Gang Rape and Incest?

There is no way to get around it, Genesis 19 is a tough chapter to walk through. It starts out with a very disturbing passage on the topic of a community where gang rape seems to be either normalized, or at least a systemic and common occurrence.

For most of us, not having the ability to refuse sexual advances from others would seem very odd. But even today, there are many people trapped in the sex trafficking trade that deal with rape and gang rape and who have no expectation that they would get to choose or refuse those who press hard against their door. No matter how foreign or uncomfortable this situation might be compared to our own sheltered experiences — or how painful it might be in comparison to personal experiences of molestation, rape, etc. — we mustn’t ignore that this type of exploitation and injustice carries an especially challenging burden.

For victims of these types of crimes against humanity, it is especially hard to not wish for vengeance for your oppressors instead of pursuing for their forgiveness. And we can see that even God’s patience with such wickedness (and great suffering caused to others others) has limits.

The culmination of this chapter, where they have been delivered from this place and culture of sexual slavery but how it clearly has an impact on how the children grow up normalized to the idea of incest is also hard to stomach for most of us living with first world problems.

To think that this is an outrageous and far fetched situation is to ignore what many poor, oppressed and victimized people deal with today. We who are reading daily Christian devotionals in the comfort of our homes and jobs may not have the particular threat of gang rape and incest pressing to break into our house. But lust, pornography, sexual perversions, adultery and all kinds of temptations would love to set the standards of our family closer and closer to Sodom and Gomorrah one generation at a time until sin is normalized and things like gang rape and incest aren’t even shocking or uncommon.

It is not so far fetched to imagine a society that starts out punishes those in court who refuse to glorify and normalize sexual perversion — moving (if unchecked) to the point of forcing acts of sexual perversion upon unwilling participants.

So we must remember the grace that our God has extended us, seek how we might help, encourage and introduce those enslaved to the trappings of sexual sin to the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And we must not hesitate to run from such things when they endanger our family — especially when the Lord makes it clear that we must turn away without looking back.

Each of us has something that we need to lay down and never pick up again. Each of us has something small that we could surrender that might seem harmless at first but could grow beyond our control and wreck our lives if left to multiply like a cancer. Let’s recognize the warning in this passage, turn away from sin, turn to God before what we “put up with” has very real consequences for our children and those we love. Amen.