#26. Romans 1:22-23 - The Three Charges (Part 3) (Indignation Series, Part V)

 Part II: The Conduct of Humanity

Part Three: The Third Charge

…not as God do [men] glorify or thank Him, but vain were they made in their reasonings, and darkened is their unintelligent heart. Alleging themselves to be wise, they are made stupid…

Here we enter the third and final charge listed against man. Those who do not glorify God as God, and instead choose to accept these horrific ideas of eternal torment and a “free” will which is in no way dependent on His plans for us, are the ones on earth who allege themselves to be wise, in going to church and believing themselves to be a spiritual guide (whether a pastor or a youth teacher or so on.)

All of humanity, to some extent, are stuck here in Rom. 1:21. We can’t move, see? Our reasonings are vain, darkening our unintelligent heart.

How does this anomaly occur? How is it that everyone in the human race, from the incredibly smart to the unimaginably stupid, manages to fall into this same pattern? You would think that we, with our supposed “free will,” would be able to break free of this pattern, no? Or any pattern, really? But we don’t. And for the last 2,000 years Romans has blatantly stood the test of time, as simple, effective, and true. How does this happen?

They were made insipid. This is the literal, direct Greek answer (English: they were made vain.) This is the truth. It is not of us, but of God to decide what is written on the heart that He Himself chose to create. Notice the passive tense? Were made? They became vain in their reasonings – they did not start this way.

Why? Well, because God set it up this way. He has the irreverence and injustice gripping man’s spirit. This has infected the reasonings of our heart, and leads us down the primrose path of failure and loss. Paul writes, at a later point in this argument (Rom. 8:20)–

For to vanity was the creation subjected, not voluntarily, but because of Him Who subjects it.

Of course, I’ll cover this verse in much greater detail when I get to it, but I want to briefly note the “because” again. It is because of God that the creation is subject to vanity. To become insipid is God’s move – not our move. We are indeed blamed for our actions, but it is God Who takes credit for the corruption of the heart.

This is a radical message. This message sticks its thumb in the eye of every religious organization to walk the earth, for not one within their buildings would say that God is at fault for the unintelligent hearts of men. These religious organizations seek to keep the focus on you and your will. They want you to choose to be saved. They want the choice to lie with you alone, and no other – not even the righteous God. The hypocrisy of this view is self-evident – for, once they realize that you do not like their “gentleman” god, this same “gentleman” god will dismiss you to a place of hell where you’d burn forever. This cold and calculated manipulation far exceeds the greatest gangsters and mafia members to walk the earth. This psychology is dark, and is perfectly in line with The True God’s declaration, here.

At the same time, to those who hear and believe this message, it is freeing. This message does not, of course, magically absolve us of the guilt of our own actions, and it may lead to a few frustrations toward God, if you’ve not yet finished Romans, but it helps to have a real Source of our problems. Anyone who reads Romans like a letter before hyper-scrutinizing it like this will note that God first set up the evangel as His power for salvation, and serves as the revelation of His righteousness. Many presume that, if God is the One in charge of all, then He is inherently unrighteous on account of darkening man’s heart like this. Yet the revelation of the evangel shuts the mouths of these critics (whether they like it or not.) These critics reveal themselves to be like Job, not understanding the purpose of evil in their lives.

These critics allege (that is, they assert without any evidence or proof) that they are wise. This very allegation comes about as a result of their vain reasonings which directly oppose the scriptures. It is made worse when you realize that these are the same people who herald the scriptures! Check it out:

BILLY GRAHAM: Everyone has the gift of free choice!

GOD: I crafted you in your mother’s womb, and planned your days before you were birthed (Ps. 139:13-16.) I am the Creator of evil (Is. 45:7) and give you the experience of evil in order to humble you (Ecc. 1:13.) I will all in accord with the council of My will (Eph. 1:9-11.)

Who is right? God, or Billy Graham? It’s really not complicated; Billy would reckon himself wise concerning the Bible, and proceed to reason out his view. Yet when these direct statements from God in the text are proposed to him, he remains irreverent, as the eyes of his heart have not yet been enlightened (Eph. 1:18.)

Yes, you read it here. God calls humans stupid in Rom. 1:22. Yes, it is scripturally viable to claim that enemies of the cross are stupid, in a spiritual sense.  In English, the word looks like a noun, but in Greek, it is a verb – moraino. It is the act of being insipid, or the act of being vain. As long as one alleges themselves to be wise with their reasonings, they are revealing themselves to be vain.

