Recently, on a Sunday afternoon, my family and I were discussing Romans Chapter 1 and the almost perfect correlation with the events we have been witnessing today. Romans 1, in my opinion, is a present-day editorial… a current narrative, penned centuries ago, defining, with prophetic accuracy, our current time in history.
What we see today as it relates to sexual promiscuity, LGBTQIA+ “rights”, pro-abortion activism, and the subsequent lawlessness permeating our families, neighborhoods, schools, and places of government is abhorrent, evil, demonic, and shameful. But unfortunately, it is not unexpected. This gradual disintegration of morality has been going on for decades, met initially with strong and necessary resistance, then apathy, then tolerance, then acceptability, and finally full advocacy of clearly unbiblical, ungodly, and mentally, spiritually and physically destructive behaviors and lifestyles.
What has become fully disclosed in this generation is what many have coined the “culture of death”. What a concise and accurate description! For the discerning mind, it is not at all difficult to see that our society has pushed, legislated, protested, funded and made social doctrine, agendas that are 100% antithetical to God, truth, morality, honor, logic, and sanity, resulting in a society laced with malignant chaos, killing itself from the inside out.
Although the disintegration of western society, and society in general, has been happening for many years, the speed at which the decline is occurring seems to be accelerating. The rate at which the culture accepts, cultivates, and nurtures absolute nonsense is astounding. Objectivity, reason, and just taking the time to really think issues through is no longer the responsible course of action for a free-thinking people. Truth is now abnormal, bigoted, racist, unloving, homo, trans, and, soon to be, “pedo” phobic, as well as culturally intolerable. Subjectivity, suggestive feelings, victimhood, selfishness and an irrational respect and encouragement of irresponsibility is the new normal, and has become the 5th gear of a vehicle fueled with wickedness, in full throttle, heading for a cultural abyss.
How does this happen? More accurately, how has this happened? Well, in Romans 1, Paul gives us the damning recipe for social destruction. In Romans 1:18-20 Paul says this:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
Romans 1:18-20
Paul’s says that God’s wrath (or anger, or judgment) is revealed (or made known) against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who do this critical and spiritually suicidal activity. What is it? Paul says that men “suppress the truth in unrighteousness”. When discerning this “culture of death”, this statement by Paul is very crucial to understand. In our society today, the issue is not that the truth is not known. The issue is that the truth is suppressed, pushed down, kept out of view and out of its rightful place of prominence. Paul also identifies the muscle, effort or engine that drives this suppression. It is the willful, purposeful, and consistent activity of unrighteousness. It is the persistent and increasing levels of unrighteousness that assists men into ignoring clear truth and coerce them into believing lies. If you have noticed, there are no reasonable answers a truth suppressor can give that will legitimize his unrighteous behavior other than his “right” to do whatever his heart desires without any accountability to anyone, especially his Maker.
Examples….
The Truth about a man having sexual relationships with multiple women for the sole purpose of physical gratification is that he is a “whoremonger”, which is a sexually promiscuous and sinful person who has no inheritance in the Kingdom of God.
However, this truth about whoremonger men is suppressed by a lust fueled culture legitimizing the insatiable “need” for men to have multiple sexual partners instead of practicing self-control and enjoying sexual fulfilment in the covenant of marriage. “Bedding down women”, or “sowing wild oats” is celebrated and constantly encouraged instead of checked and discarded at the gate of repentance and self-discipline.
The Truth about homosexuality and lesbianism is that it perverts and eliminates the primary purpose for sex, which is procreation, it distorts the natural complimentary purpose for men and women, and it is a disordered form of sexual expression. The Word of Truth also tells us that homosexuality is something that a person can be washed from and made clean by Christ Jesus. However, the truth about homosexuality and lesbianism is suppressed when there is a social concession promoting that some men and women are “born gay”, or that it is a natural orientation for some that cannot be changed”, or, those who don’t support the gay and lesbian lifestyle are evil bigoted and unloving.
