But the men reached out their hands and pulled Lot into the house with them, and shut the door. And they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great. (Gen 19,10-11)
It is said that whoever God wants to destroy, he will wound with blindness. But it is not physical blindness that is meant, with which the messengers struck the assembled rapists at Lot's house, but the inner one. That is, the loss of discernment, the loss of self-reflection, the loss of caution. These are the things that sooner or later bring about a fall without the need for any supernatural direction of events in the life of this or another one. It is enough to leave such a person to his fate - he will become similar to a car without brakes, which is speeding through a beautiful landscape for the time being, until one day, quite legitimately, there will come a heavy crash.
And it is this inner blindness, or if you like, loss of discernment or sensitivity, that is actually something that is most valuable to see in the whole story of Lot - if, of course, we want to avoid it at all costs. As we have seen, early on Lot breaks up with Abram without being able to perceive what this will lead to. For he had left the only community that was then seeking the living God in the whole area of Canaan. There was no other available, and he wasn't looking for it anyway. This was the first step, and it was one which had its legitimate consequences. Lot had already believed in God, but had not actively sought Him himself. He had no relationship of his own to the "heavenly things," and if he drew blessing from them, it was always given to him through Abram. Once Lot left him, his spiritual life began to stagnate, and he quietly drifted away from God. The seductive life of luxury in the world of that day, which Sodom represented, was more desirable to him than anything else. Lot did not want to be uprooted from this society, he wanted to belong to it, he cared about their opinion. As a result, their moral scale had a profound effect on Lot. He was trying to overcome, to defend and preserve what he once had, and although he still exceeded them in this, yes, he was better than them - he was no longer making any progress in terms of his inner growth. Rather, he was struggling not to succumb to the pressures of his environment and lose what was still left: a few good resolutions and moral principles.