This “stupidity” is not the “stupid” that we use in derogatory fashion to insult one another’s intelligence. The generalized understanding in today’s world is that “intelligence” is on one side of the spectrum, and “stupid” is on the other side. And, for our typical, everyday lives, this is fine and dandy. But in scripture, the fact that the element is “insipid” shows us that this “stupidity” is less of an “insult” and more of a “statement of fact.” It’s extremely literal; intelligence is a willful attitude to learn and understand facts, and stupid is its opposite. It is a willful lack – an inability to learn and understand facts.

It is a stupor that the stupid are in – one where they create irrational statements (like, “The all-knowing God didn’t plan for sin to enter His creation, but the all-knowing God was blindsided by it and has been in a strategic, uphill battle for thousands of years, now, which will proceed eternally”) and labeling them “spiritual” in order to pretend that they are rational.

Alleging themselves to be wise, they are made stupid, and they change the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of a corruptible human being and flying creatures and quadrupeds and reptiles.

This verse seems to work best as one long, coherent thought. It’s so obvious, even on man’s end, that even most crooked English translations can’t do much to twist this verse. Mankind is very, very self-aware of this charge. It’s not so much a moral idea, though many may perceive it this way, but more of a mortal one. As a whole, mankind understands ideas and concepts by their relation to each other. We cannot understand absolute ideas because we are not absolute (1 Cor. 2:11.) As such, everyone on this earth is destined to limit God in some way. To limit God to His “wisdom,” or His “righteousness,” or even His “love,” is to make Him out to be less than He is. His love, of course, is the greatest aspect of Himself, and this element of His character is forefront in all of His attributes, words and actions, but it is not all He is.

What we are considering in Romans is the fundamental characteristics of God – His heart. This does not mean we are learning every factual detail concerning God, for this would not fit on all the paper in the universe – nor do the facets of our vast, ever-increasing universe fully portray Him. The things we see (in our case, other human beings or flying creatures or quadrupeds or reptiles) do not compare to Him, for we are corruptible, and He is not. We think, because impatience or unrighteousness is ofttimes the source of our anger, that God must be the same way. We think, because we can become desensitized to sin, and become uncaring or unfeeling toward others, that God must be the same way if He does not immediately remedy a problematic situation. These are some of the agnostic vain reasonings that God uses to highlight our stupidity – yet there is an even worse issue.

Yes, have you ever heard of “religion?” It’s that thing I was referring to earlier? Its history is riddled with degenerate reasonings like this. The theological trinity, for example, seeks to transform God into Jesus, the Man – a literal perfect example of the incorruptible God’s glory being changed and limited to that of a corruptible man. Instead of God giving His Son to die out of love, God Himself jumps down and “dies,” or I guess doesn’t really die, but is only mostly dead because He still needs enough life to bring Himself back to life for everyone else to witness, or something. It’s the idea that God put Himself to a physical death, but didn’t spiritually die.

This is stupid.

You know what makes a lot more sense? Simply, God sending His own Son as the Sacrifice, like He said. No need to create a doctrine that literally changes God into a corruptible man, when God directly states the exact opposite (Num. 23:19.)

It is, at the end of the day, man’s desire to be in control of their own destiny, and to these people – the religious folk – God is an option. A choice by which you may or may not choose to abide by. This presumes both that man’s ability to choose is somehow independent of the all-knowing God Who gives us our lives, and our very breath, and all that we have (good or bad,) and that man would somehow have the ability to abide by anything God requests of us, though He is incorruptible and we are not. If He makes requests of us that only the incorruptible can follow (like the Mosaic law, for example,) then the corruptible will inevitably fail, and bend these rules to compensate (like the Talmud, for example.)

It is, at the end of the day, man’s desire to ensure that their enemies are continually tortured. The most modest of us typically attain to the worst and most horrific ideas of torment for the unbeliever, and victim blame the unbeliever for their “choice to not believe God,” when God, in these very passages, is pointing out that He is the reason that men choose not to believe Him – not man’s ‘free will.’ Man hates this idea, and expresses instead that God should eternally burn people that they disagree with.

These components of man’s disposition are then projected onto God. Mankind does God even worse by turning His glory into the likeness of an image of a corruptible human being. It is a similitude to a simulation of a corruptible man. The most obvious comparison would be that of Hitler to God. God, in this comparison, is made out to be worse than Hitler – similar, in that He allegedly burns people alive because they don’t fit into His “heaven,” yet simulating Hitler in the worst way, by not killing His victims, but by continually burning them. The idea of “god,” as is in Christendom today, is a slander and caricature of man himself.

