Unreasonable Thinking

Lost humanity has lost the ability to think clearly. The Apostle Paul describes their condition: "And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper" (Romans 1:28). We were created with marvelous minds endowed with the ability to commune with God. God gave us minds able to think clearly with the wisdom necessary to wisely exercise dominion over creation; but sin has destroyed this wonderful gift. The mind of fallen man is now clouded from thinking reasonably. Two recent news headlines clearly display this muddled thinking.

In May, Kermit Gosnell was convicted of the murder of three babies--failed abortions where the babies were delivered alive and subsequently killed. We applaud the conviction; justice was done. But here is the muddled thinking. The killing of a baby one minute after birth was unacceptable; it was murder. But the killing of the same child one minute before the live birth is acceptable. It is the gruesome practice of partial-birth abortion. What reasonable thinking human being fails to see the foolishness of this reasoning? For the sake of two minutes a baby is transformed from worthless tissue to a human life.

And then on June 26, 2013, the Supreme Court passed down their landmark decision on gay marriage. They struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which was approved by both houses of Congress and signed into law by then president Bill Clinton. Would anyone in their right mind possibly believe that two men could get married or that a child (adopted) could have two men as their "mommy" and daddy? In essence, the Court decided that homosexuality is a moral good that needs to be protected by law. Does this make sense?

How should we respond to this unreasonable thinking? We must declare clearly the truth of God's Word, speaking the truth in love. We must continue to declare the Gospel of Christ, the only hope of humanity. But we must also repond with grace and patience. We were once in their same condition. Paul declared, "For we also once were foolish ourselves" (Titus 3:3). It is only by God's grace that we have experienced the transformation of our mind and it is a process that is still taking place (Romans 12:1-2). While we must hate every manifestation of sin we must also demonstrate love and mercy to the sinner. And we must pray diligently that God will have mercy upon our culture that is so greatly plagued by the curse of sin.