In this text Paul paints a picture of humanity in its rejection of God and of what is true. To be sure, the picture is dark and disheartening. Society disintegrates. Community breakdown. Freedom from God’s way leads not to joy but devastation. But even in this dark text there is a glimmer of hope. God has planted within each person a recognition of the wrongness of sin, and as Paul will go on to assert later in this letter, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” As dark as this text is, in Jesus there is hope and light!
