July 31 – The Stages of Cultural Downward Moral Slide
America is exactly paralleling the downward moral slide explained in Romans 1:18-32.
This passage expresses God’s displeasure at any who “suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18 NKJV) about His existence and character. It states that it is creation that testifies to these things in an absolutely obvious way. In other words, creation can never be explained without our Creator. Yet, mankind accelerated down the path of trying to explain the origin of the universe and life without God about 200 years ago. In order to maintain this fantasy, only Darwin’s evolutionary view of origins is shown to students while the evidence for creation is suppressed.
The second stage of downward deterioration began after the Scopes “Monkey Trial” in 1925 as evolution moved toward becoming the only explanation for life being taught in our schools. Over several generations, this idea became the only framework through which teachers filtered their thinking about all of reality. The foolishness of believing that everything could make itself (without God) became accepted by the majority, “their foolish hearts were darkened…and professing to be wise they became fools” (Romans 1:21, 22 NKJV). God has defined foolishness in Psalm 14:1, “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God….” Our education system is literally filled with people professing to be wise, yet they seem incapable of seeing the obvious – that life has a designer.
The third stage of deterioration occurred in the 1960s. Humans were created to worship, and once they reject the worship of their Creator, the creation itself becomes the center of their adoration. The radical environmental movement, starting in the 1960s, has at its core a spirit of “creation worship.” Symptoms abound inside and outside the Christian community: valuing eagle eggs and African lions far above aborted human babies and unfounded hysteria over global climate change. “[People] exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.” (Romans 1:25 NIV)
The fourth stage is actually a judgment of God upon our willful rebellion as he withdraws restraint upon our sinful nature. Whether a human is male or female is locked into every single one of the billions of cells that make up our bodies, and no amount of cross-dressing, hormone treatment, or surgery can change that reality. The ultimate fist-waving in the face of God is to believe that He will determine nothing about our lives, even our sexuality. Yet, “abandoned natural relations… [men and women] were inflamed with lust for one another….” (Romans 1:26, 27 NIV). Over the last several decades, many countries in the western world have placed homosexual “marriage” on equal footing with Biblical marriage.
During the final stage of rebellion, God gives the culture over to a “depraved mind” and “every kind of wickedness” as people “not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them” (Romans 1:28-29, 32 NIV). As we look at the list in Romans 1:29-31 – envy, murder, deceit, malice, gossip, arrogance, and so on – all are on the rise in America today. Just as in Sodom and Gomorrah, anyone standing against such evil will be persecuted, and ultimately, such a society will be destroyed – either from within or from without.
Notice that the downward slide started with the denial of a Creator. What is the solution? Perhaps part of the answer is sharing with others the evidence for a Creator to whom we are accountable.