Did you ever think about what in the world happened to Lot? How could he change from being Avrohom Avinu's nephew, raised in Avrohom's house of Torah and mitzvos, of miracles and love of Hashem, to being a disgraced and shameful sinner, who rejected the God and Torah to which he had been taught to cling? (V. Rashi on Bereshis 13:11, from Medrash.) How could it happen? Was Lot so at-risk?

If we carefully examine the course of events which led to Lot's downfall, we may find an answer. To the best of our knowledge, Lot was a good man during his early travels with Avrohom. Lot's father, Haran, had died, and Lot was welcomed by Avrohom into his household and remained with Avrohom during Avrohom's initial travels and quest after departing from Charan. Lot retained many of Avrohom's noble virtues even after the two parted ways, as we see from Lot's most dedicated and vigorous hachnasas orchim (welcoming of guests), depicted in the third aliyah of the parshah.

Lot was privy to several conflicts during his stay with Avrohom. The first such conflict occurred during the sojourn of Avrohom, Sarah and Lot to Mitzrayim (ibid. 12:10-20). In that story, Pharoah took custody of Sarah for illicit purposes, and he was punished for his actions. In fact, Rashi (ibid. v. 17) quotes a Medrash which records that Sarah had sought such punishment in order to save her from Pharoah's lust. Lot was with Avrohom and Sarah throughout the course of events, and he took note. Similarly, a dispute between the shepherds of Avrohom and Lot ensued (13:7), in which Lot's shepherds objected to being told that they should not graze their flocks on fields which were not theirs. (Rashi ibid., from Medrash) Lot's shepherds felt that since Avrohom would inherit the land anyway and he had no heir, Lot was the logical heir-to-be and was thus entitled to use the land at his disposal, even before it was formally granted to Avrohom or Lot.

The above two events revolve around people taking what is not rightfully theirs. Both Pharoah and Lot's shepherds sought to take to themselves that to which they had no title. They were told that one must limit oneself and even be punished (Pharoah) for unlawful taking.

It may be that Lot rejected this restrictive side of Torah. Lot was attracted and gravitated to the chesed of Avrohom, and he held fast to it for all of his days. However, those Torah concepts which seemed to Lot to contradict chesed were negated by him (not "sharing" one's wife nor endorsing "free love"; the notion that one could not graze herds on others' land, in the spirit of "chesed" and open sharing). Lot was turned off by these occurrences, as they clashed with his understanding of chesed, and he thus spurned Avrohom and his God. (V. Rashi on 13:11.)

It must be noted that Lot's obvious misunderstanding of true chesed underscores that his commitment to Hashem was not really based on a sincere desire to cleave to Hashem and adhere to His Will; rather, Lot was attracted to the love (chesed) with which Torah flows, and his discovery that such love must be defined by Torah and expressed (and even held back) per the Torah's dictates was the factor which precipitated Lot's departure from the ways of Avrohom. Thus, it can be said that Lot's interest in Torah was external. The warmth of Torah appealed to him greatly, but commitment to the Will of Hashem for its own sake ("leshmah") was not in Lot's heart or mind.

Lot's father, Haran, suffered from a similar problem. Rashi (on Bereshis 11:28) cites the Medrash (Bereshis Rabbah 38:13) that Haran was killed when he saw that Avrohom was saved by Hashem from the furnace of Nimrod, whereupon Haran followed suit, replied to Nimrod's men that he shared the beliefs of his brother Avrohom, was cast into the fire was mortally burned, and died shortly thereafter. Chazal explain that Haran had refused to commit to faith in One God, and he stipulated that he would only believe in Hashem if he saw Avrohom emerge from the furnace alive and proven to be correct in his faith. Haran lacked a core commitment to Hashem; he was only an external follower (quite literally) of Avrohom, failing to internalize the Torah's essence. Lot was indeed a spiritual product of his father in this regard.

The use of the term "Adonay" in the our parshah is also uncanny. The Targumim (adopting one view in Chazal) understood Avrohom's use of the term, when he welcomed the angelic guests, as a name of God, whereas Lot used the word "Adonay" according to its secular meaning ("Sirs") when he greeted these same angelic guests upon their arrival in Sdom. The message of this dichotomy is that Avrohom viewed hachnasas orchim as a divine imperative, treating visitors as Hashem's children and fulfilling a holy mission out of a sincere commitment to core Torah values. Lot, on the other hand, treated hachnasas orchim in secular terms, and his perception of the mitzvah of welcoming guests was unrelated to love and service of Hashem and Torah. (This is why Avrohom's hachnasas orchim protocol insisted on guests cleansing their feet from idolatry, while Lot paid no attention to this matter. See Rashi on 18:4, from Medrash.)

May all of our actions be l'shem shamayim, in the spirit of Avrohom Avinu, and may we always adhere to the true ways of Hashem.