Empathy for the Heathen

I recently revisited the blog post I wrote called The Perspective of the Heathen, and had some more to say in regards to why many unbelievers hate God, Jesus, and Christians, and why we cannot paint everyone with a broad brush. It’s important when we get understanding and clarity to try and see things from their perspective, because people just don’t wake up one morning and decide to hate the One who allowed them to wake up at all.

Possible Reasons Why the Heathen Reject Christianity

When I engage in conversations about the gospel with individuals who display deep anger and hostility towards my message—and often towards me personally—I find myself contemplating the underlying reasons for their attitude. With a gentle question or two I crack open the door to peer into their soul just enough to allow the light in. “What are some of the teachings of Christianity that you disagree with?” I ask, and I follow up with, “Have you always believed that way?” Most disclose that they were raised in Christian or religious households; however, certain events or experiences seem to have led these individuals to renounce their faith and turn away from the Lord. It is essential to explore some of the prevalent factors that contribute to such aversion towards God and His followers.

Bad experiences with Christians

Many people don’t reject Jesus — they reject His followers for acting badly. It may be that their only experience with Christians have been negative, that they almost use resentment as a defense mechanism to not get hurt again.

Sometimes a Christian knowingly or unknowingly shamed, excluded, or wounded them inside or outside the church. Maybe the leadership, pastor, or other authority in congregation helped solidify their problems with them by just holding them to a higher standard to what the Bible says, or holding them accountable for the sin in their life.

Perception of hypocrisy

Even if a person hasn’t personally been hurt by Christians, they may see Christians preaching love but acting unloving; preaching forgiveness while holding grudges; or leaders falling into scandals of sexual sin, power, and corruption. One can only wonder how those who do these things could possibly be aligned with the love of Christ.

But being a hypocrite is more aligned with acting in pretense—pretending or acting a part to fit in. They are not Christians, they just pretend to be. I wouldn’t follow them either. This may or may not be the case, but what we need to convey is that we don’t follow those sitting in the pews—we follow Christ. He is our ultimate example. But, it’s amazing how hypocrites don’t keep us from the mall, grocery stores, or hospitals. My question to them would be, “Would you judge a hospital based on the health of the patients?” Probably not. We all suck…that’s why we need Jesus.

Christianity challenges lifestyle and morality

Christianity fundamentally challenges lifestyle and morality because if calls people to live in alignment with God’s holiness rather than society’s shifting standards. The message of Jesus Christ confronts human wisdom towards self-centeredness, urging believers to “deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Him” (Luke 9:23). Christianity itself is a not a buffet-style religion. It’s pretty black and white.

It’s also not a moral improvement but a radical transformation powered by the Holy Spirit to help us live the Christ-centered life in humility, honest, forgiveness, and love (Ephesians 4:22-24). The Bible calls us not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewal of our mind (Romans 12:2).

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God [God breathed], and is profitable for doctrine [what is right], for reproof [what is wrong], for correction [how to get right] , for instruction in righteousness [how to stay right], that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 NKJV [emphasis mine]

In its pages of Holy Scripture, the entirety of the Bible, It’s found principles on what righteousness is, what sin is, how to turn to God and repent, and how to stick with it throughout the rest of your life. God created us, and therefore we are accountable to Him (Romans 14:2; Hebrews 4:13). It is not my will, but His be done.

Misrepresentation and misunderstanding

If you were to ask the heathen to describe Christians in one word, what would they say? If we were to go through the files of rhetoric from the media, we can surmise the following: anti-science, hateful, irrational, bigoted extremist. One day while working the IowaGO! booth at the Iowa State Fair I was called all those things in the same breath.

Society, media, and education have altered the original meanings of certain words significantly to the point it seems non-sensical to those receiving backlash.

The word, hate for instance used to mean: to dislike greatly, to have great aversion to; and in Scripture, is signifies to love less. There are things in this world I hate. Liver and onions, injustice, oppression of the poor and weak, abortion, and the list goes on. Today, that word carries a meaning of—disagreeing with one’s opinion, lifestyle, or belief.

Bigoted, used to mean: obstinately (stubbornly) and blindly attached to some creed, opinion, practice or ritual; unreasonably devoted to a system or party, and illiberal towards the opinions of others. Today, it’s shocking the amount of words that come up in an online thesaurus, racist, homophobic, neo-nazi, evil-minded, xenophobic, and patriarchal—just to name a few. Though they may be descriptions of bigoted behavior, we have taken it further to mean that those individual things are the meaning.

Thankfully, Christian, isn’t found in the list, because it is a reasonable faith, belief and practice. People may hate the stereotype and how the world portrays Christianity and Christians, but not the gospel. They are just, well, bigoted against Scripture and refuse to read it to gain any understanding from it.

Pain, trauma, and unanswered prayer

The heathen may reject God, the things of God, and His people because of deep wounds caused by:

• Loss: whether someone close to them dying or financial ruin
• Tragedy: hardship, misfortune, tribulation or suffering
• Abuse: Ill-treatment, cruel, malevolent wrongdoing which caused psychological pain and trauma.
• Feeling abandoned by God: that we are all alone with no hope or help from a Creator who supposedly loves us.

