is a type of sex­u­al activ­i­ty. In a sim­i­lar way, if a father rapes his 5‑year-old son, he too would be guilty of a type of same-sex sex­u­al sin. But to con­demn the father’s act is not, in itself, to con­demn all forms of same-sex sex­u­al activ­i­ty. Like­wise, if a father rapes his daugh­ter and we con­demn it, we are not there­by con­demn­ing all forms of oppo­site-sex sex­u­al behav­ior. The men of Sodom tried to gang-rape Lot’s vis­i­tors. And there are piles of wicked­ness involved in the act: pride, greed, lust, coer­cion, vio­lence, sex out­side of mar­riage, abuse, inhos­pi­tal­i­ty, self­ish­ness, lack of con­trol, rape, and same-sex sex­u­al behav­ior. But to sin­gle out the lat­ter cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly and reduce the sto­ry to a sin­gle nar­ra­tive about homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, or being gay, or same-sex love, col­laps­es the mul­ti­fac­eted dimen­sions of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty into a nar­row theme of sex­u­al vio­lence. Not only is this reduc­tion exeget­i­cal­ly mis­lead­ing, it’s pas­toral­ly destruc­tive

That was the entire con­clu­sion, start­ing imme­di­ate­ly after he wrapped up Ezekiel 16:50. Rather than sum­ming up his argu­ments, he instead goes to sen­sa­tion­al­ism and dis­trac­tions. That said, he con­cedes much here. For starters, he admits that the rape was homo­sex­u­al rape, and falls under the cat­e­go­ry of “same-sex sex­u­al sin.” Remem­ber that the desire to com­mit a sin is a type of that sin. Thus, Pre­ston’s con­ces­sion here destroys the entire­ty of his attempt to dis­tance homo­sex­u­al­i­ty from Sodom.

Next, it must be men­tioned that it is not us con­demn­ing some­thing that makes it sin, rather it is God’s word that declares some­thing a sin. In this case, the Bible has declared all homo­sex­u­al activ­i­ty to be sin. In the case of “het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty,” (I think that’s a poor word, but we will go with it for now) God’s word has not con­demned all forms. So the rape of son vs daugh­ter “not con­demn­ing all of that type of sex­u­al­i­ty” is just a gross, sen­sa­tion­al dis­trac­tion from God’s word.

Final­ly, Pre­ston men­tions many sins, say­ing that “sin­gling out” one of those sins “col­laps­es the mul­ti­faced dimen­sions of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.” The impli­ca­tion is that it is all or noth­ing with Sodom, at least when it comes to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. This is, again, absurd. No one is say­ing that there were no oth­er sins. There were many sins in Sodom. We can acknowl­edge the many sins of Sodom, see­ing a pro­gres­sion of sin that leads to “aban­doned the nat­ur­al func­tion… [and] com­mit­ting inde­cent acts.” (see Romans 1:26–27) Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is that end-of-the-chain sin wor­thy of spe­cif­ic atten­tion.

As we move on to the “pas­toral impli­ca­tion,” it is worth not­ing that Pre­ston has not proven, or even pre­sent­ed much seri­ous argu­men­ta­tion for, a sin­gle point. He leaned more on deny­ing, deflect­ing, and dis­cred­it­ing much more than any­thing else. The points he could not hide from were still enough to show his posi­tion was false. When com­bined with an exam­i­na­tion of the Bib­li­cal con­text, we can see just how far off Pre­ston is, and how manip­u­la­tive much of his con­tent was.

Now, let us see his impli­ca­tions for pas­tors.

Pre­ston’s “Pas­toral Impli­ca­tions”

There is hard­ly a dif­fer­ence between Pre­ston’s “pas­toral impli­ca­tions” and the main body of the work. The impli­ca­tions func­tion more as a con­tin­u­a­tion of his attempts to dis­tract peo­ple from asso­ci­at­ing Sodom and homo­sex­u­al sin. Let us look at some of these impli­ca­tions.

Sec­ond, how we inter­pret the sto­ry of Sodom affects the church’s rep­u­ta­tion.
…If the Sodomites are believed to be gay peo­ple, and the Chris­t­ian God went out of his way to destroy the city of Sodom, then the nat­ur­al con­clu­sion is that the Chris­t­ian God hates gay peo­ple and can’t wait to fire up the nukes to anni­hi­late every gay city on the plan­et.

We do not deter­mine the inter­pre­ta­tion of scrip­ture based on how it will change our rep­u­ta­tion with the unsaved world. Iron­i­cal­ly, this comes after his first point, where he warned not to “read into the text what [you] want to find.” The argu­ment that rep­u­ta­tion is even a small fac­tor in inter­pre­ta­tion runs afoul of the exhor­ta­tion not to inject our own mean­ing into the text. Right­ful­ly so, as it is an emo­tion­al, not truth­ful, stan­dard.

