Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. Galatians 4:8 (NIV).
It’s an awful thing to not know God. It’s like not knowing the sky: it’s there, it’s obvious, you can’t honestly ignore it, but you choose ignore it and, in doing so, look like a fool while cutting yourself off from the benefits of sunshine. So it is with choosing to not know God. You live, you breathe, you have a life (maybe even the façade of a ‘moral’ life), you have rights, you have liberties. You have all the things God gives, but it’s a half-life because you’ve chosen to ignore the obvious, to ignore who gave you life and breath, who gives you your rights and the nature in which you exercise them, who teaches the difference between liberty and being libertine.
You’re an easy mark. In ignoring God, you open yourself up to the evil one, who is just as real as God but who you choose to ignore as well. That’s just what he’s looking for. Your life is fertile ground for being swayed by temptations and calamities. Mind you, you might believe you’re being moral, that you can still make wise choices, good choices, to avoid these kinds of things. What you don’t understand is that all of western morality springs from God because it was He who originally gave it. It wasn’t a fairy tale: its history. He even said it: “apart from me, you can do nothing.” Apart from Jesus, you really don’t have morality, and you don’t have a foundation on which you can rely when things go south. You have no temporal or eternal hope. Apart from Him, you’re a vulnerable target for the very real devil to attack you and lay waste to your phantom morality.
Thus, you’re a slave to whatever the world tells you your fate will be. Pandemic? You’ll have to settle for fear. Anger? Let it run its course. Adultery and lust? Why stop? If you don’t believe in God, there is no reason to deny yourself these emotions, these temptations, because all things are open to those who believe only in themselves. You become a slave to all those things. They rule you; they become your master. You really aren’t free, or moral, at all.
Rousseau, Nietzche, Hegel, Marx, and other atheists believed this, and they lived vacant lives; lives that left their mark on humankind but without kind humanity, without hope or love, without what is best in mankind, without a real future. Without God.
What an awful way to live. There is a better way.
For further reading: 2 Chronicles 13:9, Isaiah 37:19, Jeremiah 2:11, John 15:5, Romans 1:28, 1 Corinthians 1:21, 1 Thessalonians 4:5, 2 Thessalonian 1:8, Galatians 4:9
Lord, I put all my faith in You alone, not in the world or my own choices.
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