In the 1960's a movie came out called The Bible which dramatized biblical events from the creation to the time of Abraham. John Houston played a bumbling Noah, and (in what always seemed to me to be an odd casting choice) George C. Scott played Abraham. When the time came in the movie to portray the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah the movie showed the angels going to the warn Lot. As the angels moved through the streets of the city towards Lot's house, strange frightening looking citizens of the city moved busily around them. They were portrayed with strangely painted faces and haunting facial expressions that one might see in a horror film.

     By modern standards of explicitness this depiction was quite tame. This portrayal may or may not have accurately reflected what a Canaanite city of that day might have looked like based on modern archaeological research. As I have thought about this portrayal over the years, something else has become striking to me.

     As a little boy watching these immoral citizens of Sodom I was frightened by them! I would never want to be anywhere near such horrifying creatures nor to act as they did (which may have been the very response the producers of that day hoped to inspire). If all sin and immorality was like that no one would ever allow themselves to be in situations that could lead them to sin or be tempted themselves to engage in immorality.

     The problem is that this is not the way sin looks on the surface. Unfortunately the immoral citizens that move busily around us don't appear to be scary, in fact sometimes they seem quite harmless. They look like our friendly neighbor who lives with a man to whom she is not married. She seems honest and trustworthy, yet the Bible calls her a “fornicator” (Genesis 34:7; I Corinthians 6:9; Ephesians 5:5; Revelation 21:8). They look like that man down the street who works on our car, who keeps that stack of dirty magazines and posters in his garage. He can fix almost anything, but the Bible calls him an “idolater” (Matthew 5:28; Colossians 3:5; Revelations 21:8). They look like that professor from college who is openly homosexual. He is silly and carries himself with a good sense of humor, but the Bible calls him a “sodomite” (I Corinthians 6:9; I Timothy 1:10). They look like that nice lady at work who is on her third marriage. The first one she was just “too young” and they “both lost interest.” The second one ended when she met this nice guy at work that treated her better. They make such a nice couple, but the Bible calls them “adulterers” (Matthew 19:9; Hebrews 13:4; I Corinthians 6:9).

     The apostle Paul makes it clear that the responsibility of Christians is not to remove themselves so completely from the immoral people in the world that we cannot influence them to obey the Lord (I Corinthians 5:9,10). Even so, we must always be on guard that we do not allow the way that the world comes to view immorality to influence us to consider immorality and sin “respectable” and not frightening and dangerous.