Approving of Those Who Practice Evil (in The Middle East): A Reflection on Romans 1:32
Towards the end of Romans 1, the apostle Paul shows the horrific consequences of humanity turning away from God and his truth. People embrace a lie based on the distorted desires of the heart. As punishment, God gives them what they want, or as Paul puts it, “hands them over” (vv. 24, 26, 28) to their desires and allows them to reap the fruit of their folly.
1. A Debased Mind
Arguably the most frightening aspect of God’s judgment is that it involves being handed over to a “debased mind” (v. 28, ESV). The word “debased” (“depraved” in NIV) is used to describe something that has been tested and found wanting. It is judged to be base and worthless.
There is a deliberate wordplay in the context: “And since they did not think it worth knowing God, God handed them over to a worthless mind.” (1:28) “God was the result of human scrutiny and received a thumbs down.” (Garland, TNTC, Romans, 80)
If we devalue God and consider knowing him to be of little or no importance, then our mind itself—the moral centre of our lives, our capacity to think, discern, and evaluate—becomes debased and we lose the ability to make judgments in tune with God’s revealed will in creation (1:18-21) and conscience (2:14-16). In turn, this profound mental and moral downgrade becomes mirrored in a life of degradation and turpitude.
2. Out of Order Behaviour
As Paul goes on (NIV, 84), “Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind (“worthless mind”), to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” (1:28-31).
People with a worthless mind do things that “ought not to be done” (NIV). Literally, things that are “unfitting”. The sense is of behaviour that is out of order, a phrase we use to describe conduct that flagrantly breaks with protocols. That’s the sense here. God created a world with a good moral order that we must abide by. When we don’t, our behaviour tears at the moral fabric of God’s world.
Paul initially names the out-of-order things with four words that capture sin in its totality—wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity—before unleashing a torrent of terms that speak of sinful behaviour in all its terrible breadth and depth. The problem is not that we make mistakes here and there. It’s that we’re driven along by depraved, disordered passions that destroy relationships, defile creation, and defy God.
The last four words of v. 31—“senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless”—are an alliterative crescendo in Paul’s Greek original, which is why I quite like the NIV '84 translation, which has a similar ring to it.
“Senseless” is to be devoid of good sense and understanding. “Faithless” is as it says. It’s to break covenant with people, to go back on one’s word, to mislead and betray. “Heartless” is to be hardhearted and unfeeling towards other people. It’s the opposite of Christ’s tender heart that is moved with compassion at the suffering of others. And “ruthless” is more literally “merciless”, to be devoid of mercy. The tender, compassionate heart acts in mercy, alleviating the difficulty and distress of others. The hard heart is ruthless, willing to subject others to misery and pain for the sake of one’s own advancement and gain.
The upshot of such vicious lives is “a community in which hatred and war are native.” (Schlatter, quoted in Garland, Romans, 80)
3. The Greatest Degeneracy
It’s a terrible picture of rebellious human society. But there is something even worse, a step beyond the cruel, selfish, violent behaviour that tears at the moral fabric of creation. It is to approve of people who behave like that, to endorse people who practice wickedness and cruelty.
As Paul says, “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but also give approval to those who practice them.” (1:32)
Paul speaks of the approval of evil people as in some sense even worse than its practice. That’s the unavoidable import of his “not only … but also” reasoning: not only do they practice wickedness, but they even approve of people who behave like that.
But in what sense is endorsing evil people worse than the practice of evil? The most common suggestion is that it’s worse because of its disastrous consequences. If we approve and applaud vicious actions then we are not only practising them ourselves, but we are naturally encouraging others to do the same. We are contributing to the further breakdown of society and leading others on the path of death.
I think that’s true. And, of course, it’s particularly the case today, given the great reach of social media. But I think Paul’s point is a little different. As in v. 28, the focus is on the mind itself, and how utterly perverse it has become. As with the word translated “think it worthwhile” (dokimazo) in v. 28, the word translated “give approval” (suneudokeo) in v. 32 is also a verb of thinking (note the common “dok” in the Greek). Both verbs speak of the mind’s moral valuation, whether of God (v. 28) or of other people (v. 32).
The person with the debased mind acts in accordance with their debased mind. In a sense they are not thinking straight—they can’t think straight anymore—and their cruel, destructive behaviour is evidence that their mind is depraved and distorted. But if you or I come along and say, “I like what they’re doing there. I approve of those people who dehumanise others, who are violent and vengeful, who destroy property and livelihood, who steal, maim and murder,” then we are saying, “No, that’s not the behaviour of depraved, wicked, evil people; that’s good and proper behaviour; that’s how it should be.”
That’s the sense in which approving of evildoers is even worse than the evil acts themselves. Paul’s focus is less on the effect of such an attitude (which is certainly terrible), and more on how horrific the attitude itself is. The person who considers evildoers worthy of approval proves, in the most graphic way possible, how worthless their mind is.
To look straight into the face of evil and rather than recoiling in horror, actually nodding in approval—that is evidence of a terrifying baseness of thought and feeling. The issue is less how sin now becomes widened in scope, reaching more people—though that is no doubt true—but how the human mind and heart has now sunk to unimaginable depths of debasement, totally out of touch with the purity of God’s holiness and truth.
