2.3 Romans – Fools

Belief in God is for the weak-minded fools

Words to this extent have been repeated over and over again through history.  From Jesse Ventura in 1999 to Stalin to Marx to Freud to Feuerbach and you can keep going, the same message has been voiced over and over again.  But lies told over and over again do not make them become the truth.

To really look at the heart of this requires us to look at the alternative.  For almost all of those making this argument about the foolishness of faith in God, the answer to the question, “if you don’t believe in God then what do you believe in?” is “I believe in me or in us or in mankind.”

This is at the heart of all idolatry.  That we can substitute either ourselves or something we have made, whether it be a statue or a pole or monument or idea or dream or principle, in place of God.  It isn’t that we don’t have belief in “a god”, it is that we don’t believe in that God, and that we want gods that we make and control.  We want to be the god of our gods.

But what have we done to be in that position?  Did we create the earth?  Do we give life?  Can we provide forgiveness?  Can we secure a life after death?  Can the things we make out of wood or rock or steal?  Can the things we think, so or do?  The truth is we are not gods and therefore nothing we make is or can be a god, either.  To think otherwise is, by definition, to be a fool.

Don’t you love how Satan, the father of lies, uses the fools of the world to call the truth of the world foolish?

My Answers:

6.
They knew God but neither glorified him as God or gave thanks to him. They took the gift every day and ignored and rejected the giver

7.
a.
foolish hearts were darkened

b.
The light of the world is Jesus Christ, who was sent by love to save the world. I can bring God’s light by not being ashamed of the gospel and spreading the good news of Jesus in my words and actions.

8.
They exchanged the glory of God for graven images, false idols, man-made things. By giving what is God’s to something that is not alive and man made is to worship self over God, making our foolish selves into our own Gods although incapable of doing anything that God can do. I lowers us to fools.