Romans chapter 1

vs 21

According to Paul, humanity knew God in this general way, enough at least to give thanks to him or glorify him for his work. But we did neither. Which I personally find unsurprising. We certainly still don't on the whole.

The interesting thing, then, is the consequence of this improper attitude towards God. It changes your thinking and your heart, making your thinking futile (in the true nature of things anyway - you might think you're totally smart within your own logical paradigm, but of course if there is an absolute truth and you're not in line with it, then your thinking is no longer relevant) and 'darkening' your now foolish heart. What exactly does this mean? I'm guessing a foolish heart is one which yearns after the wrong thing. Darkening could be linked to the idea of making a path dark or light, the idea being that once your heart becomes foolish and darkened, you're stuck with foolishness.

Just think about what this means practically for the world. There is a consequence for turning away from God - futile thinking and foolish yearnings, which become impossible to escape from. It's really terrible.

vs 22

That's the thing about linguistic and communication theory - that if you change the name of something, you can make it look better. So call foolishness "wisdom" and people go "Oooooooh".

Having said that, of course, the skeptic or the anti-christ can say "reverse your argument, and those that call wisdom "foolishness" trick people into going "Ahhhhhh". And he's right. It comes down to who has the absolute behind them.

vs 23

Any exchange of God for other is a bad trade.I wonder if there's a time you can mark where societies went "the glory of the immortal God is too much for us - it makes us feel bad, or small, or irrelevant, or pressured, or something. We want to trade it for this stick - the stick does not judge us".

I mean, when you look at the steady trade-in that western society has made over the last few centuries, what is it that really caused it? I think we like to say "Oh, science popped up, then the church reacted negatively, and people went "You can't tell us what to think anymore, church!" and left. Or the Catholics had been in power so long and were so corrupt that science was like the French revolution and everyone hopped on board the logic train.

Romans tells us that this isn't so - or at least that if it is so, don't feel bad, because the truth is that people always jump ship on God. I don't know if this makes us feel that much better.

vs 24

Why is it that sexual impurity comes up first... as if the first thing that humans do when they turn their backs on God is become rampant sex-beasts. I wish I could say it wasn't true, but it really is. While I'm not sure about every culture, simple idol-based religions seem to revolve around sex, temple or shrine prostitutes etc. All the cults that people start up seem to be about sex (Waco, Moonies etc). The only other religions are those that say 'sex is bad' and then try and put a bunch of rules around opressing women and preventing inappropriate behaviour. And as for western non-Christianity? Look at our advertising, movies, and dating culture and tell me sex isn't just springing free from a lack of God.

vs 25

This seems fairly repetitious. It's already a long letter, Paul, let's not get into the repetition thing.

The word 'served' is really foul though. I mean, it's one thing to bow down to a wooden statue of a duck. It's another thing to let it make decisions for your life. This is how a lot of modern non-Christians see us though - as if we're letting some book rule our lives, rather than... whatever it is they think they have. At least their heart is in the right place. Although you will notice that while Christians generally go out and try to woo people to believing our thing to stop them from worshipping sex, they generally just tend to call us names and say we're stupid. Funny how that doesn't woo us away from our beliefs so much.

Perhaps the church could learn a bit about evangelism by looking at how not to do it.

vs 26

"Even" their women... as if men are more likely to go that way first. Hey, if you were living in greco-Roman times, I'm sure that might have been the way it seemed.

vs 27

Paul doesn't go into what the due penalty is. But he is certainly saying that homosexuality is a perversion - although the TNIV calls it an 'error'. Perhaps less nasty a word, but being in error when it comes to God is still bad.

vs 28

Note the link here - you've got knowledge = mind = action. No dualism here. In this verse the mind is the fulcrum between knowledge (of God that they denied) and action (of depravity thanks to their now depraved mind).

Just because their mind is depraved doesn't mean they are no longer thinking. Just that they now substitute "good things" for "depraved things" in the "hey that sounds great let's do that" part of their mind.

vs 29-31

Top marks to the guy who put the verse markers into these 3 verses *sigh*.

Anyway, this list is totally vile. Tell me that 'disobey their parents' doesn't totally stand out. I've got to say that I think the NIV's "senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless" is one of the best translations ever. None of the others hold up to that. I'm surprised the TNIV changed it. It was a winning formula to me.

If by the end of these verses, you haven't gotten the point that humanity's depravity-prevention chip has been completely fried, then you need to consider getting a new white coat.

vs 32

Now here is an interesting idea. After saying that the depravity-chip has been toasted, Paul now says that these people know God's righteous decree. As if there is 5% operational capacity, and it's saying "no, don't do that %$bar-squiggle#*". It's these sorts of insights into the heart that really make us wonder... do they really know they're doing wrong? I remember someone saying that serial killers overall know that killing is wrong, but they don't see punishment and wrongdoing as linked - that punishment for them is always arbitrary, and therefore who cares if you do wrong, because you're not going to 'get caught' as it were.

I wonder if humanity has that sort of serial-killer mindset because God doesn't hit us with lightning every time we don't do something wrong? Almost as if it's God's grace that turns us into depraved nutters. Of course, it's that same grace that saves us. So really, if you're taking advantage of the grace, you're all good. It's when you turn your back on God's grace that suddenly you're a serial killer waiting to happen.