Why is our society falling apart? It’s not just social conservatives who feel this way. Mobs march in the street because they want justice to be done. Vandals topple monuments in an effort to stamp out even the memory of racism. Others point to the slaughter of 60 million unborn Americans and decry the collapse of the institution of marriage. We all know things have gone off the rails, even if we cannot agree on the reason for the collapse.
In this passage, Paul explains the root of the problem – turning our attention and devotion away from God. Now, it really doesn’t matter what people choose to worship instead. Some worship the creation instead of its Creator (1:25), either by making literal idols, images of animals and people (1:23), or by idolizing the forces and patterns of the natural world.
Others go so far as to idolize the self, insisting that any and every human desire must not only be satisfied but celebrated (1:32). Sometimes such self-worship twists human love, distorting its affections so that people reject the basic facts of biology, sometimes even going so far as to engage in homosexual activity (1:26-27). Other times, self-love leads people to lash out in hatred of others, resulting in murder and strife, or in gossip and slander (1:29-30).
But we all really should know better. When we gaze up at the night sky or down into the Grand Canyon, it is obvious that we human beings are in no way responsible for the grandeur and majesty of the natural world. When we feel the force of hurricanes and tornados and see the devastation they leave behind, indeed, when we suffer from invisible yet deadly viruses, it is obvious that we can exert no significant control over the world around us. And as our scientific knowledge grows, revealing the complexity of creation, and as we learn more about the languages such as physics and DNA in which God spoke the universe into existence, it is becoming more obvious to more and more people that life and the universe could not have sprung into existence spontaneously, but that this ordered creation had to be designed by a Great Creator.
But turning our focus away from God and limiting our focus to the merely material world has the inevitable effect of darkening our hearts (1:21) and making our minds foolish (1:22). In fact, when unbelievers and their cultures have to exert increasing pressure to suppress the obvious truth of God’s power and authority (1:18), they become exhausted, lurching towards self-destruction. History is littered with once-mighty empires that have collapsed – many of which were founded by Christians, but whose descendants turned away from God and received the “due penalty for their error” (1:27).
Will we Americans become one more example of the godlessness that leads to ruin? Or will we acknowledge and bless our Creator – before it’s too late?
Romans 1:18-32 (ESV)
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,
25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature;
27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips,
30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,
31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
