Crime Scene Investigation is some of my favourite recorded TV. Occasion moralising about kids who commit murder for fun starts to sound a bit like what Paul described in Romans 1: Heres’ some of last weeks script:_

Warwick - They need some good discipline: they need some grandmother whipping their ass, like I had.
Sara - You know, it kinda sounds like you guys are blaming everybody but these kids. I mean you don’t get a bye just cos you grew up here, or your parents are on drugs, or… Those kids were perfectly capable of telling the difference between a wild night out and beating somebody to death.
Grissom - The truth is, a moral compass can only point you in the right direction, it can’t make you go there. Our culture preaches that you shouldn’t be ashamed of anything you do any more. And unfortunately this city is built on the principle that there’s no such thing as guilt: “Do whatever you want - we won’t tell.” And without a conscience, there’s nothing to stop you from killing someone. And evidently you don’t even have to feel bad about it.

I don’t know why the producers thought to put that bit of moralising in, but it contains great true: a moral compass can only point in the right direction - make you capable of telling the difference between a wild night out & so much more….. It has no power to enable you to do right. And so we not only suppress the truth but encourage others to do so too: guilt is no longer welcome - it is something to therapise away, because we suppress the truth that it’s there for a reason. Yet the truth is, no matter how much we quash the conscience.

Paul is really clear about this all in Romans 2:- ‘God shows no partiality. For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.’

But praise God, even as he shows no partiality, so that we are worse off than we ever realised, also, he shows no partiality, so we can be better off than we ever imagined

Romans 8 confidently asserts:- ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.’

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