Booger McLovin

Atheism pretends to free humanity from the burden of religion, but in truth it cuts the anchor that alone secures morality. If there is no God, there is no law above man. Right and wrong collapse into preference, and preference carries no binding authority. A world without God is a world adrift.

Atheist thinkers have confessed as much. Friedrich Nietzsche declared, “There are altogether no moral facts.” Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn.” Richard Dawkins admitted that in a godless universe there is “no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” And J. L. Mackie, a respected atheist philosopher, was plain: “There are no objective values.” These are not the claims of preachers but of atheism’s own prophets.

History itself confirms their logic. Tom Holland, in his book Dominion, observed that the ancient world before Christ was ruled by power and leverage. Life was ordered by superiority and inferiority, where the strong dominated the weak, where pity was despised, and where cruelty was often celebrated. Human dignity was not a universal idea. It was the privilege of the elite. Christianity shattered that order. The cross proclaimed that the last shall be first, that the slave is the equal of the master, that the poor, the sick, and the outcast bear the image of God. Mercy and compassion, once viewed as weakness, became virtues because Christ embodied them.

Even atheists live as cultural Christians, though they seldom realize it. Richard Dawkins himself has admitted as much, calling himself a “cultural Christian.” Why? Because the moral framework that undergirds the modern West, values like equality, compassion, and sacrificial love, did not spring from Darwin or Plato but from Jesus of Nazareth. The early Church rescued infants left to die, founded the first hospitals, and declared that in Christ there is neither slave nor free. Nietzsche, no friend to the Gospel, understood the irony. Those who cling to mercy and self-sacrifice while rejecting God are merely Christians without knowing it.

Yet when a culture separates itself from God, it loses the very light it is living on. Paul warned of this in Romans 1, that when men refuse to honor God, He gives them over to depravity. They become futile in their thinking, their hearts darkened, claiming to be wise while becoming fools.

Romans 1:18–23 – Truth Suppressed

Paul begins: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” Men know there is a God from the creation around them, but they suppress that truth. They trade the Creator for created things. Today, instead of bowing before idols of wood and stone, we worship science, progress, money, and self. The root sin is the same, refusing to glorify God.

Romans 1:24–27 – God Gives Them Over

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity.” When man will not restrain himself before God, God allows him to be enslaved to his own desires. Paul describes sexual impurity and dishonor, even men and women abandoning natural relations. It is difficult to read these verses and not see our present cultural obsession with sexual rebellion, where what was once shameful is now celebrated.

Romans 1:28–32 – A Depraved Mind

“And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a depraved mind, to do those things that are not proper.” The list Paul gives reads like a mirror of our news headlines, greed, envy, murder, arrogance, disobedience to parents, lack of mercy. This is the inevitable fruit of a society that rejects God. When the truth is cast off, the mind itself becomes twisted, calling evil good and good evil.

Paul concludes with a haunting observation. Not only do people commit such deeds, they “give hearty approval to those who practice them.” Our culture does not simply fall into sin, it celebrates it, legislates it, and mocks those who resist it.

The tragedy of a young man killing and wounding children this week at a Catholic school is not an isolated act of madness. It is part of the broader unraveling that happens when a people exchange God’s truth for lies.

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” Yet every cry for justice, every defense of human dignity, every act of compassion reveals a conscience shaped by Christ. A man does not have to bend the knee to reflect His light, but if the light of the Gospel is the only warmth in a freezing world, perhaps the source of it deserves a second look.

The Only Sure Foundation

We have seen what happens when a nation forgets God. Minds grow dark, mercy grows thin, and power writes the rules. Romans 1 names the disease. There is only one cure.

“But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been revealed” and it comes “through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe” (Romans 3:21, 22). “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23, 24). At the cross, God’s justice and mercy meet. Christ bore our guilt as an atoning sacrifice, so that God would be “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).

So the way back is clear. Repent. “Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away” (Acts 3:19). Believe. “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). Come into the light. “Whoever follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life” (John 8:12).

Begin today. Turn from the lie that man is his own god. Ask Christ to forgive you, to cleanse you, and to make you new. Open the Scriptures each morning. Join a faithful church that loves the truth. Practice mercy. Defend the weak. Build what sin has broken. A culture cannot be healed by slogans or policy. It is healed one forgiven heart at a time.

We stand at a fork in the road. One path ends in the futility that Romans 1 describes. The other leads to the life that Jesus gives. Choose life.