"God Gave Them Over..."

"God gave them over..."

These words, repeated three times, are found in the first chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans, and of all the commentary written on the human condition, these words might be the saddest of all, for they represent the reality of a horror that few are aware exists, much less that is descriptive of them.

"God gave them over" means that God, in response to man's demand, turns him over to himself. He gives him what he wants. When we reject Him as God, preferring another or other gods, God responds by turning us over to ourselves.

To some, this may sound pretty good, but here's the problem: we are simply terrible at being God. We suck at it. We are immeasurably bad at it. If being God were playing golf, we would not even be allowed on the course because of how totally devoid we are of any skill whatsoever. It is the highest form of hubris to think that we can do better then God, that we know better, and yet that is exactly what we do when we say, "no thanks, God. I'm not interested in You. I prefer someone else, someone of my own design." This is what we have done in exchanging the glory of the incorruptible for the corruptible. Thinking ourselves so wise, we do the dumbest, most foolish thing we can do. We reject the best for the worst when we should give Him glory and thanks. After all, that is the reasonable thing to do.

But we are not operating according to reason, a reality made evident by virtue of the fact that we can't even see how terrifically awful we are at being God. Our minds have been darkened. It is a frightening fact that when we reject the truth, when we walk away from the light, we lose all ability to distinguish truth from untruth. Stumbling along blindly, the dangers that lie in our path are not recognized until we have already stumbled over them, and by then it is too late to do anything about it with our new god-powers. And yet we stubbornly continue on, foolishly and irrationally clinging to the fiction which is that we know what we are doing and that we can do it a lot better then God can. We abandon the truth and we embrace a lie. A lie nearly as old as creation itself. A lie which claims that God is superfluous, unnecessary, like a divine appendix. He can stay there so long as He's quiet, but if He causes us any trouble, we are better off without Him.

And so we declare that, for all practical purposes, God is dead. He has been usurped by another, and this god is in full agreement with us. Because he/she/it is us. This god may take many forms, from a golden calf to a stack of money to a __________-- you fill in the blank. But in the end, no matter the form it may take, what we are doing is declaring that we ourselves are god. We give ourselves the glory and we give ourselves the thanks (how silly we must look thanking ourselves! It's like a monumental delusion of grandeur blended with a heaping scoop of schizophrenia.) And we thumb our nose at the now-useless God and with a hearty "amen" declare ourselves blessed forever.

And God let's us do it. He gives us over to ourselves: to our lusts, to our passions and to the depravity of our minds. "This is what you want?" He asks. "Very well, this is what you shall receive." And the gavel drops and the sentence is pronounced and we walk out of the courtroom smirking, thinking ourselves so wise.

And hell begins.

Because we have exchanged the Lord for a lord, and that is never a wise capital investment. The return is simply atrocious. Furthermore (and oh, this is rich!), as a result of God confirming upon us what we have demanded, we are blinded to the blunder we have made. We barrel on mindlessly, stupidly unaware of the danger because we have demanded that all proximity alarms be deactivated. As a result of this horrible judgment of God--a judgment which we ourselves demanded--our very minds become enslaved to our stupidity. We have not emancipated ourselves from God. We have only exchanged Him for one who does not regard us as He does, but rather enslaves us to ourselves with a hiss and an asphyxiating squeeze.

There is the irony! Like a snake that begins to devour itself tail-first, so it is the way of man, slowly destroying himself while simultaneously believing that all is well. Sin upon sin, building on itself and then building on itself some more. Higher and higher and with greater depravity, until at last this monstrosity we have been constructing becomes more then we can maintain and comes crashing down. We have demanded more then we can bear. We do not possess the ability to be God and at last that truth dawns on us. But the light which brings this dawning of understanding does not bring with it a relief from the oppressive weight, for it is not the light of salvation. Rather it is the light given off by a destructive fire that never fully destroys and never is extinguished. We have asked for a life without God. God has obliged us in our request.

And hell begins.