by Susan Peabody

Created on: May 13, 2009   Last Updated: May 21, 2009

Romans 2:13-16 RSV "For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When the Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus."

This passage says different things to different people. The traditional Christian scholar does not believe that this passage embraces people who have not known the historical Christ, because they read it in the context of the rest of Romans and the rest of the New Testament. They may be right. But I turn to this passage to validate an intuitive idea that came to me as a young adolescent studying to join the Methodist Church. When the minister said that only Christians go to Heaven I shrunk back in horror. No, I said. My brother was a very good person. Certainly he went to Heaven. No, the minister said, Only by surrendering to Christ are you saved. Then he asked me if my brother had been exposed to the Christian faith. I had to admit that he had. There you have it, he said triumphantly. He wasn't some aborigine stuck out on a desert isle. He rejected God. He will not go to Heaven. Then I posed the question, But what about the Jews, Hindus Muslims and Buddhists. They are good people and have answered the call to love God. And the Jews worship the same God. Will they go to Heaven? No, the minister sputtered. I broke out in tears and left. And I didn't go back to church for twenty-eight years.

In 1983 I did come back because some merciful Christian (a Catholic Priest) said I could believe that all good people, of whatever faith, would go to Heaven if I wanted to and that my brother might even be there too. No one knows for sure. I was so relieved. I didn't care if it were true or not. It became the bridge I needed to return home. (Later I joined a church that believed this too. The Quakers have a principal they call universalism which incorporates this idea.)

One day, while studying the Bible in a class we called The School of Prophets, we read Romans 6:16, and I felt I had finally found some remnant of validation for my beliefs. Doesn't this passage speak of every one who does good, and God shows no partiality. Doesn't it say [italics

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