Sodom
Most are probably somewhat familiar with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. It was a place so wicked that God destroyed the entire area (with 2 major cities). Abraham even pleaded with God that the city not be destroyed so utterly if there were basically any righteous people found there. It would have only taken ten decent people to save the region. Yet, only Lot and his family were saved, and his wife was turned to a pillar of salt just for looking back after leaving!
God had sent messengers to Lot’s family to get them out and the city showed up to to try to sexually assault those angels!
He Became Judge?!
Lot, confronted by such a grievous display of sinfulness, pleads with them to not do something so horrible. It is so shocking to him that he even considers offering his daughters to them to be a less terrifying option! However, their response is one that today is all too common when confronted with the judgements of God.
But they said, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” Then they pressed hard against the man Lot, and drew near to break the door down.
Genesis 19:9
Is this not a valid criticism of Lot from a cultural relativity worldview? This was just how the people of Sodom lived. Now Lot, who comes from a different culture, comes in and judges their behavior?! How dare he! He had no right.
God Is Judge
Except that it wasn’t really Lot judging these people. Lot didn’t invent a standard of not sodomizing guests to the town. The reason this shouldn’t be done is because it is against an objective standard of good and evil. God, who by nature is perfectly good, is the standard by which all behavior is measured. Every piece of space dust floating through the far reaches of some other galaxy all the way down to a person living his life here on Earth owes their very existence to the God who created them. As such, they are all under his authority and violating his standards is always wrong.
It doesn’t matter that the people of Sodom had their own customs. It doesn’t matter that Lot was an outsider. He was warning them against doing the very thing for which, a few hours later, they and their wicked culture would be wiped completely from existence. And God’s judgement of them and their culture was perfectly just because the various, diverse societies of the world answer to God rather than the other way around.
What God says is good is good. What he says is wicked is wicked. It doesn’t matter how much time passes or all the supposed reasons why a culture decides they know better. A culture that does not submit itself to God’s standards is on borrowed time.
Take Heed
As people who know what God’s standards are, we are doing a culture no favors by hiding God’s commands from them. A mission Christ laid on his church was to teach the nations those commands. Judgement is coming whether we warn them or not, and it would be unloving not to.
As exiles and sojourners in this fallen world, we will often be met with accusations of being judgmental for pointing out how cultures are in opposition to God’s ways. However, we need to remember that God is right to judge these nations and it would be wrong for us not to plead with them to repent.
The church must reject the ideas of cultural relativism. For many of us, this assumption has been baked into a lot of our learning growing up. Everything from our school systems to our entertainment industry has been designed to teach us that every culture must be judged only from within itself and cannot be measured by any standard outside of it.
However, the only standard that really matters is eternal and exists outside of all man-made systems. Therefore, any culture that fails to aim for that standard is guilty already. It is loving to teach nations to obey him.
