Victim

“So that night they made their father drunk with wine, and the older daughter came in and went to bed with her father. But he was not aware of when she lay down with him or when she got up." –Genesis 19:33, NET

Lot “did not know.” Does this absolve him of responsibility? Was Lot a mere “victim” and his daughters the “perpetrators” in the crime of incest? Or was Lot to blame for it all by keeping his innocent daughters in isolation?

Let us step away from the cacophony of the world’s speculation. They are all spiritually blind and know little of responsibility, insisting that there must be a direct correlation to assign blame, or that one’s guilt absolves the other of fault. We must see that we ourselves are impartial judges, and look for every avenue of escape from liability. In addition, we must see we have an enemy that will play both sides of the truth, feeding us lies we want to believe, or twisting conviction into condemnation and heaping upon one the shame of the other.

Let us instead see and embrace the difficult truth—when we step away from the strong tower of God (Psa 61:3), we turn ourselves over to a wicked world, easily swept up in their judgment (see Gen 14:12). Even if we suffer for doing good (1Pe 4:19), yet fail to “look towards the hills” (Psa 121:1-2) and trust in divine deliverance (Gen 19:17-21), we inevitably find ourselves in a dark cave of self-ruin.

In sharing her redemption story after having aborted her child, Toni McFadden said that while she had to forgive others in her healing journey, “My true healing came because I took responsibility for what I did. I didn’t blame other people for that. And what God revealed to me was how wicked my heart was apart from him, that we are so capable of so much evil when He is not Lord over our lives,” (Family Talk, “Redeemed: My Journey After Abortion” 2022).

As long as we pridefully hold to our innocence, we can never truly escape the cave. Without repentance, we are unable to see the true beauty of the Gospel and run out into freedom and into the loving arms of our kind Redeemer in joyful worship.