I was thinking about Romans chapters 1 and 2 this morning and decided to read a portion from The Message version of the Bible.
Romans 1:19 –
“But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life…”
That one line: “They… trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives.” The sense that people trivialize themselves into silliness has struck me. We are children of God, why do we so tend to deal with ourselves in ways that do not recognize our place before God – his heirs, his children. We would rather, what, live lesser, demeaned, defamed lives with regard to who and what we truly are, what we are capable of, what has been given to us.
We have lost our ability to rightly understand life, our lives; love, how to love vulnerably and honestly; hope, for we hope in things that are superficial and vanish; joy, for we believe we can find happiness and satisfaction in things; our kindred, for we lose our ability for relationships and the life sustaining presence that they provide; fullness, for the downward spiral can’t stop and we become lesser and lesser of what we were created to be until we are – lost.
God has shown us the way out of the mire. We, I truly think instinctively, know where to go to find the way out, but we don’t. We often would rather be blind, illiterate regarding life, and believe we know better. We find ourselves descending into silliness and confusion and harm. God has shown us the way out. Will we listen, will we heed his call, will we take the steps necessary to find the Way that makes us whole again?