Calvin Shenk Said:".....When we relativize Jesus, we are left with no place to stand to evaluate the truth."

Ezekiel 16:49 Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.

That's the English Standard Version, btw, which is very close to what the NASB says. Actually, when I first started with the ESV, I thought it was NASB with a new name.

But, anyway.... Is it me or does that sound an awful lot like here? I remember the year I rang bells for the Salvation Army in Winchester. It wasn't enough for some people to not put money in the bucket. They had to stand there and make snide remarks about not wanting my job (I was a volunteer), about how those people should just get a job (most of them had jobs), "it's not my responsibility...."If you read verse 50, you'll find out this is the reason God wiped out Sodom. The violence of attempted rape was only a symptom of the above disease. So, once again I ask: If it's perfectly fine with people that their neighbors don't have their basic needs met, then is it really that big of a leap to just killing them? I'm talking about myself here too. I live next door to that shack with no indoor plumbing. There used to be a family over there that had three kids, the mom could not maintain a job, my parents were buying all their groceries for them, wood for the furnace, driving her around when she had no vehicle, basically supporting them. At the time it infuriated me. My parents were barely able to provide for them and theirs. How should it have been their responsibility to provide for those people next door? But, now I see that *I* was wrong in my judgemental attitude toward those people, and my parents were doing the right thing. I still think they would have been better off if they would have just gone to Salvation Army (at least SA Winchester) because then they wouldn't have been stuck in the middle of nowhere.