The meaning of Romans 1:26 ff has come to be interpreted by many people to mean many things, especially the question has been raised of late whether it is meant as a condemnation of homosexual acts, or if it focuses merely on sex acts isolated from marital bond, or if it refers to lustful behavior in general.
This preoccupation misses the larger point entirely - Benedict XVI states that Romans summarily paints a picture of Roman decadence and debauchery that “hits modern readers with a most acute sense of timeliness” (see Ratzinger: “Why Christianity?”). It resonates so acutely and timely, since it has only be recently, i.e. since the Sixties, that we have seen a complete upheaval and upending of normative sexual behavior. (Since then, the goal posts of what constitutes normative behavior have been moved at ever more faster rates, rates in any case faster than such new norms would require to take any one particular solid footing, contributing to further inter-generational alienation at every turning point.)
Romans is a reminder of the debauchery and violence inherent at any such times as ours as well as those described. We find this also in Genesis 19:3, which depicts a near rape scene of Lot and his guests, narrowly averted only through the intervention of the angels sent for the protection of Lot (the sole righteous man in the entire city) and his family in the ensuing destruction of Sodom.
Genesis shows us that the righteous are fully alone, save for the presence of God. Further, that the escape of such time and circumstance is only possible by divine intervention (i.e. angel of God) and by strict avoidance of the proximity and view of any vileness: even the mere act of observation literally petrifies the innocent, disabling their agency and costing them their life. (“But Lot’s wife looked back as she was following behind him, and she turned into a pillar of salt.”)
Pride is a known cardinal sin: sinful Christian pride today might include a false sense of inclusiveness, i.e. allowing all that which is inherently disorderly to Christians, to their faith, and to their family lives to be in plain sight and in the closest of proximity to them. This may be due to both a false sense of charity and openness, as well as due to a false sense of intellectual superiority (i.e. the misguided belief of somehow being fully inoculated against sin through our faith, which allows for quasi-participation in and proximity to that which we know is harmful to us), when all it does is invite a general calling into question of those beliefs which we claim to hold dear, until we Christians too have turned into pillars of salt, unable to move forward and being fully lost to life.
Hence Jesus’ admonition to “keep watch, because you do not know the day on which your Lord will come”. (Mt 24:42).
Our responsibility for ourselves lies in our own hands, and there remains no consolation or correction once our chance is missed.
Perhaps the only indirect consolation of what happens to the deceivers is found in Matthew 18:6: “if anyone causes one of these little ones--those who believe in me--to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
titsay
romaincrisis
yousharknotpass