Sharia law, Pashtunwali, and Another Textual Reason Why Jesus’s Condemnation of Sodom and Gomorrah was not about Homosexual Indiscretion

Recently, I watched the movie Lone Survivor. At its conclusion, Marcus Luttrell, played by Mark Wahlberg, encounters Afghani civilians whom he asks for help after having his unit wiped out by the pursuing Taliban. In return, the Afghanis take him into their village. When the Taliban comes in and orders the villagers to turn him over, the Afghanis refuse. Just prior to the credits, the audience is informed that it was the custom of Pashtunwali that kept Luttrell alive, and that the custom dates back 2,000 years.

The technical term, melmastia, is a dimension of Pashtunwali in Arabic and Pashtun Sharia Law that deals with hospitality. The custom of course is not exclusively Arabic, but Semitic, in the sense that peoples of the region felt themselves honor-bound to acknowledge it. It is the prevailing theme in the Jewish Bible’s story of Sodom and Gomorrah, in which the men of the city surrounded Lot’s house and demand his visitors.

After the cities are destroyed, we are told, that the reason why it was judged was because Sodom and Gomorrah did not treat its visitors with hospitality. A fact seen in the following verse.

“Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door. (Genesis 19:9)

In fact, the men of Sodom also despised Lot because he too was a recent foreigner who made his home there!

So when Jesus charges his disciples to preach the gospel, sending them out in twos, he warns that any town that does not welcome them will have a harsher punishment awaiting them then even Sodom and Gomorrah on the Day of Judgment.

If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. (Matthew 10:14-15)

One reason for this may have been that while Sodom and Gomorrah were the cities of Canaanites, the cities which Jesus commands his disciples to visit are restricted to the cities of the Jews. And perhaps as Jews, being among Jews, the standard was higher.

One rarely hears the Matthew passage in this context, but indeed the fact that Jesus acknowledges that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is not homosexuality or even rape but a lack of hospitality remains an important interpretative lens to this passage. Given the seriousness with which Jesus treats this sin, it remains difficult to internalize, especially for a 21st Century Western audience where we tend to keep our neighbors at arm’s length.