Little Things

There’s a scene, in the movie "Vanilla Sky," in which the protagonist (played by Tom Cruise) and a character (played by Noah Taylor) who introduces himself as “Tech Support,” are riding in an elevator. One of them says to the other, “It’s the little things...” to which the other responds, “They’re the biggest things,” to which, in light of experience and the scriptures, I would rejoin: if the little things aren’t the biggest things, they-- like the twitch in the corner of a poker player’s mouth-- certainly tell on the biggest things, if one knows what to look for and what it means to see it.<\p>

There are some little things in the scriptures that make huge impacts, not only on the history contained within the scriptures, but on our contemporary paradigm, as well; things so little, everyone seems to have missed them, from the moment they were recorded, until now. The late Pete Ruckman (in his Commentary on Genesis) noted the disobedience of Abram described in Genesis 12:1, for instance, though he missed the disobedience of the angels who came to recon and destroy Sodom, in Genesis 19 , while Abram was arguing with the Judge of all the earth for the souls of that wicked city. (Genesis 18:23- 33 ) It’s germane to the subject of these angels’ disobedience to say a thing or two about the argument made by Abram, acting as Sodom’s defense counsel.

Firstly, it’s worth noting the way Abe chides with the Judge of all the earth, in verse 25, fairly lecturing him on how to do his job, after supposing there might be fifty righteous in the city: “That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Why such a condescending tone? Why would Abe not rather have simply asked the Judge if any righteous in the city might be saved?

In my opinion, Paul-- while not necessarily intending to do so-- properly characterizes this presumptuousness of Abram’s in Romans 11:34, thus: “who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?” At any rate, Abe keeps returning to the bar of justice to argue for fewer and fewer righteous to be sufficient cause for the salvation of exceeding wicked Sodom until, in verse 32, the final criterion is agreed upon, by which-- if met-- the Judge allows he will spare the whole city of Sodom: “And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake.”

Meanwhile, the angels come to Sodom, and find Abram’s cousin, Lot, sitting where the elders who judged cities were wont to sit, in those days: in the gate of the city. This is noteworthy, because 2 Peter 2:7 refers to Lot as “just,” (a shortened form of ‘Justice,’ our title for a judge) while the men of Sodom call Lot “a judge,” in Genesis 19:9.

Now, a judge who could sit in the gate of Sodom and not condemn the residents thereof as wicked would seem a strange sort to call “righteous,” but that’s exactly what Peter (after evoking "just Lot") does, in the very next verse-- 2 Peter 2:8-- saying, “that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds.”

The significance of this seeming contradiction could be to reveal to us, by the Holy Ghost, that Christ did not die for Lot, nor any like him. "For the LORD loveth judgment," (Psalms 37:28) not perversion in the guise and place of the same love of the Lord. After all, any man who wears the robe to pervert Justice and the honor with which one should preside over her bar, is a worthless man and a wicked judge-- not a good man with a righteous soul.

We need to remember it was none other than Peter-- who apparently enjoyed: working with the other apostles butt- naked aboard commercial fishing rigs where there's plenty of tackling and nets (not to mention sea monsters) to keep things interesting for one's wee- wee (John 21:3- 7) and that within view of shore; wearing his work clothes to swim (John 21:7 ); and sleeping butt- naked, when in chains, having a soldier on either side of him for warmth (Acts 12:6- 8 )-- who penned this glowing critique of Lot's character and worth: Lot, who saved "Bela, which is Zoar," ( Genesis 14:3) instead of Sodom, much like Moses was God instead of God. (Exodus 4:16)

Romans 5:6 & 7 says, “Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.” I believe it's the Jew in Paul that makes him equate ungodly with good. After all, someone always has to die for a man who's already dying for himself, according to the jews' religion (and Cain and Lamech, who beat them to it, back in Genesis 4 .) The point, here, is that Lot was clearly not a good man, though he was obviously esteemed righteous by Peter, who was busted by an angel of the Lord sleeping like Louis XIV: naked, with soldiers for bedding. (Not that there's necessarily anything inherently conspiratorial about homosexuals....)

