It’s not possible to love ourselves most and love the Lord most. But we want it to be, because even as we work to do the Lord’s will, we don’t really want to set our own desires aside.

So what do we do? When the two are in conflict, our instinct is to try to make our evils out to be good things and avoid making a choice.

That is illustrated here, as Lot – representing those in the Ancient Church who still desired what was good – tries to appeal to the evil people of the church. Spiritually, those in similar loves are brothers, so in using that term he is trying to find good in them and bring it out. And in asking them not to do "wickedness," he’s asking them not to use their knowledge of the Lord to attack the idea of the Lord, which will create an irreconcilable conflict.

(Notae: Arcana Coelestia 2355, 2358)

2314. Besides this, 'the inhabitants of Sodom' describes, in the internal sense, the state of those people inside the same Church who are averse to the good of charity, and describes how evil and falsity among them increases with the passage of time until nothing but evil and falsity are theirs.