You probably have a good sense of what you believe.
But here is a more honest question: What do you celebrate? What do you share, laugh at, applaud, and keep coming back to?
Because that is doing something to you. And you are probably the last person to notice.
A Little Background on Romans 1
Before we get into it, some context helps.
Romans is a letter the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome around 57 AD. He had never been there. So the first several chapters are Paul laying out the full picture of the gospel, starting with the human problem, before he gets to the solution.
Romans 1 is the diagnosis. And it is not comfortable reading.
Paul's argument is that every human being, regardless of background, has access to enough knowledge of God through creation and conscience to be accountable. The problem is not ignorance. The problem is suppression. People know, and they hold it down. They exchange the truth for something more convenient, redirect their worship toward things they can manage and control, and the drift begins.
What makes Romans 1 worth paying attention to is that Paul is not describing a specific group of especially bad people. He is describing a pattern. A progression. The ordinary, predictable path of what happens inside a person, and eventually a culture, when truth keeps getting pushed down.
And by the end of the chapter, he lands on something most readers skip over.
The Final Stage Nobody Talks About
Romans 1 is usually read as a list of sins. But Paul is describing a progression, and the final stage is the most culturally relevant part of the whole passage.
It is not private sin. It is communal applause.
In verse 32, Paul writes that people "not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them." The drift moves from suppression of truth (individual), to redirected worship (internal), to public celebration of the very things that are destroying people (cultural).
That third stage is where things get hard to reverse. Not because the behavior gets worse, but because the categories collapse. The vocabulary for calling something destructive quietly erodes. What was once recognizable as harm gets normalized, then celebrated, then defended.
And once you are defending it, you have stopped seeing it clearly.
This Is How Formation Actually Works
Most people think formation is about the big decisions. The dramatic moments. The obvious choices.
It is not. It is about what you find funny.
Here is the progression Paul is describing, in plain terms:
What you find funny, you find acceptable. What you find acceptable, you find normal. What you find normal, you eventually find desirable. And what you celebrate in others, you can no longer see clearly in yourself.
That is not a political point. It is a formation principle. And it applies to everyone.
Oxford Dictionary named "brain rot" as its 2024 Word of the Year, and "ragebait" in 2025. Two consecutive years, the most culturally significant word described something we all recognize as harmful, participate in compulsively, and have now given a name to. We are so far into the drift that we coined terms for it and kept scrolling. That is Romans 1:32 in a dictionary entry.
The Galatians 5 List Is Closer Than You Think
Paul did not just diagnose the problem in Romans 1 and move on. In his letter to the Galatians, he describes what a life shaped by the wrong things actually produces in practice.
His list in Galatians 5:19-21 is worth reading slowly. Not just the dramatic sins at the top.
Look at the social sins in the middle: discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, factions.
He is not describing extremists. He is describing ordinary community life that has been quietly shaped by what people celebrate and consume. He is describing the group chat. He is describing Tuesday afternoon on your phone.
The question is not whether you are being formed. You are. The question is what is doing the forming, and whether you have been paying attention.
What To Actually Do With This
This is not a call to throw your phone in a lake. It is a call to get honest.
Audit what you laugh at. Not occasionally. This week. The content that gets a share, a reaction, a "this is so true" from you. What does it actually celebrate?
Notice what you have stopped calling a problem. Contempt used to feel wrong. Cynicism used to bother you. If it does not anymore, that is worth paying attention to.
Be honest about what your feed is producing in you. More patience or less? More generosity or less? Fruit does not lie.
Change the inputs before you try to change the outputs. You cannot spend hours absorbing contempt and then wonder why love feels like work.
Formation is always happening. It is quiet, cumulative, and it moves in the direction of whatever you keep giving your attention to.
The Way Back Is Not Willpower
Here is the thing about drift: trying harder is not the answer.
Paul knew this from personal experience. He called himself the chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). He was not writing Romans 1 from a distance. He understood what suppression looked like from the inside.
Which is why, just seven chapters later, he writes: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1).
Romans 1 is the diagnosis. Romans 8 is the cure. And the cure is not discipline. It is transformation at the root level.
In Romans 12:2, Paul says to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Not just better behavior. A different source. When you are drawing from the right place, led by the Spirit, the fruit starts to look different. Not because you are working harder at it, but because the root system changed.
New root. Different fruit.
That is available to you. Not after you have cleaned up the pattern. Right now.
