Romans 1:18ff in Action

In Romans 1:18ff, the wrath of God is revealed by giving rebellious humanity over to increasingly darker minds and increasingly depraved behavior.  The further from honoring the true God a society (and person) becomes, usually the more wretchedly rebellious it becomes.

Here are a few sure signs of Western culture’s flight from accountability, and descent into darkness taken from Dr. Mohler’s blog.

1. The Beyond Marriage Movement among liberal intellectuals and homosexual activists.  This movement seeks to remove the privileged status of marriage that government (finally free of religion) would recognize a literal plethora of family arrangements.  Rather than pursue equality by lobbying for marriage rights, these activists essentially want to eventually destroy marriage by offering a menu of legal options from which to choose.  This way, no matter how messed up you are there is a legal option for you to “be a family” and be “systematically affirmed in your diversity”.  I guess the only “sin” in these people’s eyes to to affirm the fact that some behaviors are just plain wrong, and hate is not the only one of those things.  Nor is claiming something is wrong a manifestation of hate and prejudice, or they are just as prejudiced against religious folks and that would be wrong.  Here is Mohler’s post.

2. The designation of those who would actually choose to have a child with a disease, rather than abort, as genetic outlaws and sinners.  Since we flee from the notion of God, we set ourselves up as gods and decide who should live and who should die.  And if you have the wrong genetic disease, some of these ‘scientists’ think you should die.  And they think you irresponsible and sinful should you love that child, bring it to term and raise it.  They want to make compassion immoral, more evidence of their flight from God.

3. The controversy among lesbians about whether or not a lesbian who has a sex change operation has gone over to the other side.  Some of this seems to be tied into the notion of lesbianism as a rejection of all things male rather than just a sexual orientation.  Of course this seems to be rather murky water to me.  Does the person suffer from sexual orientation issues, or gender issues?  If they keep the same partner, does that mean the partner is no longer a lesbian since their partner has had gender reassignment?  Do you see what happens when you refuse to submit to God?  It is a downward spiral in which up becomes down, left becomes right and good becomes evil.  When you have a music festival to which only women born as women, and presumably attracted to women, are invited isn’t that sexist and heterophobic?  Well, in post-modern ethics it is power that matters and the powerless can’t be guilty of such prejudice.  So this means that the only immoral music festival would be for men, born as men, who love women, or men as God designed them to be.  You never would have thought about any of this when I was a kid!

4. This is not from Mohler’s blog, but the August issue of Christianity Today.  Those who have the audacity to not affirm zero population growth or population reduction (a zero or one child policy) are now called breeders by those who do.  Ask western Euorpe where this is getting them?  It is an economic nightmare, especially with their socialist forms of benefits.

We are returning to a time similar to that of the early church among a depraved Roman Empire.  Christians showed compassion by caring for the orphans abandoned by others, and widows as well.  The church really was light and salt in a corrupt and dying world.  I guess the question is, will the church become so again, or will it be conformed to the world?  The point is not to point all kinds of fingers at how horrible they are.  The point is to become that community of salt and light, caring for the weakest members of society and living upright and godly lives.  The point is to reveal the power of the gospel in our lives as well as our words.  Big church buildings with multi-use facilities don’t do that (the people who worship there can).  I fear so many of our churches are focused on wrong things, and missing great opportunities in the process.