by Adelani Aderemi

Created on: July 03, 2009

The question of whether where you live can influence who you are as a person would depend largely on many factors like your background culture and training, convictions, acquired set of values, level of spiritual awareness, your determination, prevailing circumstances and how well you can cope with heat of trials. In this piece I would try to show both sides of the argument and site some examples to justify my points.

Lot was not influenced by his environment

Lot, Abraham's nephew (Gen 19:1-36) raised his family in Sodom until the time God decided to destroy the city because of their sins. Anal intercourse is called sodomy today because it originated from Sodom. Lot had lived long enough with his uncle to have been indoctrinated in Abraham's spiritual inclinations. He held the laws of God so dear in his heart and taught same to his daughters. It was a commendable feat that Lot was found righteous and having ruled his household very well, was also able to raise two daughters who remained virgins even when they had grooms-to-be in Sodom. Lot was not influenced by the custom of Sodom, and it appears his daughters were not either.

Lot's wife was influenced by the environment

Well, right in the same household, it appears that Lot's wife was influenced. Some people believed she was a native of Sodom and so was already depraved before Lot married her. But this was unlikely, and the Bible did not tell us where Lot got his wife from. One can only infer that with Lot's firm belief in the laws of God as taught him by Abraham, he would have also known that God frowned at inter racial marriages between His chosen people and other nations. Though it was only spelt out in the Mosaic Law that came later in the age but it appeared Abraham knew about it for he made his servant to swear an oath that he would not take a wife for Isaac among the Canaanites where they sojourned but he would go back to his native land to get a wife. So I believe Lot married a relation as well, but one who was not as spiritually matured as to resist the lure of Sodom's wealth and sinful pleasure. She looked back against the Angels' warning, a sign that she was reluctant to live the sinful area. Background and convictions were the problems here. She was influenced by the environment

Lot's daughters lost out in desperate situations

Still on Lot and his family, we read that they escaped to the city of Zoar, also a very sinful place but which the angels spared because of Lot's insistence

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