At any rate-- after the men of Sodom nearly beat down Lot’s door in an attempt to rape the angels he brought home from the city’s gate [for his own pleasure, perhaps (Genesis 19:4- 11)]-- the angels tell Lot to round up all the family he has in Sodom, and bring them out with himself, for they will destroy the city. So, Lot-- the “righteous” judge who cannot condemn wicked Sodom-- gets as many of his family members together as possible, before morning light, and winds up with a grand total, including himself, six shy of the requisite ten for which Abram sued the Judge to not destroy Sodom, at the end of chapter 18.

The angels then tell Lot to take all the family he was able to round up-- his wife and two daughters-- “to the mountain, lest thou be consumed,” (Genesis 19:17) thus indicating their intent to destroy all five cities in the valley, at which point Lot shows his righteousness to be of a wicked sort: by arguing against going to the mountain “lest some evil take me, and I die,” (verse 19) as if the Lord is going to rescue him from the exceeding wickedness of Sodom just to kill him in the mountain.

Perhaps this pretense to need of a city to live in was simply Lot's prevaricating attempt at obfuscating his own proclivities behind the beard of 'city- dweller.' Or maybe Lot was embarrassed of having been a hillbilly, once- upon- a- short- while- ago. After all, Lot-- like the Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger characters in "Brokeback Mountain" -- was a cattleman (Genesis 13:7- 13) before moving to Sodom and apparently losing or selling all his livestock (or were his cattle penned at Zoar?). Any need of a city to survive would be pretense to a cattleman. Such employment doesn’t suffer those who are scared of the outdoors.

A cattleman has to protect his livestock-- and his family-- on the range, at all times. Lot could have easily made it to another city with only his wife and daughters to secure along the way-- not that that would’ve been necessary: his cousin Abram’s operation was most likely large enough to be seen from Sodom; and having esteemed Lot’s companionship worthy of disobeying the Lord in bringing Lot with him to Canaan, (Genesis 12:1) it’s doubtful Abe was waiting in the mountain to kill Lot upon his escape from Sodom. In fact, it seems (Genesis 19:27 & 28 ) he was more likely looking for Lot, to ‘catch him in the rye,’ as it were, and care for him until he got back on his feet.

Though, if Lot was truly scared of a mountain-- which was no doubt tame in comparison to the exceeding wickedness of Sodom-- his fear likewise betrays his wickedness, in light of his former cowboying days. As Proverbs 28:1 says, “The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.” As I read the text, it’s a safe bet that it was the wickedness of the cities in the valley of Siddim that kept Lot in Sodom, regardless of whatever it was that attracted him, in the first place.

After making this wild claim to be afraid of the mountain, Lot then begs the angel to let him escape to Bela, (later called Zoar) one of the cities on the kill list; which would necessitate the salvation of a condemned city (or the condemnation of a man the angel would save.) Lot, according to the text, represents the salvation of Zoar as seeming reasonable to him because the city is “a little one.” (Therefore, it’s only a little transgression to save it, I suppose.)

In Genesis 19:21, the angel Lot is haggling with says, “I have accepted thee [as opposed to the word of the Lord] concerning this thing also, [I shudder to think what "also," here, implies.] that I will not overthrow this city, for the which thou hast spoken.” So Lot escapes to Zoar, from which he then escapes to the mountain (verse 30) he claims to be deathly afraid of, because “he [in turn] feared to dwell in Zoar.” So much fear, for a righteous judge. It sure seems the character of Lot is one of the little things everyone-- including the apostles-- who wrote about it, got wrong. No one I know of has ever questioned the circumspection of the angels who "searched- out" Sodom.

When the apostles were being examined and rebuked by a council of Jewish religious leaders concerning their Christian witness, Peter told the council there convened (as recorded in Acts 5:29) “We ought to obey God rather than men.” So ought angels.

In Genesis 19:21, the angels who were present in the valley of Siddim made a decision to take a man’s word over the Lord’s word in the matter of Zoar. The angel talking with Lot promises to not overthrow “this city, for which thou [Lot] hast spoken,” in spite of the fact that the Lord had already spoken against it. This, in a word, is treason. (1Samuel 15:22 & 23)

One even has to wonder why the angels would spare Lot. It is possible there was communication about Lot between the Judge and the angels which the text of Genesis 19 doesn’t divulge, but the deal struck with Abe was an all- or- nothing proposal. Regarding Sodom only. The Judge agreed to spare that city if ten righteous were found therein.

