Do Not Look Back,Or Have We Misread the Moment?
I came across a post by Christine Caine talking about Lot’s wife, and it reminded me of how some time I had touched upon this very subject (ATP, Spirit & the Powerhouse Within: A Reflection on Divine Energy in Our Cells) but not in the way Christine and countless others automatically narrate her and her story.
If one thing doing regression and trauma-informed work has shown me, it is that there are different perspectives and nuances within other parties in our story that, in moments of disregulation, we didn’t have the capacity to fully see.
In those moments, we create beliefs and conclusions and then pass them on until, like a folk story, they become something we assume is the full truth, without pausing to consider whether we may have interpreted it through a limited lens at the time.
And I began to notice a pattern.
It is not only something we see in personal memory or relational experience, it also shows up in history.
For over 1,400 years, Europe operated under the belief that the Earth was the centre of the universe, this was not questioned in isolation and it was supported by religion, philosophy, and science of the time.
Then Nicolaus Copernicus proposed the heliocentric model, later supported by Galileo Galilei.
This changed everything about:
navigation
science
theology interpretation
humanity’s place in the cosmos
But what stands out to me is not just the scientific shift.
It is this:
They were interpreting reality consistently within the framework they had been given.
The data was there. The observations were real, but the framework shaping meaning was incomplete.
And when that framework changes, everything we thought we understood shifts with it.
And we also see this at a personal level.
A child shows inconsistent effort in their learning. At times they engage, at other times they appear to shut down.
The conclusion becomes fixed: “they are not trying”, that assumption then begins to shape how they are spoken about, corrected, and understood.
Yet later understanding often reveals something very different, what was interpreted as lack of effort was actually a mismatch between expectation and capacity.
The behaviour didn’t change.
What changed was the framework used to explain it.
And this is where I begin to pause.
Because I am not saying people have it wrong about Scripture or about God.
But I do wonder whether, at times, we read through inherited frameworks that have already shaped what we expect to see especially around themes of judgement, consequence, and obedience.
And so when we come to passages like Lot’s wife, I find myself asking whether we are reading the text itself, or the interpretation we have been handed.
We have often taught the story of Lot’s wife as a warning about disobedience: “Don’t look back, or you’ll end up like her.”
While obedience is certainly part of the narrative, I wonder if we have missed something deeper.
God’s command was not presented as arbitrary instruction, it reads as urgency.
“Escape for your life. Do not look back…” (Genesis 19:17)
אַל־תַּבִּיט אַחֲרֶיךָ (al tabbīt acharēkha) The verb nabat carries the idea of:
to gaze
to regard
to fix one’s attention upon
to direct one’s focus
It is more than a passing glance, it is about where attention is directed and this is where I find myself slowing down.
Because whether her gaze reflected longing, hesitation, disbelief, or something else entirely is not actually stated in the text.
What is stated is the instruction and what is often assumed is the motive.
And I think this is where the tension sits for me. If we already assume a framework of God as primarily punitive or testing, then we will naturally read the moment through that lens.
But if we pause that assumption, we might also ask whether the urgency in the text is protective rather than punitive.
Whether this is less about punishment for looking back, and more about a warning not to step back into something they were being urgently removed from.
And I find myself thinking about how easily we do this in life.
We interpret behaviour through the framework we already hold.
If that framework is incomplete, the meaning we assign can miss the full picture.
Instead of seeing Lot’s wife as a simple moral warning, I find myself wondering whether we have flattened a human moment into a rule, rather than sitting with its complexity.
Because often, when we reduce people to examples, we lose the nuance of their humanity.
And I don’t think Scripture asks us to flatten people. I think it asks us to see more clearly and this is where it becomes personal.
Because it is easy to read these stories and hold them at a distance, yet not notice how often the same patterns exist within us.
Have we not all found ourselves repeating cycles we said we would leave behind?
Returning to familiar places, relationships, behaviours, thoughts, despite knowing they are no longer aligned with who we are becoming?
Not always because we are disobedient, but because letting go is complex.
Because there is often inner conflict between what we know and what we feel and in that tension, we do not always move forward cleanly.
Sometimes we pause. Sometimes we hesitate. Sometimes we look back.
So how is Lot’s wife so different from us in those moments?
Yet she is often held up primarily as a warning, rather than a reflection of something deeply human.
What if instead of only asking, “why did she look back?”
we also asked, “what within us finds it hard to fully let go?”
Perhaps there are places we return to, not because they are good for us but because they are familiar.
Perhaps there are patterns we step back into, even when part of us already knows the cost.
And perhaps the inner turmoil is not simply about obedience or failure, but about attachment, grief, fear, identity, and the difficulty of releasing what once felt like safety.
This is where I find myself returning to pause.
Because when we do subconscious and embodied work, we do not just think about change, we feel it.
We begin to sense the weight of what we are carrying.
We become aware of the parts of us that still hold on, and the parts that are trying to move forward, it is not just cognitive understanding. It is embodied awareness.
And in that space, something softens.
Not through force. Not through condemnation. But through awareness.
And in that awareness, there is often something deeply human that emerges
compassion, not only for ourselves, but for others too.
Because when we begin to see the complexity within our own internal world, we are less quick to reduce others to simple categories or moral conclusions. We begin to recognise that people are carrying far more than what is visible.
And that includes Lot’s wife.
And perhaps this is where the invitation sits.
Not in judgement, and not in fear, but in trust.
That letting go is not always simple.
That moving forward is not always linear.
And that sometimes, the hardest part is not the command to move, but the internal process of releasing what we are still emotionally or physically attached to.
And so I return again to the pause.
The space where we are not forced, but invited.
The space where we feel rather than just analyse.
The space where compassion begins to replace assumption.
And where we begin to understand not just intellectually, but within ourselves how challenging it can be to let go, and let God.
If this resonates with you, I invite you to read my other blog Embodied Grace: Healing the Broken Parts Within and connect with us as we continue exploring healing, perception, and the deeper layers of what it means to let go and become whole, book a discovery chat today.