Tragedy strikes when we least expect it. Sometimes it’s self-inflicted. Other times it’s because of negligence or malevolence of another. We blame God because He either allowed it to happen, or was the cause of it, but never look at our own selves as the possible culprit to our consequences. Isn’t ironic though that God is the last to be thanked for the good we receive, yet the first to be blamed for the terrible things in life.

God created everything good, and it is because through one man (Adam) sin entered the world by his disobedience to God, death came through sin, and thus spread to all men because we all have sinned (Romans 5:12). This entire world three chapters from the beginning in Genesis has been corrupted. 10 out of 10 people die. Everyone will die, we just don’t know when or how. Now it’s a part of life, even though it wasn’t created to be.

They don’t understand who God really is

Therefore, many unbeliever’s views of God are not biblical and therefore a misunderstanding of who He really is. They think He is:

• a cosmic-bully
• a rule-enforcer
• a distant judge
• an uncaring father
• a tyrannical authoritarian

If someone only hears or thinks “God hates sinners” and never “For God so loved the world,” rejection is understandable. We as Christians and ambassadors of Christ should tell the whole story of who He is and what He has done. That God sent His one and only Son into the world not to condemn it, but through Him to save it (John 3:16-17). It’s one thing to not have a cure for a disease; it’s a completely different thing to reject the cure. That’s a Y.O.U. problem. But in order to understand who God is, they need to read His Words and what He said. They don’t understand because they refuse to. Who’s the bigot now?

Spiritual resistance

We know who the real enemy is in this life. Satan, the father of lies, is real. He’s not dressed in a red leotard with a plastic pitchfork and horns bought at the local Spirit Halloween store. He is a formidable foe.

• He does not play fair
• Shows no mercy
• Wants to kill you, destroy your witness, and your testimony
• Hates marriage, children, God, and you.

He is known by many names. Some of which are:

• Lucifer
• Father of Lies
• The accuser of the brethren
• God of this world
• Prince of demons
• Ruler of darkness
• The Tempter

His malignant work is extensive

• He slanders the saints
• Tempts to disobedience
• Opposes the righteous
• Hinders and frustrates the gospel
• He hates you and has a horrifying plan for your life

He may not attack you directly, but this entire world is his playground. He has the resources and the power to take you out as much as the Lord allows. There is a supernatural spiritual world that we don’t see, and be thankful of that. We just need to be aware it exists, and we walk in it every day.

The Bible says that those who are in the world and unbelievers are not the enemy, but the ones being taken by him.

But avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they generate strife. And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.

2 Timothy 2:23-26 NKJV

Pride or self-sufficiency

Christianity requires surrender. Humans naturally resist giving up control, especially to a Being they can’t see or hear. Americans in particular are taught to “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,” to achieve success independently without assistance. There is a sense of pride that comes through that “do-it-yourself” self-reliant attitude and we believe that anything less than that is weak. God is viewed only as a crutch to get through life.

My answer to them is, “So what?” In order to say that Jesus is a crutch, it would have to mean that we are walking injured, need help, and we cannot do it on our own. That’s their actual problem. They can’t see themselves as needing Him.

In essence, where it really stems from is that they cannot fathom the idea that they are dead, cannot do anything apart from Jesus, and He has to basically carry us through life, not just hobble on one leg as if we do our part and He does His. That’s not how this works. If I needed to jump out of a plane to save my life, and believed that a parachute in my hand will save me: by faith I will put it on. But while outside the plane and floating, how in the world am I going to help that parachute guide me to the ground safely? I don’t have ahold of the parachute—it has ahold of me! That’s the fundamental truth of salvation in Jesus.

What’s Really Going On?

We could expound on why the heathen might reject biblical Christianity, but those are merely symptoms. We need to dig deeper to understand their beliefs. Here are three basic things that might be going on in the heart of the heathen.

Human Pride and Self-Rule

At the heart of unbelief is the desire to be independent from God. People reject God because acknowledging Him means acknowledging authority, accountability, and surrender. Pride says:

• “I don’t need God.”
• “I decide what’s true.”
• “I’ll define right and wrong.”

This traces back to the original temptation in Genesis 3:5 — to be like God. Pride blinds the heart and becomes the primary barrier to repentance (James 4:6).

Love of Sin and Darkness

Many reject Christ not because evidence is lacking but because belief would confront their lifestyle.

“People loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” — John 3:19

Rejecting God allows a person to avoid guilt, repentance, moral change, and the discomfort of conviction. Scripture shows that unbelief is often a moral problem before it’s an intellectual one.

Spiritual Blindness

Ultimately, unbelief is not merely psychological or philosophical — it is spiritual.

“The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers.” — 2 Corinthians 4:4
“No one can come to Me unless the Father draws him.” — John 6:44

Without the Spirit’s intervention, people cannot see their need for Christ, the beauty of the gospel, or the reality of their condition. The battle is not only external—it is supernatural. It is beyond us, but we are to merely share it in hopes that they Words would penetrate the heart and be poked by the conscience.

Let us have empathy over the heathen and have a compassionate heart of Christ who came to “seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10); knowing that He reached down and saved us from what they swim in every day so that we might lead others to the truth.