The Truth about abortion is that it murders human children. 100% of us human beings are here today as a result of pregnancies created by the sexual activity of men with women, and those pregnant women giving birth to us. It has been the natural, consistent, unchangeable order and course of human existence since the beginning of creation. Pregnancy and childbirth are sacred in that it is understood to be a process by which another being, made in God’s image, is brought into this world, to be a part of it, and with the expectation to make his or her mark on this world for the better. Each and every one of us have been, or are in the process of being zygotes, embryos, fetuses, babies, toddlers, adolescents, teenagers, and adults; with all of these phases just being different maturations of the same human life. Is it not very clear, when you deliberately stop the life of a person maturing in the womb of a woman, despite the myriad of reasons that caused a decision like this to be made, that it is murder?
But in order to suppress the truth about abortion, those who support this unrighteous activity use distorted, misleading, and psychologically finessed language to create an entirely different definition of abortion than the actual killing of a human life. Truth suppressors use conscience killing words like “a clump of cells”, “reproductive health care”, “my body my choice”, and “women’s rights”; to purposefully dehumanize, undignify, ignore, and take the focus away from the unborn victim, who has had his or her life taken, and to coerce men and women into irrationally believing that this is all purely a “treatment” or “remedy” for a woman’s “medical issues”. Now millions of men and women, world wide believe that it is a “human right” to kill children, and to prevent, out of convenience, a human being from entering the world, while pretending that it’s something less than that. How sad.
The truth about transgenderism is that there is no such thing as transgenderism. A man cannot become a female, because he feels like a female or desires to become a woman. A female cannot become a male because she feels like a male or desires to become a man. Neither can a person be a functional hybrid of both male and female, or be both non-male and non-female. A human being is either a male man or a female woman, as determined by the inherent sexual and biological distinctions between men and women given by God, their Creator. Women can cut their hair, remove their breasts, take drugs to deepen their voice, grow facial hair, mangle their reproductive organs to manufacture male genitalia, and do all the things externally to facilitate the lie that they are men, but they will never be men. Men can grow their hair long, where lipstick, makeup and nails, surgically install breasts on their chest, take female hormones, castrate themselves and create simulated female genitalia, but they will never be women. All that will come of this activity is that men and women will permanently destroy the purpose for which God made them men and women, and succumb to a tragic realization that instead of addressing the root cause of their gender dysphoria, they irreversibly treated the symptom which cured…nothing.
However, those who suppress the truth about transgenderism always attempt to normalize it in the culture. In the entertainment we consume, truth suppressors cunningly feed us images of men in dresses and skirts, with feminine mannerisms, gradually desensitizing us to the value and necessity of having masculine men. They also, un-ashamedly attempt to groom elementary school children into accepting sexual perversion with sexually explicit books and abhorrent activities like “drag queen story hour”, while teaching children to be essentially advocates for any form of sexual deviancy. The truth suppressors also hide all the negative, physical, mental, and psychological side effects associated with gender dysphoria, including suicide, and in turn promote it as an alternative, but equally fulfilling lifestyle.
Our culture is a massive “truth suppressing machine”.
Paul also says that what is known about God is evident to the unrighteous man because God has revealed Himself to men through his creation. The reality and natural order of the material world, as well as human existence is undeniable evidence of God’s presence and divine power.
Paul then goes on to say this:
For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Romans 1: 21 (NASB)
Listen to what is being said here. God is saying that ungodly and unrighteous men know God. They know inherently that God exists. They know internally that He is real. However, unrighteous men perform the ultimate form of disrespect. They do not honor God for who He is, nor give thanks for what He has done. It is “this” act that has triggered the chaotic downward trend and implosion of our culture and society.
What happens when you dishonor God? What happens when you arrogantly pass by your Creator and “will” yourself to ignore Him?
The Apostle Paul says that, first, we become futile in our speculations, meaning that our thinking becomes flawed, empty and worthless. We start to seriously contemplate irrational, illogical and un-natural nonsense as truth. As a result of these futile speculations, our hearts become darkened or blinded to the truth and easily receptive to lies.
