FOOLS WITH DARKENED HEARTS

 Romans 1:21:  "For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 

The ancient Roman family gathers for dinner, carefully prepared by the mother of the household. The father, the children, are in their usual places around the table. There are two other guests{ the household gods who were known as the Lares and the Penates. As the mother serves the food to her children and her husband, she has set a plate of dinner for the Lares and the Penates. Dinner is served and they enjoy a meal together.

Yet the food on the plates of the household gods remains. The gods at the table do not eat a bite; the food remains just as she arranged it on the plate. Yet, she dutifully goes through the same serving everyday. 

We would ask, "Can you not see that you have placed powerless statuettes at the table who cannot speak, lift a hand, open their mouths and eat? What's wrong with you? Why do you go through with this meaningless repetition day after day?" We know: because they have become fools with darkened hearts having rejected the truth of Ps. 19:1-2. 

A darkened heart can become serious, very serious. When we read of the record of the history of Israel, a nation who all too often absorbed the idolatry of the cultures around them and the moral diseases that came with it. God sent several prophets to the Israelites to excoriate one generation after another for pracitcing the killing of their own children as sacrifices! God calls this abomination "causing their children to pass through the fire." 

What in the world?! "They became fools." Here's the way the heathen and the Jews came to look at this practice as something good: "To show our live for our god, we offer to him the most precious thing in the world, our child." This is how darkened the human heart can be. This conclusion has to be of satanic origin. 

This abomination has been discovered in South America--altars built  by the native peoples with jars all around them containing the skeletons of babies and children. Say "good-bye to the noble savage theory which was the position of Reusseau: it's the idea that human beings in their natural state—before the development of society and civilization—were inherently good, peaceful, and virtuous. 

Rousseau believed that human beings were born free and equal, living a simple, uncomplicated life in harmony with nature. He contrasted this idealized state of humanity with the corrupting influences of society and civilization-- private property, which he saw as responsible for inequality, greed, and violence.

We live in a culture that has moved away from its biblical underpinnings so we should expect to Romans one's infiltration into our society in which people have become fools. Examples abound:

1. Defund the police

2. A person can change his or her gender

3. Males can and should be able to crush females in sports.

3. There are no such things a boundaries for countries.

4. Human nature is malleable.

5. Since truth is relative, what is true today is not true tomorrow.

A society filled with darkened hearts is a society in which people "pass through the fire."