“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” – Romans 1:21-32 NIV

One of my favorite parts of Romans is the last part. We see the degradation of man when they leave a relationship with God. It starts out with not acknowledging God or thanking him. It progresses from there to people that become fools thinking they are wise. It keeps degrading more and more so to idolatry and sexual issues and then finally full on depravity and evil deeds such as murder, deceit, God hating, living without love, etc. What I love about this section is not only does it easily refute a lot of modern day man’s issues and arguments that certain sins are “good”, but also it gives a map of what happens when we turn from God and where a people are in that progression. This is how we see societies decay and fall apart when they full on turn away from God. Simply put, don’t turn away from God and you won’t have your life fall apart even if you have struggles and things are hard. If only more people followed this simple logic the world have less problems.