I was once on a panel with—this sounds like a bad joke, but it really happened—a rabbi, an imam, a Buddhist, and a Hindu. We were asked to talk about peacemaking, and I was the first to speak. I talked about the call to peacemaking in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. But I also talked about what those same scriptures say about our fallen nature. Sinful people often do things, I said, that can only be remedied by the threat or actual use of violence by the police or the military. But this use of violence must itself be monitored in accordance with standards of justice.

The rabbi was next, and before introducing some distinctive Jewish nuances, he began by expressing fundamental agreement with what I had said. Then the imam also added his word of approval. “I agree with the Christian and the Jew on the basic issues here.”

The Buddhist was next, and she immediately expressed her dissent. “The previous three speakers,” she said, “all hold that the basic problem for human beings is sin, with the solution being salvation by obeying God’s commands. My religion says something very different. The fundamental problem is ignorance, and the remedy is to walk the path to enlightenment.” The Hindu was last, and he sided with the Buddhist.

This illustrates a very signficant divide among the major religions. Those of us in the Abrahamic family have serious disagreements among ourselves. But we also have a kind of consensus on some of our assumptions about the human condition. Apart from a revelation from the divine, we human beings are in big trouble. We need help from God that we could never manufacture on our own. For me, as a follower of Jesus, I believe that as a participant in our shared human rebellion, my only hope is in the atoning work of the Savior who died at Calvary. As one who believes this, I depart from my Jewish and Muslim friends on key issues having to do with the way of salvation. But the gap that separates me from those who do not acknowledge the reality of sin, and of the need for salvation that only God can initiate—the awareness of that gap means that the Dalai Lama’s talk about “love, compassion and forgiveness” strikes me as a superficial avoidance of questions that we avoid at our eternal peril.