Don’t be naive. There are difficult times ahead. As the end approaches, people are going to be self-absorbed, money hungry, self promoting, boastful, proud, abusive, profane, contemptuous of parents, ungrateful, unholy, impulsively wild, ruthless, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, addicted to lust, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure instead of lovers of God. They will make a show of religion, but live like a heathen behind the scenes. Hypocrites. Stay away from people like this. (2 Timothy 3:1-5)
Don’t go along with the empty-headed, mindless crowd. They have refused so long to deal with God that they have lost touch not only with God but with reality itself! They can’t think straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion. (Ephesians 4:17-19)
The way it all fell apart was like this: Even though people knew God perfectly well, they neither worshiped him as God nor gave thanks to him. Their thinking became dumb and pointless because sin makes people stupid. They had neither sense nor direction in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole universe in his hands for cheap figurines that you can buy at any roadside stand.
So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, then that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. All this because they traded the true God for a fake god- they made an idol of their passions- they worshiped the god they made inside of themselves instead of worshiping the God who made them! What a mess. (Romans 1:21-25)
Monkeys in My Bag 