Indeed now, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have increased your mercy which you have shown me by saving my life; but I cannot escape to the mountains, lest some evil overtake me and I die. See now, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one; please let me escape there (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live.” (Gen 19,19-20)

Scripture gives Lot credit for his righteousness (2 Peter 2:7). Let us ask a provocative question: is it not possible that, from an external perspective, he was morally superior even to Abraham? It is not entirely impossible. Why? Because with other people we perceive above all their falls - and so, while we know much about Abraham's, we actually know nothing about Lot in this respect. We don't read that he lied out of fear, preferring to leave his wife in someone else's harem, or fathered children with his maidservant. But beware - even he would have had reason to do so, for he had no son, no heir! He stayed, however, with his two daughters, and their prospective bridegrooms must have considered themselves fortunate at the thought of the size of the farm that would be theirs once.

Lot may not have committed so many blunders in his life, but that is also due to the fact that he did not undertake so many things, take so many risks, try to go further. A decorated horse, who only stays in the stable all the time, seems more plausible and safer than one who throws out his hooves and falls, sometimes quite wildly. The former doesn't make mistakes, but he's not going anywhere. He hardly falls, but learns nothing. He's been stagnant all his life.

Lot was a moral man, a believer, but he didn't know God personally. What better evidence can there be for this claim than to observe his conversation with God? We have already said that we do not discuss with a rescuer who is coming out of a burning house, but we listen to his instructions. But Lot talks back to God as a little child - to the God who came to save him, and Lot knows well with whom he is dealing. And yet he thinks he knows how things ought to be. He wants to go back to the city, not the mountain. His thinking remains along the same tracks in which he has spent his whole life. He doesn't want change, no matter what. Although he is supernaturally brought out of the city of destruction, he doesn't believe that God understands his path and knows what is best for him.