day no. 15,717: non-excused absence

"Knowledge brings moral culpability with it. Natural revelation can certainly be called natural law. It has all the ingredients -- a lawgiver, a standard, a subject, and a moral responsibility." 
-- Douglas Wilson, Rules for Reformers

"There is a difference between an ideal and a vision. An ideal has no moral inspiration; a vision has. The people who give themselves over to ideals rarely do anything. A man’s conception of Deity may be used to justify his deliberate neglect of his duty. Jonah argued that because God was a God of justice and of mercy, therefore everything would be all right. I may have a right conception of God, and that may be the very reason why I do not do my duty. But wherever there is vision, there is also a life of rectitude because the vision imparts moral incentive." -- Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

"We are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table." -- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

We have a moral responsibility and obligation to obey what God has revealed to us. In nature, we observe certain qualities consistent with God's character and commandments that are in keeping with the qualities He reveals to us in His word. In other words, His world is consistent with His Word and while not everyone has access to His Word, everyone has access to His world. As such, we are required to keep His commands and there are adequate excuses for refusing to do so. Ignorance is not an intellectual defect, but a moral one. We cannot claim even claim intellectual ignorance because every one of us knows on account of the sun coming up; and knowing them obligates the knower to do something in response to them -- something specific which if not done becomes a clear violation.

In other words...

Romans 1:18-23
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.