Some passages of the Bible provoke pure disgust. A good
example of this is Judges 19. This chapter goes from bad, to worse, to
revolting. If you meditate on what is happening, it actually makes you angry. The
passage includes homosexuality, rape, murder, mutilation and complete disregard
for the victims of the rape and murder. And one of the men who empowered the crime is
a Leviticus priest, it’s a sordid affair.
Some critics of the Bible use passages like this to attack
the Scriptures. But they are simply misreading it or misunderstanding it.
A chapter such as this is in the Bible precisely to provoke
disgust in the reader. It is to highlight just how wicked God’s own people
become if they depart from the word of God.
I saw a post the other day where some progressive Christian
was trying to use scant archaeological evidence to argue for women in ministry
today, because we have evidence of it in some of the early Church. The evidence
was spurious, however, even if we grant it to be true, it doesn’t argue what
that person thought. It simply demonstrates how quickly God’s people can go
apostate if they abandon his commands. The same can be said for early worship
of icons, and so many other practices in the early Church. God’s people can go
apostate quickly.
In Judges it takes just a generation for Israel to go from
righteously following God to worshipping idols and committing abominations. And
this cycle goes on and on until Israel becomes as evil as Sodom. If you don’t
believe me, just read Judges 19. It is perhaps the most disgust inducing
chapter in the Scriptures.
But this shows us how depraved we can become and how quickly
it can happen if we reject the God we know. How quickly did our society go from
saying all religions and ways of life are equal, to neutering kids through
surgery and chemicals, and celebrating it as liberty? Fast enough to give many
people whiplash. So fast even many unbelievers are now disgusted that our
culture went there.
But without God as the centre of a society, no abomination
is off the table. Such is the state of mankind apart from God, our father, and
his Son, Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Hence why Peter warned:
“20 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. 21 For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. 22 What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire” (2 Peter 2:20-22).