These people force false, dead representations of God in man, or in flying creatures, or quadrupeds, or reptiles (Chronicles of Narnia, for example, has come to represent God as a lion, and Bruce Almighty represents God as a Morgan Freeman type who gives free will to whomever and remains reactive instead of proactive.) The idolatry of man has grown progressively worse over the last 2,000 years. It was first displayed against God in the example we considered a few articles ago, with the Israelites at Mt. Sinai creating a golden calf and proclaiming it as the one that rescued them out of Egypt. The god Horus in ancient Egypt represented kingship, and carried the head of a falcon. Later Greek and Roman gods would typically look like men, and would willingly commit the most morally degrading acts we can conceive of. And what does God (the God, the true God that is not like man) have to say about the truth of idolatry? Ps. 115:4-8–

They have a mouth, but they cannot speak; they have eyes, but they cannot see; they have ears, but they cannot hear; they have a nose, but they cannot smell; their hands, they cannot feel with them; they cannot even mumble in their throat. Like them, may their makers become, all who are trusting in them.

It is projection. These people act like the objects they worship. Animals have no sense of morality – hence the Israelites’ actions at Mt. Sinai. The Assyrians were one of the most brutal and violent cultures to exist – just like their god. The Greeks and Romans pillaged neighboring countries with all the decency of their gods.

I’m sensing a pattern, here.

The most egregious example, of course, is modern-day Christendom and its plastic Jesus. Man has reconfigured God to match their perceived “righteous” qualifications, which include burning people eternally and giving flawed creatures personal agency to earn such a penalty. Man has, essentially, made God into their caricature, and this beast has only grown in size – sects have multiplied, unfounded claims have become widely accepted, and The Supreme God, Who gives to all life and breath and all, has been reduced to an option in the white-steepled buildings on our street corners.

We are defenseless against this. We are all guilty of blindly accepting a lesser god, or for actively nurturing this beast, helping it grow. In truth, it is the other way around: God is conforming us to His Likeness and Image (Rom. 8:28-30.) We are subject to – not subjecting – the God of the universe, and to make Him out to be like us is disrespectful, and unrighteous.

Man’s forceful twisting of God’s words to formulate the Christian religion and excuse their own shameful behavior (like the Crusades, or the Revolutionary War, or funding the church with the state,) is building to the final seven years of Revelation. God’s indignation will be unveiled on the irreverence and injustice of man, who detain (or disguise, or withhold) the truth of God, of His righteousness and love, and His plan for the universe, and His method of handling sin, apart from our unrighteous theories about what His penalty “should” be, in injustice. This is where His indignation is sourced, and it is going to systematically destroy the false churches of today, which share these lies about Him.

Yes; per Revelation’s prophetic declarations, this indignation will soon come to pass upon the entire earth.

Now, this is, on its surface, very distressing news. Yet we must not lose sight of God’s end-goal, however, which is to use this backdrop of pain and suffering to display His evangel – the very cure that will resolve all of this.   Believe it or not, a believer is spared from this indignation – Rom. 5:9. Through the evangel, a believer becomes properly equipped against these two internal enemies – disrespect and unrighteousness. And, believe it or not, the remedy is rather simple: respect and righteousness! Who would’ve thought??

A need has been created, and the resolve is now being administered among select individuals. This respect and righteousness will be administered through Christ’s faith, fully unveiled to us between Romans 3:21-8:30. All of the human sin that is considered in Rom. 1:18 (that is: every human sin,) will be met with divine indignation, and resolved by the righteousness of God which is made manifest in this evangel. It is, literally, only God’s power into salvation which can handle any and every human sin, and result in life’s justifying for all mankind (Rom. 5:18.)

Great things, indeed, are in store for us, in learning of all three of these points, in Rom. 1:16, 17, and 18, which show us the necessity – our need – for God and His righteousness. Apart from His resolve which He establishes on His terms through His Son, there would be no rational, conceivable resolution to this madness. Indeed, modern-day humanity is generally nihilistic, or hopeful, instead of grounded and expectant. There is a common thread for all of these folk: they do not know of the evangel of God, nor do they realize their need for it. It is the bottom line – the only rational, all-encompassing conclusion that would rectify all of this – and it’s found, right here, of all places, in Romans.

- GerudoKing