As a result of embracing faulty and meaningless thinking and allowing the light of God and his truth to become less luminous, then dim and finally snuffed out, we create the ungodly conditions necessary for a cultural shift into universal unrighteousness.
Paul records this progressive shift in the subsequent verses of Romans 1, which is initiated through unrighteous thinking and ungodly worship.
To paraphrase these verses, Paul says:
- Professing to be wise, they became fools, (verse 22). Men’s foolish imaginations and irrational, vain notions of reality, progress into undisputed wisdom and dogma that everyone must accept as truth.
- and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures (verse 23). Men replace the true, eternal living God, that they have willfully rejected with false gods of their own choosing; gods that have only the ability to decay.
This brings me now to my main point. When God’s sees his creation denying his existence, suppressing his truth, engaging in behaviors that amplify the suppression of His Truth, never giving Him the honor and thanksgiving that He, as Creator and Lord of all deserves, how is God to respond? How does he execute His righteous judgment? Historically in scripture, God has punished the unrighteous in a myriad of ways. We have vivid examples such as; God destroying the earth with a flood, destroying Sodom and Gomorrah with fire, the rebellious Israelites swallowed up by the earth in the wilderness, Ananias and Saphira dropping dead due to lying to the Holy Spirit and many others. But God also executes his Judgment in another way. It is a method of judgment that is less direct but just as effective. And I believe that God is using this method in our culture today.
One of the most severe forms of God’s Judgment is when He does…… nothing.
If you continue reading through Romans 1, Paul keeps repeating this phrase as he is describing the ungodly. The phrase is … “God gave them over”. You see it in verse 24, verse 26, and again in verse 28. Now what does this phrase mean? For God to “give people over”, means that He leaves them to themselves; to their own devices. It is as if God steps back and lets men’s own wickedness take its course on them. We may not always consider this but one of the most gracious things that God does is restrain the evil that men are capable of. In America, we have been blessed for decades by God graciously restraining the full expression of evil desires, as we, for decades, have been suppressing His truth and replacing it with lies, dishonoring and disrespecting His name, and ignoring His rightful position as Lord by arrogantly bringing our unrighteousness in His presence. But God does have a time when his patient restraint ends. Today, in 2022, we are seeing with more clarity, the hand of God pulling away from our Nation.
Listen to what Paul says in the remaining passages of Romans 1 and tell me if this is not a prophetic textual mirror, reflecting our current cultural climate:
Therefore, God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
Romans 1:24-25 (NASB)
(This passage describes our current sexually promiscuous culture, engaging in casual, random and careless sexual recklessness, resulting from unrestrained impure desires.)
For this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.
Romans 1:26-27 (NASB)
(This passage describes our current culture of lesbianism and homosexuality, resulting from unrestrained, deeply insatiable, impure and disordered sexual desires)
And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
Romans 1:28-32 (NASB)
(This passage describes the culminating result of the unrighteous whose minds are unrestrained from imagining, contemplating, exercising, and encouraging, all forms of ungodly, vile, and deviant behavior, regardless of the known consequences. This is strikingly synonymous with our current culture today that embraces transgenderism, abortion, atheism, rebellion, deceit and tyrannical lawlessness.)
Look at the progression of evil that ensues when the Truth is rejected, and God withholds righteous restraint: Hearts become filled with impure lusts, passions are degraded, and minds are depraved, and death is the reward.
What is the solution for an unrighteous culture with truth as its arch enemy? What is the remedy for a forgotten God. The remedy is what it has always been since the beginning of God’s redemptive plan in eternity past and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The remedy is God’s grace, applied to sinners like you and I, who in humility and repentance, plead for God’s mercy, and compel others to do the same through the Gospel.
Perhaps in God’s providence he will re-engage his hand of restraint against wickedness, and give our nation and the world more time, and yet another undeserved opportunity to “remember” Him, so that we may turn in faith to Christ, and follow our Creator. Christ is the only cure to the “culture of death”
We who know Jesus Christ as Lord can take some peace and hope in knowing this, that even in these rebellious times, Jesus still saves sinners.
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