Theology for Everybody: RomansSample

Set Free: Escaping Rules

It seems like everyone is upset about something, and the new favorite American pastime is blaming someone else for all the pains, problems, and perils on the planet.

God has revealed something of His goodness to us externally through creation (Romans 1) and internally through our conscience (Romans 2). Therefore, anyone who is paying attention is aware of the following four undeniable facts:

1. Something has gone terribly wrong.

2. There is an urgent human problem that is only getting worse.

3. Something needs to be done to fix our problems and pains.

4. Someone must address all the evil/unrighteousness/injustice/suffering and fix the prison riot we call a planet.

Because we are created in God’s image, there is a universal human longing for righteousness and justice. There’s something in us that looks at the world and says, “Things are wrong, and they need to be made right. Things are unjust, and they need to be made just.” We’re aware of everybody else’s faults, flaws, and failures. But because we have fallen into sin, there is a universal human blindness to our own personal sin. We can clearly see the evils in other people, systems, and institutions, but we fail to see we are part of the problem.

We look at the world and judge it, but we make excuses for ourselves. “Oh, it’s my personality.” “That’s just how God made me.” “I was tired.” “I was hungry.” “I overslept.” We make excuses about our genetics, cultural conditioning, and predisposition. But Paul says, “You have no excuse.” There’s no excuse for our behavior.

We never look at our lives and ask, “Where am I messed up?” We don’t look at how we architect our own life, family, business, or finances and have that same eye of scrutiny. This is a universal human problem. And things only get worse in our day of technology because we have a judgmental culture.

Much of social media and technology exists to judge. Thumbs up, thumbs down, we’re all judging. Everyone is encouraged to judge everywhere we go, but no one is encouraged to judge themselves. I’ve yet to find the website where you publicly declare all the things wrong with you or the protest where everyone carries signs listing their failures. Paul says that judgment is, in essence, hypocrisy, because we judge people for the very things we do ourselves.

(Continued on Day 48 ...)

Today’s Reflection

In what ways do you see the world getting worse and worse?