There was no deal struck to save all worthwhile parties in spite of the perdition made of the cities in which they were found. There was no mention of Lot. Nor was any other city mentioned, in Abram’s discussion with the Judge about the coming judgment, besides Sodom-- the city in which Lot resided and over which he presided as a judge in the gate. As there were not ten found in Sodom who could be construed as worthy of saving, all in Sodom-- and the other cities in the vale, besides-- should have suffered the perdition of Sodom, as per the deal struck between Abe and the Judge. Lot should not have survived. Nor should Zoar.

We’re speaking, here, of “little” things that make huge differences, and-- as I read The Holy Bible, and history in general-- few little things bear such gargantuan consequences as the sparing of Zoar and Lot. There’s another place in the canon of scripture we refer to as The Holy Bible where the men of a city try to beat down the door of one of their own in order to rape a male traveler in their midst.

In Judges 19:15- 28, a Levite on his way home to Mount Ephraim from Bethlehem, stops over in the Benjamite city of Gibeah-- the hometown of Israel’s first king, Saul-- overnight. While there, one of the locals invites him to come to his home and stay the night, instead of sleeping in the street. When the Levite and the other members of his party arrive at their host’s house, “the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, [in a flashback straight out of Genesis 19:5] beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him.” (Judges 19:22) Resultant of this ‘public demonstration’ of moral bankruptcy, the Levite sends his concubine out to the men of Gibeah who rape her-- instead of him-- to death.

When the Levite returns home to Mount Ephraim, he rallies all the tribes of Israel to visit justice upon the men of Gibeah for their mistreatment of his concubine, and for their unconscionable wickedness generally; in response to which the entire tribe of Benjamin proves how set they are on said wickedness by rallying behind Gibeah, though out- numbered by the other tribes, 15.4- to- 1.

Now, the tribal possession of Benjamin was surrounded by the tribe of Judah’s land, the way a hand is surrounded by a glove, though, in form, more like the way a Benjamite phallus is surrounded by a Levite's butt- hole when the man- lovers are 'getting to know' their priest to death. Thus, it stands to reason, that Judah-- as the tribe closest to Benjamin-- was the most likely of all the tribes of Israel to have been perverted (if any of them were) by casual contact with Benjamin’s wickedness. So, when the Lord tells Israel to send Judah first against Gibeah, it makes perfectly good sense.

And, when Judah suffers stomach- churning levels of attrition, the first and second days of the battle, this is likewise understandable; though, of course, it was moronic of the children of Israel to ask, "who should go up first for us?" considering the marching order prescribed by the Lord in Numbers 2.

Good men don’t escape responsibility by doing nothing; and wicked men don’t escape responsibility by judging those men who partake in their wickedness with them to be worthy of death. At any rate, this great loss of lives by the tribe of Judah compels all the tribes gathered against Benjamin to weep before the Lord, instead of reprimanding their own leadership for attempting to fight against the stone- slinging southpaws of wicked Benjamin in a manner other the one prescribed by the Lord, which, in a nutshell, was: "when one goes (to war), all go." This worm turns the third day, when Israel finds another reason to weep before the Lord.

On the third day of battle, all the tribes gather at Gibeah and join Judah in the battle against the men of Benjamin. On this day, Gibeah is sacked, all the women and children of Benjamin killed, and the men of Benjamin flee for their lives before the avenging tribes. When all is said and done, six hundred men of Benjamin-- all that remain thereof-- find refuge in the wilderness, and Israel assembles before the Lord to weep again: this time for the would- be (were It only for obedience) loss of a tribe of Israel.

Perhaps in like manner to Lot begging for the salvation of Zoar, the Israelites repent of the snuffing- out of a tribe of their “evil family,” preferring to save Benjamin, now that it’s become “the smallest of the tribes of Israel;” (1 Samuel 9:21) toward which end they devise a scheme to effect the survival of the little remnant of Benjamin.

This may seem a simple proposition: Beyond not killing the rest of them, what's required? But-- incredible as it may seem-- the children of Israel are convinced that a requisite to their saving of the queer rapists of Benjamin is the provision of wives-- from their tribes-- to the surviving rapists. And, to further complicate matters: anywhere a Jew is, there's bound to be curses. It's insurance, as far as they're concerned. How else to possess the gates of their enemies, if not by utility of judgemental cursing, after all?