It’s what Isaiah spoke of when he lamented, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isa 5:20).
In other words, the ultimate evidence that one’s mind has become worthless and degenerate is not behaving in cruel, barbaric, and murderous ways. It’s endorsing and approving of people who behave in cruel, barbaric and murderous ways. To nod in approval. To fly the flag. To stand on the sideline cheering on the horror.
4. A Troubling Loyalty
This text sheds light on some of the troubling responses, including among professing Christians, to the atrocities committed in the Middle East over the last year.
Think of those who publicly praised Hamas’ actions of Oct 7 last year, even though Hamas brutally assaulted and murdered hundreds of innocent Israelis. Or the many politicians who gave a rapturous reception to Netanyahu in the US Congress on July 25, repeatedly applauding a corrupt and malevolent warmonger, who has bombed Gaza into oblivion. Or those Israeli citizens who rather than distancing themselves from IDF members who had raped Palestinian detainees, came to their public defence. Each of these is a troubling and transparent example of condoning evildoers.
One of the things commentators don’t mention is that Rom 1:32 is the only place in the NT where the verb translated “approve of” or “endorse” (suneudokeo) takes a personal object, i.e. endorsing a person or people as opposed to simply endorsing an action (which is how the same verb is used in Luke 11:48; Acts 8:1; 22:20; 1 Cor 7:12-13).
I think that’s probably significant in the context, where the beginning of degeneracy is the choice to turn from the knowledge of (the personal) God towards the worship of God’s creatures instead. The devaluing and disapproving of God in v. 28 and the approving of evildoers in v. 32 forms a frame around vv. 28-32 that repeats the fundamental theme of the whole section, which is humanity’s decision to turn from God to serve idols, the ultimate idol being a fellow human being.
So it’s significant I think that here, in Rom 1:32, Paul speaks of endorsing evildoers and not just evil deeds. It’s another expression of the idolatrous exchange of the creator for the creature. We express loyalty and allegiance towards those whom we think best represent our values and commitments. That ought to be our creator God, but the debased mind does not find the holy and loving God appealing. It finds evildoers appealing because they stand for what we most value.
If you keep endorsing those who practice evil (whether individual people, or corrupt regimes), it’s possible that the evil deeds are not a bug but a feature that makes the idolatrous allegiance attractive.
Recently, a UN report has detailed Israel’s deliberate, systematic destruction of Gaza’s health-care system, the deliberate killing, detaining, and torturing of medical personnel, and the systematic use of sexual abuse, physical and psychological violence, and torture against Palestinian detainees in Israeli detention centres. Over the last few months, numerous Western doctors returning from Gaza have reported the widespread targeting of children with sniper shots to the chest or head (see, for example, here, here, here, here, and here). And just a couple of days ago, videos were doing the rounds online (link to news article, not videos which are just too graphic) showing patients in tents in the grounds of Al Aqsa hospital engulfed in flames, burning to death.
If you are a Christian and you support the present Israeli government in its Gaza offensive with a clear conscience, it is possibly evidence of a debased, corrupt mind that is alienated from God’s truth, mercy, and love. In short, it is possible evidence of complete moral bankruptcy.
There are certain moral convictions that are treated in the Bible as self-evident. For example, Paul doesn’t argue why it is that people who “practice such [evil] things are worthy of death” (Rom 1:32). He just asserts that it is so, and that we all know it to be the case. Speaking to the church in Corinth, he doesn’t argue why it is wrong for a man to “have his father’s wife” (1 Cor 5:1). He doesn’t have to. It’s so patently obvious that it is “not tolerated even among pagans” (1 Cor 5:1). And so on.
Similarly, it is patently obvious that Israel over the last year, like Hamas on Oct 7, have been systematically acting in a way that is so out of order, so “unfitting” (Rom 1:28), that most of the sentient world is crying out for them to stop. We don’t need international law to tell us that snipering children, killing doctors, and torturing detainees is wrong, though it certainly does.
But as Christian believers we have in the gospel of Jesus Christ an even clearer and fuller revelation of God’s truth, moral rectitude, and love that gives us even greater cause to vehemently oppose such great evils. As such, it is extraordinary that Christian people would express indifference to such acts, and positively scandalous that they would approve of those who practice them. Such approval is not an expression of the mind of Christ. Rather, it reflects another mind altogether, one that looks very much like the debased, darkened mind of Romans 1.
The truth is, it has broken my heart to see evangelical Christian leaders be so forthright in their denunciations of Hamas because of its crimes (rightly so), but continue to endorse Israel’s actions (silently or vocally) in the face of even greater evidence of atrocities. But ultimately, I believe such a stance—however much I and others find it upsetting—offends God, betrays the gospel, and risks deadening the conscience.
If you are a Christian, especially if you are a Christian leader, and you have hitherto been publicly supporting Israel in its assault on Gaza, now is the time to publicly make it clear that God does not approve of what Israel is doing. I believe you need to make that clear both for the sake of your own moral integrity, and for the honour of the Christ you claim to serve.
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