Dungeon Rabbit Hole: Commentary on Romans 1
I apologize for my inability to crawl one dungeon without finding a few rabbit holes along the way. My bible and I happen to open to Romans chapter 1 today and within it I found a plethora of words that sprang from the pages to not only bombard me with painful bites, but also, and seemingly at the same time, comfort those bites.
If you’ll indulge a small rabbit hole into Romans chapter 1 with me today, I think you’ll find some of the value that I did while briefly reading it.
19 They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. 20 For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard Richard Dawkins speak about the universe, maybe even Stephen Hawking? If you haven’t, I would suggest googling a debate with them because you need to hear or prevalent this Scripture is today. On here, I have several articles talking about how the founders of Science were essentially all Christians because they were trying to uncover what God designed. It wasn’t until much later in the field of Science that we started getting atheist creating fallacious arguments toward theism.
The issue for me is that I could speak endlessly on this because of the sheer volume of fallacy they commit. In this, I will try to keep it to just one example that we can use alongside this Scripture. Atheist tell Christians “do not invoke God for what science cannot yet explain” or rather the “watchmaker” idea as Dawkins would put it. However, in doing this they do two things (1) they DENY scripture, which we know to be Gods word and (2) they must afront their OWN belief system asserting as Hawking does “gravity did it” therefore — we don’t need God.
I ask you this…what is the difference between exchanging “God did it” and “Gravity did it”? I can tell you using reason I prefer to base my beliefs upon what is reasonable to behold. That is to say…if something is created or invented, I can find an intelligent cause. I would much rather bank my belief upon an intelligent God that I can reasonable presume exists because of what we see in nature than put my belief in the idea that “gravity” must have done it, as Hawking presumed.
Romans tells us, in a very straight forward manner, everyone is without excuse through means of visible reason.
Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. 22 Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. 23 And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. 25 They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. 26 That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. 27 And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved.
28 Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. 29 Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. 30 They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. 31 They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. 32 They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.
Scripture tells us they knew God existed but shunned Him from the inside out in order that they may pursue their own desires, be their own god. Chaos wrapped itself around their minds, darkened them, ensnared them. They, as so many atheist scientist and philosophers, claim to be wise. Today, we may not see much idol worship in such a vivid form as wood carvings, though it does exist, but we can rest assure that people worship their careers, children, or themselves in the same way.
This is my utter fear in life - GOD ABANDONED THEM - what a horrific thought. That we may become so self absorbed into thinking we know best that God up and says “have your way”. This is again, something that I could spend hours talking about how humans have decimated His design. Hugh Ross actually has a fantastic lecture on this and if I can find it, I will. Essentially, industrialization kills humanity in about 1000 ways.