This post is part of my ongoing series of writing down my thoughts on the Bible passages I read each day. Some days I hope to have great insight that the Lord gives me, and many days, I will likely struggle through the text and not know what to write down based on what I read. My hope and prayer is that as I make this a habit, just as I did daily writing for so long, that I will improve on my ability to read and understand the passages I’m reading. Please keep in mind that many of these posts may be published late at night or with little time studying and simply be my first thoughts after reading. This is in no way a commentary that one should use to discern the Bible, but my own personal thoughts.

Chapter 19 of Genesis is one of the hardest passages in the bible for me to understand. Not because of confusing language or words that I don’t understand. Actually, the opposite. I think I understand the passage exactly (or mostly) and the actions of Lot confuse me if what he did was considered righteous before the Lord.

I think I would have to write out the whole chapter for you to get the proper context here, so I’m not going to do that. But I do highly encourage you to read this passage if you’d like to understand what I’m talking about.

My biggest question has always been about Lot’s offering to give his daughters instead of these guests in his home. It does say that these were angels of the Lord, and that’s the only explanation that I can think of that somewhat justifies what he did. When these evil men of the city come to him and say that they want to molest these guests that Lot has, he thinks that these are the Lord’s guests and that he cannot give them away to these evil men.

But still, It’s hard for me, in any context, to think about offering my own daughters (if I had any) over almost anybody. That’s why sometimes I think passages like this are often hard to figure out because even though scripture is inspired by God, that doesn’t mean that everything a man or woman does in it is God approved. If that were the case, we could all go kill the man of any woman we saw fit to marry. Just because it’s in scripture doesn’t mean that the thing itself is okay, it just means that the story is true.

However, outside of this small passage that is hard for me to wrap my head around, I was also struck by this idea that we as men feel like we have to protect God. Perhaps this is taken a bit out of context or allegorized too much. But here Lot is trying to “protect” these angels of God, but then in the end, the men pull him inside the house and blind the evil men outside. They are the ones who end up saving Lot even though he’s trying to save them.

How often does that happen to us. We think that God needs our help or support in something, but actually, we’re the ones being used by God.

At the end of the day, if we find ourselves being the protagonist and not God, we need to rethink the way that we’re living.