On God's Communication With Non-Christian Nations

God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth": that is, of Christ Jesus. Christ must be proclaimed to all nations and individuals, so that this revelation may reach to the ends of the earth:

God graciously arranged that the things he had once revealed for the salvation of all peoples should remain in their entirety, throughout the ages, and be transmitted to all generations. 

This passage used to cause a problem for me.  It's like a block in my mind that keeps nagging at me and saying, "If this was all real, then how do you explain me?"  Sometimes I think the whole idea of God and the Church would be easier to accept if this part had been left out.

You see, the problem is that millions of people throughout the world have never heard of Christ.  Not enough to make a decision to follow Him anyway.  So the whole idea of "one truth" isn't just impossible in theory, it fails in practice.  Whether we're talking about poor farmers in China or poor hunters in Africa, the faith just isn't there for everyone.

What's more, shouldn't it have said all FUTURE generations.  After all, those in the Old Testament had no knowledge of the truth.  Especially those who weren't Jewish.

How do we get around this?

Let's start with our own lives.  When we first heard about Christ, did we have a full understanding of the sacraments, Catholic doctrine, and everything involved?  Of course not.  We had to take things piece by piece.  Slowly, we learned more of the truth, and slowly we came to accept it.  And we go on learning and accepting as we go through life...never once coming to a FULL understanding of the faith.

It is the same with the world.  It wasn't always ready for the full truth...and parts of it are still not ready.

Remember when Jesus was trying to explain why God allowed men to divorce their wives?  He said, "Because Moses by reason of the hardness of your heart permitted you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so."

In this case, Jesus is trying to point out that there was an eternal truth, but that God allowed ignorance of that truth out of mercy.  So it is with the world today and yesterday.  God allows certain parts of the world to remain ignorant of His existence...not because He does not love them, but because He DOES love them.  The truth is too much for some people.  Their lives, their cultures, and their governments have to be conditioned to accept it before they can be introduced to it.  Otherwise, the truth is quickly lost in a landslide of rejection.

I'm not saying it would be futile for missionaries to evangelize in certain places.  But we, as Christians, must accept the fact that not all of those places are ready to accept Christ into their cultures...and God is merciful in those circumstances, just as he was merciful enough to tolerate divorce. 

I would further add that 'truth', in all its beauty and glory, can be harmful in large doses when introduced at the wrong time.  Some of my children, for example, are too young to understand all the intricate details of sex.  To try and explain it all to a five year old, would be like putting a large slab of stone on his back...one that would crush him and cripple him for the rest of his life.  For his age, it's enough to know that there's a physical difference between boys and girls, and that boys shouldn't hit girls (something that kids almost instinctively understand).

So it is with man, that he instinctively understands there is something greater than himself in the world, and that he owes his existence to that thing.  God reveals the rest to people as they need to know it...and not always as they WANT to know it.  Even in a part of the world without Christianity.

And that's how I came to understand and accept this passage.