Romans 1:21 & 25 –
<21>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.
This chapter is awesome and convicting at the same time, it’s one that you should read a few times to digest. Paul is addressing the church in Rome where we know from history the moral decay that society went through. This goes to the heart of creation by stating we know God by the universe and world around us. Then they acknowledged other gods where today we look to science for concrete answers. When we do not get them we apply “theories” and present them as “fact” where people take them on “faith.”
Are we in the same state as Rome was 2000 years ago, by knowing God but dismissing Him? Look at verse 25 and we can apply this to today’s society as much as we could the society in Rome then.
<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.
We do this too often and trade other ideas for God. We start to compartmentalize God and worship parts of His nature. Take Love, many say God is love and worship love. They want to ignore that death and vengeance parts of the Bible saying a loving God would not do this. So Love becomes their God.
Of take nature, people make nature their God and dismiss the true creator. The most “famous” current idol for this is “mother nature” who has even made it into commercials as a controlling everything. God is nature but nature is not god! We could go on and on making analogies like this where an attribute of God becomes people’s god. Let’s face it, just because we don’t like something God does or one of His attributes doesn’t mean we dismiss it. No more than ever we should dive in to understand it.
I did this with the “trinity”, I could not understand how God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus were all the same. I could see God and the Holy Spirit, but Jesus is time and time again God’s son. How can Jesus be His son and Him at the same time? The common explanation is there are some things we just can’t comprehend and must take on faith. I could not accept that and needed to know the truth and get clarity. I undertook a 5 year quest to really understand the “Holy Trinity” and finally did. Ironically clarity came from a self-indulgent video call “The Secret”. The key Paul is trying to make here is make God your God and not some attribute that feels right.