Foolish. faithless. heartless. ruthless.
Foolish. faithless. heartless. ruthless.
Romans 1:31, natural consequences, and the kind of God who wants to transform the human condition
Gentle reader,
For years, the drumbeat of Romans 1:31 has been pounding through my mind, a poignant appraisal of the sinful human condition. In the NRSV translation, it’s just four words:
“foolish,
faithless,
heartless,
ruthless.”
That’s it for the verse. Four staccato descriptors of us humans when given over “to an unfit mind” and to doing “things that should not be done” (Romans 1:28 NRSVUE).
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to an unfit mind and to do things that should not be done. 29 They were filled with every kind of injustice, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die, yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them. (Romans 1:28-32).
Notice how the verse I’m focusing on, powerful in brevity, is also powerful within this long list of consequences of sin.
I’m not a fan of the term “vice-list,” so often used to describe such passages. “Vice-list” is reductive. It ignores that fact that such passages always come in theological and human contexts, contexts which tell us about the character of the God who is love and about the kind of loving relationship God desires to have with us. Notice that the text above is a holistic account of sin, including ways sin deforms us both as individuals and also in relationships: including heart, soul, mind, and strength.
This not a checklist of to-do-nots or a set of empty rules. This is a powerful assessment of a sociological disaster, a relational disaster, a moral disaster, an idolatrous disaster, a disaster inflected by the canonical meaning of “foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” This is the disaster that is the human situation, when we do not acknowledge God as God. To acknowledge the true and living God is to begin to learn how God is the antithesis of all that is foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
Notice, the disaster is not a punishment imposed by God. Instead, it is what contemporary parenting speak terms a “natural consequence.” When my son forgets his backpack, he doesn’t have his homework and must accept the results for his grade. I don’t cause his bad grade, nor do I desire it, but I’ve given him over to the situation, because he deserves the freedom to learn and to grow in maturity and character.
God, who is love, would never cause us to become foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. But foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless is the natural result of failing to acknowledge the God who is love over and against the false gods to whom our foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless condition is an offering of obeisance. When I go worshiping false gods, I become, like them: foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. But God is wisdom, fidelity, steadfast love, and mercy, and invites us to be so transformed.
FOOLISH.
ἀσυνέτους
asýnetos
In Greek, all four words begin with
a-
meaning “not” or “without.”
We foolish ones are without synetos, a “synthesized understanding.”
syn-
meaning “with” or “together.”
Our minds are unsynchronized chaos, our reason without the synergy we ought to have with the great tradition of human reason and with the Logos. Our prose lacks true syntax, and our persons lack the synthesis that ought to be ours in the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Our synapses misfire and we become symptotic, showing forth our foolishness in failures at sympathy.
The “synthesized understanding” our God would have for us, instead, embraces the richness of reason but is not limited to bare logic. It is the truly personal understanding that comes when we can put everything together rightly, can synthesize, in living relationship with the wisdom of the living God.
In our foolishness, we are incoherent. We are falling apart. But God would heal, would bind our wounds, knit us back together, and make us whole.
FAITHLESS.
ἀσυνθέτους,
asynthetous
We faithless ones are those who are are not
with, syn-
our God.
We are not with God. We are without loyalty. We do not keep faith. This is the faithlessness of covenant breaking, of the traitor, the violation of the adulterer.
What greater contrast could there be to the steadfast love and faithful promise keeping of our God? Praise God, that, “if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13).
The God of love is “the faithful God who maintains covenant loyalty with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations” (Deuteronomy 7:9).
To this God, we can cry in praise, “When we turned away, and our love failed, your love remained steadfast.”1 Our faith in this God will not go away empty handed.
HEARTLESS.
ἀστόργους,
astorgous
We heartless ones are stone cold.
Without the ability to cherish.
Absent natural affection.
But the heartfullness of scripture is the heart of the Father for the Son, in the Spirit and the heart of the Father for the Son, in the Spirit, to and for us, beloved sons and daughters. The heartiness of the Father, the giver of good gifts, is here, seeking us heartless ones, longing to take our hearts of stone and transform them into flesh.
RUTHLESS.
ἀνελεήμονας·
aneleēmonas
We are merciless. Without mercy.
Though we stand in need of mercy, we would withhold it from others.
We are out-of-sync with the mercy of God’s covenant love.
Out-of-sync with the mercy God showed to Mary, who sang, “He has come to the aid of his child Israel, in remembrance of his mercy (Luke 1:54).
Out-of-sync with the mercy God brought to all the nations; “Therefore I will confess you among the gentiles and sing praises to your name” (Romans 15:9).
Out-of-sync with the God “who is rich in mercy,” who, “out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:4-7).
As ruthless ones—merciless—we are so very unlike God.
Image of the good Samaritan by falco from Pixabay
But foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless is not the end of the story. God is the God who redeems and transforms.
CALLED OUT OF FOOLISHNESS BY THE GOD WHO IS WISDOM.
We who were known as Incoherent-Fools shall be called Whole-In-Mind-and-Heart, for Jesus is the one in whom “all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17).
CALLED OUT OF FAITHLESSNESS BY THE GOD WHO IS FAITHFUL.
We who were known as Cheaters-and-Traitors shall be called Fidelity, for the “steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).
CALLED OUT OF HEARTLESSNESS BY THE GOD WHOSE HEART PUMPED RED, HUMAN BLOOD.
We who were known as Cold-As-Ice shall be called Beloved sons and daughters, for now we “see what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are” (1 John 3:1).
CALLED OUT OF RUTHLESSNESS BY THE GOD WHO IS MERCY.
We who were known as Merciless shall be called Forgiven, for we can “approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
Grace and peace,
BFJ
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Monday’s upcoming post will be a response to reader questions about my post about the TGC Josh Butler excerpt on sex and salvation.
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From the United Methodist liturgy for the Great Thanksgiving.
In ‘The Story of God Commentary on Romans’, Michael Bird says reading Romans 1:18-32 is like walking down the crack alley of the human soul. It is an extension and out working of the fall and rebellion in Eden and the resultant death sentence. I understand this of humanity writ large but I also know some very kind, gentle and moral people who are not Christians. Some are adherents of other religions, some are atheists. I wouldn’t say these people are faultless, but they aren’t ‘filled with’ the characteristics on the list. What do we make of them? Are they ‘gentiles doing naturally what the law requires’? On the other hand, probably everyone with the ability for honest reflection can find themselves somewhere on this list and so we all stand condemned and in need of a Savior, which is I think, Paul’s point.
“Notice, the disaster is not a punishment imposed by God. Instead, it is what contemporary parenting speak terms a “natural consequence.” Great point, Beth. This struck me as I pondered how we sometimes think God is angry and out to punish and smite people who don’t believe in him, turn to idols, etc. What Paul is describing, as you said, is this is the result of your choices, not something God makes happen to them. Thanks!!