In Judges 21:1, we are informed “the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpeh, saying, There shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife.” Somehow, the idea of simply not killing the remnant of Benjamin, and allowing them to fend for themselves in regards to courting and marrying whomsoever they will, is inconceivable to the Israelites. Instead, they take a head- count (apparently without taking the ransom prescribed for all such counts in Exodus 30:12) of all in attendance at the general congress in Mizpeh, to ascertain whether there are any Israelites who, for any reason, (perhaps they didn’t receive a notice to attend, for instance) were not in attendance and therefore entered not into the oath sworn by those in attendance, concerning the giving of wives to Benjamin.

This done, they discover the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead may, without breaching the aforementioned oath, give their daughters to the Benjamites, being as there were no inhabitants of that city in attendance. So, instead of wiping the remnant of Benjamin out, and thereby completing the covenant- bound task they had begun regarding the removal from their midst of the sodomite rapists and all who would stand on their side, the Israelites send twelve thousand men of war to Jabesh-gilead to wipe it out, and “give” their daughters (not their wives and mothers) to the remnant of Benjamin to “marry” by raping.

Judges 21:12 tells us, “they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young [i.e. pedophilia] virgins, that had known no man by lying with any male.” These they bring to the surviving Benjamites holed- up in the wilderness to “marry” by force, having killed all other inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead. This, of course, is two hundred virgins shy of the six hundred little girls required to provide all those remaining of Benjamin a forced- wife of his own, so they go back to the drawing- board to devise some scheme by which they might “give” wives to the unmarried remnant of Benjamin by means as subtle as those employed against Jabesh-gilead.

They settle on a solution akin to stealing young girls [pedophilia] from a church picnic in the municipal park. “Then they said, Behold, there is a feast of the LORD in Shiloh yearly in a place which is on the north side of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah. Therefore they commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards; And see, and, behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin. And it shall be, when their fathers or their brethren come unto us to complain, that we will say unto them, Be favourable unto them for our sakes: because we reserved not to each man his wife in the war: for ye did not give unto them at this time, that ye should be guilty [meaning: we don't have to kill you, if you shut up]. And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives, according to their number, of them that danced, whom they caught: and they went and returned unto their inheritance, and repaired the cities, and dwelt in them.” (Judges 21:19- 23) Thus, the bull- queer Benjamites, who offended by a gang- rape, were saved by mass conspiratorial rape of mere children, in collusion with the holier- than- thou’s who judged them worthy of death, for rape. So much for man’s [Lot's, for instance] righteous justice.

The Book is a trove of such indiscretions and misjudgments. To cover them generally-- much less comprehensively-- would require a larger set of volumes than the original canon, and more time than I might ever have. I think, however, the pair cited above are timely and representative of how little compromises become larger headaches, given time, than the splitting migraines they alleviate originally.

If, for instance, it seems a small indiscretion to allow LGBT’s in the pulpits, it most likely seems so because the pulpits and the flocks they service had, long before this allowance was made, already become so perverse as to make it impossible to conceive of any more depraved way to attempt mocking God, than to allow "out- and- proud" queers in.

To be sure, I think the reason so many professing “Christians” refuse to take personal responsibility for reversing the wickedness of our times, preferring-- instead-- to wait for Jesus to return and straighten out all the crookedness for them-- in spite of his declarations that, “the things concerning me have an end,” and “It is expedient for you that I go away,” and “greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father”-- is because cell phones and cameras are ubiquitous, these days, and they desire a ‘capture’ of their professed God: some for spank- bank utility in their prayer closets; some for other, equally iconic and depraved utilities.

The sad truth of the matter is that gay marriage-- besides currently being officially recognized legal doctrine around the globe-- is a cunningly- devised doctrine of devils included in The Doctrine, shortly after the book of Judges: in the account of David and Jonathan’s soul- binding “friendship.” The fact that this bond of souls also amounts to what is likely the most successful marriage-- outside of the proposed matrimony between Christ and the church-- described in the canon, is equally sad and sobering; if not altogether frightening.

Jonathan was one of king Saul’s sons. Saul was the first king of Israel. He was a Benjamite from the aforementioned city of Gibeah, and, as such, wouldn’t have been around to be king, if the job of cleansing the homosexual rapists thereof from off the land, described previously herein, had been successfully and completely effected.

