Romans 1: 18 and on

18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

28And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

I read a C.S. Lewis quote a while ago. It was something along the lines of:

"Imagine you are visiting a country, and find many of the people sitting around watching the slow unveiling of a piece of bacon. Wouldn't you think something was wrong with their appetites? It is not necessarily starvation, or not necessarily glutton"

and similarly from Merton:

"Only a good man knows what bad is. A bad man knows either. A good man would feel terrible about his badness, because he understands both good and evil. To the bad man, everything is quite evil, all the time."

The wrath of God is a scary thing. Our natural being is a pleasure sink. That sink is not easily plugged. As romans states, we were meant to see God and acknowledge him for who he is, yet we now find ourselves mucking around in the physical, trying to make up for the divine. What a travesty! Imagine! Trying to substitute a picture of pill rather than the real medicine. There are few resemblances, and even fewer common effects. Eating the picture will do nothing more than upset your stomach, medicine will make you feel better.

Ok, so that is not the best example, but I am of a finite mind. My only ability is to imagine the divine consistency. And how deep our sin is. The end of Romans i have cited states that we were given up to be full of all these nasty things. Perhaps the most terrible part is that we know them to be wrong, and yet we do them. The other terrible thing is that we encourage others to do them.

How bad are we really? And who's standard are we using to say so?

Most days I wake up and I don't feel that bad, short of a bad argument or a malicious deed the day before. If i sit at my favorite restaurant with my desired sandwich, I do not feel particularly evil. And yet we are. Our most blatant and blaring quality somehow goes unnoticed.

Maybe its because we are quite quite bad. I've always wondered just how bad we are. Many times we read Romans one and say, my, that sounds a lot like a horde of evil soldiers set on conquest, but by heavens, that does not describe myself.

What does 1 John say? If you say you do not have sin, you lie, and the truth is not in you? And also even what Merton said before, we are ignorant; the cause is the lack of any silver of good.

Who will save such a people?

Only God almighty.