Romans 1

People ask all the time about what will happen to those that die in some far off country and have never heard the Gospel. Will God condemn to the flames as a result of their disbelief? The problem, though, with this line of thinking is the assumption that there is disbelief at all. Paul tells us in this passage that God's nature and power are clearly visible to everyone and that man is without excuse.

Paul tells us that there are some in Rome that have believed even though Paul hasn't ever been able to bring the Gospel there. The Romans are almost like the people that we worry about. They are the ones that are on the fringe of the Christian movement at this time. They are the ones that no one has been able to reach, and yet they have heard of the Gospel and believed. Surely others have been there besides Paul and Paul was certainly not the only person preaching the Gospel. The point, though, is that God found a way to reach those that wanted to know Him.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis tells us that all of humanity has the same sense of right and wrong. He doesn't expand on that, but I think we all have to agree that it goes back to the fall of man in the garden. What else would be the logical result of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil except that mankind would then know the difference? This doesn't mean that man has any capability to behave one way or another, just that he knows the difference. I think that God also gave humanity a universal desire to have a relationship with Him.

We all believe in a supernatural power of some kind. For me, it's God and His son Jesus Christ. For others it might be something else. And for those holdout atheists that claim to not believe in anything supernatural, let me remind you that your beloved sense of reason is not to be found anywhere else in the universe. If you take God out of the equation and the universe is just a random event, then reason must also be supernatural (of course, if you leave God in, it's still supernatural, so it really doesn't matter). Regardless, we all believe in something more powerful than ourselves, and I wonder if God doesn't work with this to reveal Himself.

It's common knowledge that many different societies and religions share similar stories of creation, a flood, a messiah, a resurrection, atonement through blood, etc. Christianity certainly does not have that market cornered, but we still believe that we have the truth. How can that be reconciled? Some would say that the stories that exist in other religions are plants by Satan to drive those people away from God, but I wonder if that's really the truth.

Let me be clear before I continue. I DO NOT believe that all religions of the world are essentially the same thing. In fact, I recognize that most of the world's religions are based on a system of good deeds in return for a reward after death. Christianity and God is not about that. Christianity is about a relationship with God, and about the atonement through the blood of Christ. Without that belief, there is no reward. Period. God is very clear on this point, and I want to be as well.

I do wonder, however, why Satan would try to influence a group of people, that have never heard the Gospel, away from the Gospel. It seems like a waste of time to me. If they are already in the dark, why mess with them? And if that makes sense to you, then don't you have to wonder, where then did these near-Christian ideas come from? Does it make sense that they may have come from God? Does it make sense that, just like Paul tells us in this passage, that the people recognize the nature of God and were trying to have a relationship with Him just like the Jews?

Some people would say that that can't be true because the Jews were God's chosen people. To them, I would ask, chosen for what? They weren't the only people that God revealed Himself to. Even in the Old Testament, God spoke with people that were not Jewish (Balaam – Numbers 22). So why wouldn't He also speak or reveal Himself to those on the other side of the world? Could that be the reason that the stories are so similar?

At the same time, Paul reminds us that while every man has the ability to know God, every man also has the ability to recognize the difference between good and evil, and that in some cases, God has allowed man to choose evil and has turned man over to the natural results of that. Entire societies have been brought down by the results of disease, famine, war, earthquakes, and floods. Some of that, Paul attests, is the result of the evil of man and the judgment of God. What will be the result for our society? We have a near-Christian idea of God just like many others that we consider pagan. Collectively, we tend to accept the evil that men do as okay for them if it doesn't touch me. Generally, we turn our head when people make their own choices to ignore God. Will this result in our downfall? And what will that downfall look like?