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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman A
Truth Suppressing Culture I believe that what Paul
wrote in Romans 1:18 through 32, although written about a specific
generation of people, is relevant to today's western world.
In verse 18 to 21 we read that God's wrath is revealed on a culture
that suppresses the truth of God's existence, despite the fact that its
surrounding natural environment proves otherwise.
In verses 22 and 23 we note that the truth suppressing culture was
foolish when it replaced God with the creation of its own hands.
God, therefore, stepped back from that culture and gave it over to
the indulgence of sin (verses 24, 26, 28) which Paul listed as follows:
homosexuality, unrighteousness, evil, greed, wickedness, envy, murders,
quarrels, deceit, malice, gossip, slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud,
boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless,
untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful.
In verse 28 to 32 we
read that this truth suppressing culture chose to exclude the knowledge of
God from its cultural understanding so it could practice a lifestyle of
sin. The Greek text suggests
that this choice was deliberate, not something it unconsciously slipped
into. The Greek text also
suggests that the practicing of sin caused the culture to become the sins
it committed. In other words,
the culture naturally sinned, because at its core, sin was what it had
become. People slandered
because they were slanderers. People
murdered because they were murderers.
People committed sexual sins because they were sexually immoral.
On and on it goes. Paul
ended his thought by saying that the culture approved sin, or in today's
terms, legalized sin. This sounds like the
path the western world is presently on.
The West has excluded God from its cultural conscience, legalized
sin, and is inherently sinful, and thus, deserves the fate seen in Romans
1. I believe God still causes
nations to both rise and fall (Daniel 2:21, 4:17).
He might well choose to step back from the West and just hand it
over to indulge in its sinfulness. If
that is so, at some point He will step back into our culture and bring it
down in an act of divine judgment. I
anticipate that to be the fate of the West, and if I'm wrong, it will
eventually fall with the rest of the world's nations, as seen in Revelation
18 and 19.
As the community of
Christians we must prepare for the possible fall of the West, because it
will cause us much stress, stress that God often uses to purify a wayward
church. Whether this fall
happens in my lifetime or not; I don't know.
What I do know is that like Noah's ark in that day of judgment, the
church is to be a refuge where we can survive the day our culture
collapses.
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