We Know

All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) (Romans 2:12-15)

 

“What about those who have never heard?” Let’s make it a little clearer a challenge. “How dare God condemn people to Hell when He hasn’t made the rules absolutely clear to everyone.” To this, Paul answered in Romans 1 that God has made the rules clear enough for people to recognize that they are condemned. There are some people who claim that all religions are basically the same. In a way, this is true. All religions are the same in that they all attempt to explain how the universe works and provide the rules by which one must function to please God and to get along well with others. Many of these things might be said to be obvious.

According to Professor Lewis, this is one of the big differences between Christianity and atheism (the two faiths with which he was the most familiar) is Christians can believe that some of the other religions at least hint at truth, while Atheism requires one to believe that religionists are dead wrong.

If you look at what any religion (including Atheism) determines about actions, which are good and which are evil, I believe you’ll find a great deal of similarity, and one of the similarities is the failure of any human to live up to the standards. There is enough truth in Islam for the Muslim to know that he has not perfectly lived up to Allah’s standard. That’s one of the reasons the extremists are so eager to commit suicide. They think that “makes up” for their less than stellar behavior of the past. There is enough truth in Buddhism for most Buddhists to know they’re coming back, and that they’ll be lucky if they come back as a person. There is enough truth in Greek pantheism to know that pleasing the gods is tricky business and that those gods are liars. Read the Iliad, you’ll see. Even Atheists recognize that they don’t live up perfectly to their own, individual, standard of good behavior. That’s the reason for relativism. It gives them the opportunity to try to “yeah, but” their way out of condemnation.

God made the universe in such a way that there is enough truth in nature for us all to know that we have failed and are condemned. No matter what moral code we follow, we have failed it. We have two choices. We can admit it or we can make excuses, but even in making excuses, we’re admitting that the standard is real, we know what it is, and we haven’t lived up to it. Whether we have The Law or not, we know we’re guilty.