And then there’s the quote that led this entire arti­cle. Beyond the extreme sen­sa­tion­al­ism of it, he does not remove the sup­posed dilem­ma. God still Judged and destroyed Sodom. If not for homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, then it was for some­thing. If the judg­ment is for such as greed, then you leave the world with a greater fear of God’s nukes, at least accord­ing to Pre­ston’s log­ic. It seems that, either way, we need to deal with God’s judg­ment, and we need to do it in a non­sen­sa­tion­al way. Reduc­ing God’s right­eous judg­ment to “scary nukes from heav­en that might scare peo­ple,” ends up being an attack on God as judge in Gen­e­sis 19, instead of an argu­ment against Sodom’s sin being homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.

Third, and most impor­tant­ly, many peo­ple strug­gling with same-sex attrac­tion are con­fused and dam­aged when Chris­tians apply the sto­ry of Sodom to them. Young John­ny comes out to his youth pas­tor when he is 15 years old, and his youth pas­tor shows him the sto­ry of Sodom and says, “You know, John­ny, God doesn’t approve of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.” John­ny turns to read a pas­sage about a bunch of men try­ing to gang-rape a cou­ple of angels and thinks: What, do you think I’m some kind of mon­ster? John­ny begins to see the Chris­t­ian Bible as twist­ed and con­de­scend­ing, and he tends to see Chris­tians who read this Bible as unwill­ing to under­stand the real expe­ri­ences of actu­al gay people—the ones who aren’t down with gang rap­ing angels.

Though it has already been seen in sev­er­al com­ments from Pre­ston, I think this quote shows off the crux of Pre­ston’s moti­va­tion. He tru­ly sees “mod­ern” homo­sex­u­al­i­ty as a cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly and fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent thing from “ancient” homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. The Bible, how­ev­er, does not make cat­e­gor­i­cal dis­tinc­tions con­cern­ing the sin, and instead has a blan­ket pro­hi­bi­tion on homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.

Sodom is not need­ed for the blan­ket con­dem­na­tion (and the hypo­thet­i­cal pas­tor’s words) to be true. God makes this clear in the pas­sages that direct­ly address homo­sex­u­al­i­ty as sin­ful. With that said, the hypo­thet­i­cal is non­sense. Pre­ston acts as if Sodom being about homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is “harsh,” but the pas­sages that direct­ly pro­hib­it the sin are equal­ly as “harsh.”

The hypo­thet­i­cal does show off some­thing quite well though. The pas­tor’s words are very benign, yet John­ny still rejects what was said and Chris­tian­i­ty alto­geth­er. Why is this the case, and what is John­ny reject­ing? John­ny has reject­ed Christ and His word, and there is noth­ing the pas­tor could do to cause or pre­vent that. John­ny will stand before Christ at the end of the age, and John­ny will be sent to hell for­ev­er for reject­ing Christ. What that pas­tor did was care enough to warn him. Flip­ping to Leviti­cus or Romans was not going to get a fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent result. Even in Pre­ston’s con­trived hypo­thet­i­cal, he’s failed to show the “dan­ger” of speak­ing God’s truth.

Con­clu­sion

There is some­thing very off in Pre­ston’s the­ol­o­gy. It is root­ed in emo­tion, not truth. It sees speak­ing the truth as destruc­tive but hid­ing the truth as ben­e­fi­cial. I will be hon­est, as I’ve done this inves­ti­ga­tion, I con­tin­ue to be sur­prised by just how poor Pre­ston’s argu­men­ta­tion is, and just how manip­u­la­tive he is will­ing to be.

On that note, Let us address the quote above. Yet anoth­er scare tac­tic, as there are mil­lions of “Have you con­sid­ered this” argu­ments out there. We do not need to con­sid­er all pos­si­bil­i­ties to arrive at truth, but rather we need to exam­ine the word respon­si­bly and allow it to speak for itself. I can speak for myself and say that the rea­son I believe that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was a pri­ma­ry rea­son for Sodom’s judg­ment is not because of tra­di­tion.

Let us stand on God’s truth, and not be tricked by men com­ing with emo­tion­al, sen­sa­tion­al, nov­el argu­ments. Test all things with scrip­ture.

1. I hope it is unnec­es­sary to point out who wrong men rap­ing women is, and how that is some­thing wor­thy of judg­ment. The ques­tion is “what was Sodom judged for,” not “what oth­er evil things could occur in the world.” ↩︎