INDEED:
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Romans 1:20-32 (The Message)
Ignoring God Leads to a Downward Spiral
18-23But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.
24-25So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!
26-27Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.
28-32Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!
The Message (MSG)
Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson
Yeah. That is exactly what is going on.
Being moral, i.e. following and obeying God, is hated and reviled today.
Just watching any old movie, or a movie that depicts old times (like the new John Adam’s series), shows such a huge difference between now and just 30 years ago. Look back 200 years and it seems everyone was either entirely moral or could at least be shamed when shown to be immoral in public. Compare that with any modern show, like South Park for example.
Now, immorality is shown as a badge of “honor”. Look at me, I’m immoral! Nuts to anyone who has a problem with it! Aren’t I incredible?
It is like the child that tells their Parent, “Nuts to you! I’m not interested in following your orders.” They leave the home, and commence doing the opposite of everything they were raised to do. Later, as they are drowning in a pool of their own blood and urine out the back of the crack house, they can still be heard saying, “At least I’m not like my stupid Parent! I hate You and your ways! I would rather die like this than control my behavior and do what I know is right!”
No matter how much wealth, fame, and power they give each other, it is still the same. Only, by having such things, they gather under them all who are like them and become organized into one big America destroying force. Almost all the immoral flock to their leader, loving and cheering him as the ultimate expression of their own immorality.
It’s all about how they hate God and hate His morals. It’s all about how they love and want to do the exact opposite of what He has told them to do.
Conservatism, a sort of politicalization of God’s morals, is the only thing keeping the conservative God haters from rallying together in joy with their brothers around Obama. Hopefully, they will come to Him soon too.