Lot's Wife, Linda

how one painting and the 1980s AIDS epidemic gave 10-year-old-me a mini existential crisis

Growing up Mormon, I had a special brand of Christian upbringing. While some Mormon beliefs are specific to Mormonism— no coffee or tea, no alcohol, getting married to your spouse for literal eternity, heaven has tiers, and maybe you’ll get to rule over your own planet some day— other Mormon teachings are just regular-ass Christian beliefs. Yes, Mormons have their own scriptures, but Mormons also use the bible. And today I’m going to tell you about the early existential crisis I had, which stemmed from the story of Lot’s wife.

Along with caffeinated soda at 7am, Mormons also really like art. Religious paintings hang in all the meeting houses, and the meeting house I attended in my youth was no exception.

I pretty vividly remember one of those paintings—a painting of Lot’s Wife, who infamously turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at her burning city.

this isn’t the same painting, but you get the gist

The painting of Lot’s Wife hung on the wall in the hallway just outside the classroom where the adult women met for their hour of woman-specific instruction. (That choice placement of a painting of a sinning woman being punished is pretty balls-in-your-face, but that totally eluded me as a kid.) Sodom and Gomorrah burning, and Lot’s wife, looking back, turned into a statue of salt.

Around the same time that young me was entranced with this painting hanging on the church wall, several other things were happening in the world. AIDS was a scary global epidemic and I, like a bazillion other religious kids, was taught (either overtly or covertly) that AIDS was an illness probably sent by god to punish gay people.

Sodom was “a city named after butt-sex”, I once heard an older kid at church say, and at the time there was no internet and I could only imagine what “butt-sex” entailed. I understood that gay people loved each other romantically, so I imagined one guy telling another guy that he really loved his butt. And he probably sweetly patted the butt. And maybe kissed the butt. Because: romance.

The other city was Gomorrah, the city of—what? I didn’t know if Gomorrah was named after anything and, again, there was no Google. It was probably the city where people cussed and were very drunk all the time and had parties with drugs and coffee. Even on Sundays. I wondered which city Lot’s wife was leaving. Probably not the gay one, I reasoned. So, probably the loud party one.

God told Lot’s whole family not to look back toward their burning city as they left it, but Lot’s wife did. She looked back. As a kid, I wondered a thousand times why she looked back.

Maybe one of her friends was still in the burning party city. Maybe they were trapped in the burning party city! And maybe they’d called Lot’s wife’s name for help. If my city was on fire and I heard my friend call my name for help, would I be able to not look back?

Also, what was Lot’s wife’s name? Didn’t she have her own name? She must have had a name. A name other than “Lot’s wife”.

I thought of my brother, Sean. I was Sean’s sister. What if my city was burning and I was walking away from it and I suddenly heard my friend yell, “Sean’s sister!” from their burning house? Yes, I thought, I’d recognize my friend’s voice. And I’d turn around before remembering that god had told me, very specifically, not to. And I’d be a pile of salt, too. And my family wouldn’t even know, because they weren’t allowed to turn around to see if I was still following—or they’d be turned into piles of salt.

Was it hard salt, like a statue? Or salt like in a shaker that would blow away in the wind, leaving no trace for your family to find later? And which was worse for your family to find—a statue, or nothing?

But the biggest question I had about all of it was: why was it so terrible to look back?
What could possibly be so evil about looking back?

As an adult, I understand the metaphor. The story is a metaphor for Lot’s wife— she still doesn’t have a name so, goddamn it, we’re going to call her Linda— Linda’s pining. Even momentary pining. Pining for the comfort or excitement of the sinful things we’re each trying to leave behind. Maybe it’s a metaphor for dwelling too much on the past, or not being able to let certain things go.

As an adult, I understand it’s a metaphorical kind of scare tactic, not a literal one. Leave the loud parties and butt-sex behind you and never think about how fun it was or how much you’d ever want, even for a moment, to go back to it. Don’t even think about it.

No biggie, Linda.

Just kidding—even as a metaphor that lesson is dreadful and terrifying. But as a Mormon kid in the 1980s AIDS epidemic, staring at this painting each week, seeing Lot’s wife, Linda, turned back toward her burning home, maybe because someone called her name, or maybe because she’d forgotten the cat, or maybe to see if the rest of her family was still following, or maybe—god forbid—just so she could get one last look at the home she’s going to miss—as that kid, the only message I got was this:

God burned the gay people’s city once, and now in the 1980s he is killing them with a slow, painful disease. There are some things—like being gay and kissing butts, probably, and other things, like looking back—that are truly terrible in god’s eyes, and I cannot figure out why any of them are so bad, or why they are supposed to be so much worse than other things. As a kid, I do not know what makes these things so bad that god will kill you because of them. And then you’ll be dead and god will still be mad at you, even after you’re dead. You won’t go to heaven (not to any of the Mormon heavenly tiers), even after god burns your entire city down or turns you into a statue of salt or kills you with a slow, painful disease like AIDS.

As a kid I am scared of god, because of all those things, but also because, in spite of those things, I’m supposed to think of Him as my loving Father in Heaven. And I don’t know which version of Him to expect after I die. Or which version of Him is now. Which version is watching me now, here—which version is knowing the thoughts in my head as I wait for my mom to stop talking to the other church ladies so we can leave?

Here is the thing—here is the rub—that’s likely the thing that made it fairly easy for me to walk away from Mormonism (and organized religion as a whole) when the time came. That God— that often vengeful, confusing, scary, consistently inconsistent, violent, but also still “loving” Father in Heaven—was a man I knew perfectly well. Because that Heavenly Father matched up with my father at home. My earthly father: often vengeful, confusing, inconsistent, scary, violent, but also at times “loving”— and I never knew which version of him to expect when I got home.

As a kid, every lesson was literal and I saw every man who loved me and “wanted the best for me” as scary and volatile and inconsistent. As a kid, I wasn’t super excited about the prospect of dying and returning to a heavenly father who was scary and volatile and inconsistent—and then spending eternity there. I already had a father like that on earth and, frankly, I couldn’t wait to grow up and leave home.

As an adult I understand my lessons are both literal and metaphorical. I understand that the vengeful, volatile god who turned Lot’s wife, Linda, into a pillar of salt is a god written by volatile and inconsistent men. And I’m not beholden to any such man—on earth or in heaven. Volatile, scary male gods were created and written by volatile, scared male mortals, and I’m none of those things.

So. I no longer wonder why patting or kissing the butt of the person you love is so terrible; I no longer look for reason where there is none. I no longer try so hard to puzzle out if stories are literal or metaphorical— not when those stories are merely problematic fiction at their core either way. I no longer worry and fret about Lot’s wife, Linda, or about why she looked back. I’m only positive that it’s ok that she did.

And I’m with you, Linda.