Yes, but put yourself in my place

I’m going to say this little ramble is about “biblical studies” because that is the context in which it keeps coming up in my mind. This one is just a little bit scary—it scares me, at any rate—and I think it will scare you if you take it seriously. Here’s the idea. Every utterance and every written message is framed so as to be well received and it will be well received by anyone who has placed himself at “the right place.” By “the right place,” I will mean only “that place where the message will be well received.” And by “place,” I mean wherever that combination of issue salience and moral values are most deeply held and most highly prized.” Where that is the case is a “place.” A high school pep rally is a “place.” A bunch of dropouts hanging out in front of the bar smoking stolen cigarettes is a “place.”

When I was at Westminster College, there was a defensive back much beloved by his fraternity brothers. The player’s name was Dave Gooch. He was a walk-on and over time became a very good player. The frat friends used to give this cheer: “Hoochie, hoochie, hoochie! Goochie, Goochie, Goochie! Kill!”

Iambic trimeter, just as you would expect.

I want to think of where—at what “place”—you would have to be to really get and to really like that cheer. You’d have to have the context of the football game in mind, for sure, so you would know how to take the instruction, “Kill!” It would probably help if you liked Dave Gooch, which nearly everybody did. I did, certainly. He was in my very first Westminster Political Behavior Class and married a cute blonde cheerleader, who was also in that class. What's not to like.

Next, let’s move to bunkum; originially Buncombe and today, only bunk. Felix Walker, who served in Congress from1817—1823, is supposed to have given a long speech of which his colleagues disapproved because it took a lot of time and wasn’t about anything. Rep. Walker asked their indulgence. His constituents expected him to make speeches in Congress and this one was for them, back home in Buncombe County, North Carolina. I haven’t heard the speech, but I’ll bet it was full of whatever rants would have been taken as common sense or as “speaking the truth to power” according to local sensibilities. There may have been praises for North Carolina tobacco (unquestionably the best), for the graceful rise of the Piedmont, and for the resolutely clement weather. Rep. Walker said he understood that his remarks didn’t make any sense in the context of the Congress, but that he was “speaking to Buncombe.” His colleagues were not in the “place” where his remarks would make sense but there was a place where they would. If you were “there,” you would understand and approve.

The premise I want to raise is this: if you want to know what this speech means, you have to be in Buncombe. Or at least, you have to want to be in Buncombe and you have to know something about what it is like in Buncombe. I’m not arguing, yet, that anyone ought to want to do that. I am saying only that that is what you would have to do to understand the speech. Whatever claim this post has to its label, “biblical studies,” rests with this choice of an example.

According to the account in Genesis 19, Lot moved to the vicinity of Sodom when he and Abraham separated. One day two angels showed up, the two who were being sent to Sodom to see if things were really as bad as God had been hearing they were.

Lot was sitting at the gate of the city. In all fairness, an “angel” is any messenger from God. We have no idea what these messengers looked like, but I'm sure that tired and dusty from the trip were part of the situation. In any case, Lot invited them to stay at his house and, after a little celestial hemming and hawing, they did. And before it was even dark that night, a crowd of villagers surrounded Lot’s house demanding that his guests be sent out to be raped for the enjoyment of the crowd. “Sodom-ized” is a word we could safely use here.

We don’t know who Lot thought these messengers were, but we do know they were his guests and the duties of hospitality were taken very seriously in that culture and in that time. Lot must safeguard his guests. It is his duty. His counteroffer is that he will send out his two daughters, both virgins, for the crowd to treat as they pleased. Virginity is a value as well, of course, but daughters are property.

We find this horrible, of course. Lot shouldn’t have done that and if he did, it should at least have been kept out of the Bible. I’m not saying it isn’t horrible. It is especially horrible from our “place,” which is in a different kind of society and at a different time, which features different values. What I’m saying is that this is a really good chance to try to put ourselves in the “place” where the listeners to that story are.

Remember that the daughters are Lot’s property. If he had thought that the crowd could be bought off with the farm animals, he would certainly have sent them. He would have sent money if that would have worked. He would have sent any property he owned. Lot was ready to part with anything he could honorably part with—anything that belonged to him—to honor his pledge of safety to his guests. This makes him an honorable man, according to the values of that place and that time.

That paragraph is my description—speculation, really—of the place the hearers of this story occupied. From that place it is easy to celebrate the power of the messengers, the villainy of the villagers, and the honorableness of Lot, who put the duties of hospitality (to his guests) above protecting his property.(his daughters). He was also obedient to the messengers in getting out of town while the getting was good and he was caring in taking with him all of his family who would go.

I propose that we consider the virtues of learning what the place of the hearers was and that we consider the advantages of trying to hear the story the way we imagine they must have heard it. There is a risk, of course. In taking on their perspectives, we take on—only temporarily—their values. We imagine daughters as “property.” We imagine protecting our guests at all personal costs whatsoever. We remind ourselves that when Jesus told us to love our neighbors, these are not the neighbors he had in mind.

If you are not yet wary of the vulnerabilities to which this proposal will lead you, I ask only that you join me on the next foray, in which I try to see how the account of “taking possession of”—we would call it “ethnic cleansing” today—the Promised Land would be seen by the succession of Israelite Boosters’ Clubs to whom it was first told.