From the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse. For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.
(Romans 1:20-23)
(Romans 1:20-23)
Through His creation of the world, God's eternal power and divine nature are clearly evidenced to those living in it and point to the fact that Someone much greater and bigger than they is at work both in them as well as the world around them. As a matter of fact, their genesis is found in Him. Generally, though, this is not mankind's response to life, the world, or God. To the contrary, we trade His glory for explanations and theories in an effort to find comfort and safety while ignoring our responsibility to our Creator.
For example, when Christian Smith and his fellow researchers with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill took a closer look at American teenagers and their viewpoints of spirituality, they found a faith that resembles much of this passage. The faith held and described by these young Americans can basically be described as "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism". After conversing with more than 3000 students, this outlook is comprised of the following tenets of belief: 1. "A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth." 2. "God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions." 3. "The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about one's self." 4. "God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem." 5. "Good people go to heaven when they die."
What is this study illustrating? HUMANISM. We have traded the glory of God for humanism--the philosophy of life that teaches that humans are the highest beings and centers of the universe. There may be a "higher power", but humans are given the supremacy. Everything in life is about the happiness and contentment of the human being and God is out of the picture (unless of course we are in trouble). We forget the awesome truth that we were created by God to give Him glory (Isaiah 43:7). In our own ingenuity, we seek to suppress that which is the Truth of God to make way for our own interpretations and explanations of life. After all, humans do know best, right?
To this dilemma, Dr. John MacArthur reminds us that "Man's chief end is to glorify God and Scripture continually demands it. To glorify Him is to honor Him, to acknowledge His attributes, and to praise Him for His perfections. It is to recognize His glory and extol Him for it. Failing to give Him glory is man's greatest affront to his Creator."
How do we fail to give God glory? We've done it through the Enlightenment, Modernism, Post-Modernism, Naturalism, Humanism, and a plethora of other "isms" that seek to give answers to the meaning of life apart from a centrality upon God Himself. Rather than recognizing Him as the Almighty Creator in which He is, we give credit to the evolution of mankind. Rather than acknowledging our dependence upon Him for the very breath we breathe and the sustenance of which we partake, we exalt the intelligence and ingenuity of mankind as the source of our success.
And, what about this interesting dichotomy: For everything good in society, we esteem human development, intelligence, and morality rather than thanking God for His blessings or provisions. On the other hand, every calamity or evil that befalls our land warrants our fists shaking toward the sky seeking to rationalize how a loving God could ever allow such atrocities to affect humans. For all things praiseworthy, we get the credit. For anything bad in our eyes, God gets the blame. In other words, the creation knows better than the Creator!
What is the solution to this dilemma? We are to see life through God's viewpoint rather than our own. Rather than take credit for anything praiseworthy in this life, we should redirect that praise back to our Creator--the proper beneficiary of such praise. And, when blame needs to be affixed, rather than shifting it towards the very One whom the word blame should never apply, we should take personal responsibility for our own sin and inadequacies while seeking the love, grace, and hope of God through His Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ.
For example, when Christian Smith and his fellow researchers with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill took a closer look at American teenagers and their viewpoints of spirituality, they found a faith that resembles much of this passage. The faith held and described by these young Americans can basically be described as "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism". After conversing with more than 3000 students, this outlook is comprised of the following tenets of belief: 1. "A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth." 2. "God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions." 3. "The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about one's self." 4. "God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem." 5. "Good people go to heaven when they die."
What is this study illustrating? HUMANISM. We have traded the glory of God for humanism--the philosophy of life that teaches that humans are the highest beings and centers of the universe. There may be a "higher power", but humans are given the supremacy. Everything in life is about the happiness and contentment of the human being and God is out of the picture (unless of course we are in trouble). We forget the awesome truth that we were created by God to give Him glory (Isaiah 43:7). In our own ingenuity, we seek to suppress that which is the Truth of God to make way for our own interpretations and explanations of life. After all, humans do know best, right?
To this dilemma, Dr. John MacArthur reminds us that "Man's chief end is to glorify God and Scripture continually demands it. To glorify Him is to honor Him, to acknowledge His attributes, and to praise Him for His perfections. It is to recognize His glory and extol Him for it. Failing to give Him glory is man's greatest affront to his Creator."
How do we fail to give God glory? We've done it through the Enlightenment, Modernism, Post-Modernism, Naturalism, Humanism, and a plethora of other "isms" that seek to give answers to the meaning of life apart from a centrality upon God Himself. Rather than recognizing Him as the Almighty Creator in which He is, we give credit to the evolution of mankind. Rather than acknowledging our dependence upon Him for the very breath we breathe and the sustenance of which we partake, we exalt the intelligence and ingenuity of mankind as the source of our success.
And, what about this interesting dichotomy: For everything good in society, we esteem human development, intelligence, and morality rather than thanking God for His blessings or provisions. On the other hand, every calamity or evil that befalls our land warrants our fists shaking toward the sky seeking to rationalize how a loving God could ever allow such atrocities to affect humans. For all things praiseworthy, we get the credit. For anything bad in our eyes, God gets the blame. In other words, the creation knows better than the Creator!
What is the solution to this dilemma? We are to see life through God's viewpoint rather than our own. Rather than take credit for anything praiseworthy in this life, we should redirect that praise back to our Creator--the proper beneficiary of such praise. And, when blame needs to be affixed, rather than shifting it towards the very One whom the word blame should never apply, we should take personal responsibility for our own sin and inadequacies while seeking the love, grace, and hope of God through His Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ.