You most likely know who David was, given the notoriety he gained in slaying the giant, Goliath, a Philistine of Gath. David was destined to become the second king of Israel, and-- ultimately-- the patriarch of the royal line of Judah [the real King of the Jews], which (as a nation) included only Judah and Benjamin. Besides Saul, all of the kings who reigned in Judah, before and after their national schism with the other ten tribes of Israel, were David and his direct descendants.

In respect of marriage, Ephesians 5:28 says, “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.” Paul is not writing, here, about what we call the flesh so much as the soul of a man. The soul is somehow intertwined with the body, according to the doctrine. The evidence of this is found in the anecdote about Moses’ interment found in the ninth verse of Jude, where a struggle between an archangel and Satan is described concerning Moses’ body, which was personally interred by the Lord, according to Deuteronomy 34:6 .

If the soul and the body weren’t somehow related, why would there be a struggle between Michael and Satan over Moses’ body? Why would either of them want a stinky, putrefying corpse? This may seem a fine point, but it’s crucial to understand, as a definite point of doctrine, when considering the relationship between David and Jonathan.

1 Samuel 18:1 says, “that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” At first blush, this may seem innocent enough, but in light of the verse from Ephesians 5, cited above, this becomes the consummating act of physical marriage described by the Christ, in Matthew 19:5 , as two bodies becoming one flesh (to paraphrase.)

The spiritual consummation of this marriage between the future king of Israel and the son of Saul is described in verse 3 of the same chapter of 1 Samuel: “Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.” This is, for all intent purposes, what we call “holy matrimony,” or “the taking of the vows,” and is further underscored-- twice-- as such, in chapter 20, verses 8 and 17. In verse 8, David says to Jonathan, “Therefore thou shalt deal kindly with thy servant; for thou hast brought thy servant into a covenant of the LORD with thee.” Verse 17 says, “Jonathan caused David to swear again, because he loved him: for he loved him as he loved his own soul.”

This relationship was extremely affectionate, according to testimony from David. In his epitaph honoring his now- deceased soul- mate, in 2 Samuel 1:26, David writes, “my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” Understand: when David calls Jonathan “brother,” it’s not necessarily to obscure his marriage to him from the rest of us. David was, in fact, Jonathan’s brother- in- law by marriage to Jonathan’s sister, Michal.

Now, you may be wondering: Why-- if homosexuality is so repugnant to God, and David and Jonathan’s relationship was what it seems to me to have been-- wouldn’t God cite this gay marriage as another “great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme;” along with the adultery David committed with Bath-sheba (and the resultant murder of her husband, Uriah the Hittite) in 2 Samuel 12:14? And my response to this query is: the sin of homosexuality had been so prevalent for so long in the culture as to become a wanton depravity.

It's not that God stops judging his people for the indiscretions they indulge, but when their indulgence of any given transgression reaches such a fervor as to be wanton: he stops correcting them in real-time for it. This principle of God's judgement is described in Hosea 4:14 thus: "I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery: for themselves are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots: therefore the people that doth not understand shall fall." This passage is addressed to the children of Israel who, at the time Hosea wrote it, had declined into a state of abject apostasy, and identifies God's correction as an instrument of his grace. (Notice: the last word in Hosea 4:14 is "fall;" a judgement most commonly associated with Satan.)

Of this condition of wantonness, Proverbs 29:1 says, "He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." So, while correction softens as it becomes ineffectual, judgement hardens as it waits: until there is no remedy but the perdition of the transgressors. "My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD; neither be weary of his correction: For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth." (Proverbs 3:11 & 12)

I think Godfather Corleone spoke prophecy when he said, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” After all, the Godfather was referring to family as friends and to friends as enemies. Is not God “a friend that sticketh closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18: 24) to some? To his children, he is "our father which art in heaven," but to the ungodly he is "our friend crawling up our ass seeking justice."

"The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good." (Proverbs 15:3)

Perhaps the lesson in the little things is to never argue with God, even though we-- as Christ, in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the eve of his crucifixion-- sometimes have a natural need to question him. After all, could it ever be anything but detrimental to “get” our way with God?

“He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.” (Matthew 26:42)