Genesis 19:5 · World English Bible
Genesis 19:5 Meaning They Called to Lot
They called to Lot, and said to him, “Where are the men who came in to you this night? Bring them out to us, that we may have sex with them.”
What does Genesis 19:5 mean?
Fear wants whatever has been sheltered dragged back into the open where it can be used up. To bring the guests out and know them is the ego's way of consuming what threatens it, for to a mind that believes in attack, to know a thing is to possess and undo it.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Genesis 19:5 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
Fear wants whatever has been sheltered dragged back into the open where it can be used up. To bring the guests out and know them is the ego's way of consuming what threatens it, for to a mind that believes in attack, to know a thing is to possess and undo it. The two who came in are the first stirrings of a gentler sight, and the crowd wants them surrendered.
What presses at the door is not a neighbor but the mind's own insistence that nothing tender be kept whole and safe. Under that pressure a mind feels it must hand over its peace. It does not have to. The guests were given for keeping, and holding them is the whole of the choice.
Men which came in: the newly welcomed perceptions of innocence, the visitors of a kinder teacher that the mind has begun to house. Lot: the part of the mind that has taken in these guests and is now asked to give them up to fear.
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Christian Psychology lens
Live Genesis 19:5 today
- When something good and private starts in you, a new calm, a new honesty, do not immediately post it or explain it. Let it have a week of being only yours.
- If someone pushes you to explain or justify a peace you have found, you can say, "I'd rather just live it for now." That is a complete answer.
- Under real pressure to hand over your steadiness, an angry caller, a boss at the end of their rope, keep your voice low and your hands still. You can absorb a lot without surrendering the room inside you.
What good thing in me am I being pressured to hand over?
The same truth in other traditions
Zen
Guard the small new quiet the way you would carry a full cup across a crowded room. What is young in you cannot survive being handed to everyone who demands it.
Taoism
The soft and living thing keeps its life by not hardening to meet what is hard. Yielding where it matters is not the same as giving yourself away.
Sufism
The heart's new opening is kept quiet at first, not from secrecy but because it is tender. Teachers told students to hold the gift close until it had roots.
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