Common Objections

Most objections to Christianity are not attacks. They are questions with a history. Someone was told that the Bible is full of contradictions and never saw anyone answer it. Someone watched a church leader fall. Someone read the conquest of Canaan and closed the book. Someone sat at a graveside and asked where God was.

Those objections deserve better than a slogan. They deserve to be heard properly, granted where they are right, and answered where they are wrong. That is what this paper tries to do.

What this paper is

This is a companion to 30 Questions Skeptics Ask. That paper gives short, sharp answers, one question at a time. This one takes the most common objections in themes and treats them more fully. Each objection has three parts:

• What the objection gets right. Almost every objection has something true in it. Saying so is not weakness; it is honesty, and it is where real conversations start.
• The answer. What Scripture says, and what history, philosophy and science add, with sources you can check in the notes.
• In conversation. A few lines on how to handle the objection when a friend raises it, because the goal is not to win an argument but to help a person see.

There are thirty objections in six parts: the evidence (1–5), the Bible's text (6–10), the Bible's morality (11–15), suffering and judgment (16–20), Christians and the church (21–25), and the personal objections that often lie underneath all the others (26–30). Part 7 gives principles and sample conversations for believers. You can read straight through, or go to the objection you need.

Who is writing

I was raised Roman Catholic but never really connected — I went through the motions, fell asleep in the pews, and faked being sick to skip Mass. Eventually I gave up and called myself an atheist. I decided to read the Bible for one reason: to disprove it, so I'd have an excuse to stop going to church for good.

It did the opposite. Genesis gripped me. In Matthew I read Jesus' own words and felt the weight of my own sin for the first time. I came to faith in 2022, and my wife came to faith a month later. The rest of my story is at kylelauriano.com/about.

Every verse here is quoted from the King James Bible, which you can read free in the 1611 Reader at kylelauriano.com/library. A KJV with Strong's Concordance will let you check the words against the Hebrew and Greek for yourself.

The posture of this paper

Peter told Christians to be ready to answer, and he told them how: “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15). Paul added, “Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man” (Colossians 4:6).

Meekness, fear, grace, salt. Not arrogance, not mockery, not pressure. If a believer reading this takes away nothing else, take that.

These five objections ask whether there is any good reason to believe at all. They come first because if there is no evidence for God, or for Jesus, the rest does not matter.

1. "There's no evidence that God exists"

What the objection gets right

There is no laboratory test for God, and Christians should not pretend there is. God is not a thing inside the universe that can be weighed. Many people have also been given bad arguments for God, and are right to reject those.

The answer

The real question is what kind of evidence would count. We believe many things for good reasons without a laboratory test: that other people have minds, that the past happened, that cruelty is wrong. Evidence for God is like evidence in history or a courtroom: several lines that point the same way.

The universe began. Scripture's first sentence is a claim about a beginning: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Physics now gives strong reason to think the universe did have a beginning. Whatever begins to exist has a cause, and the cause of all matter, space and time cannot itself be made of matter, space and time. Leibniz asked the question that still has no answer without God: why is there something rather than nothing?¹

The universe is finely ordered. The physical constants fall within narrow ranges that allow stars, chemistry and life. The cosmologist Martin Rees, not a believer, devoted a book to six such numbers.² Fred Hoyle, an astronomer who had long rejected religion, concluded from the physics of carbon that “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics.”³ “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork” (Psalm 19:1).

We know right from wrong. Every culture knows that some things are really wrong, not merely disliked. Paul says the Gentiles “shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness” (Romans 2:15). If morality is only evolved preference, then "wrong" means no more than "I don't like it." C. S. Lewis built the opening of Mere Christianity on this point.⁴

Jesus rose from the dead. This is the evidence Christianity itself puts forward, and Objection 4 and the companion paper take it up. If it happened, God exists and has acted.

None of these is a mathematical proof. Together they make a strong case, and they explain why Paul could say that men are “without excuse” (Romans 1:20).

In conversation

Ask what evidence the person would accept. Many have never thought about it. If the answer is "nothing could convince me," the issue is not evidence. If the answer is something specific, you have somewhere to start.

2. "Science has disproved God"

What the objection gets right

Science has explained a great deal that people once put down to unseen forces, and Christians have sometimes made fools of themselves by staking their faith on gaps that science later filled. A "God of the gaps" who only lives in what we don't yet understand is a shrinking god.

The answer

The God of the Bible is not a gap. He is the author of the whole book, including the parts science reads well. Science studies the regular workings of the natural world. Whether that world has a Maker is a question about why there is a natural world at all, and science cannot answer it, because it can only measure what is inside nature.

The claim that science has disproved God is usually a philosophy called naturalism, the belief that nature is all there is. That belief is not a result of science. It is an assumption some scientists bring to it. Many of the founders of modern science held the opposite assumption: that a rational God made a rational world, and that is why it can be studied. Isaac Newton wrote at the end of his Principia that the solar system “could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”⁵

Where there is a real conflict, it is usually over origins. Genesis records that God made the world in six days, formed Adam from the dust, made Eve from his side, and later judged the world by a global flood. Jesus spoke of the creation of man and woman as history: “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female” (Matthew 19:4). The Ten Commandments ground the week in the creation week: “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth” (Exodus 20:11). And Paul ties death to Adam: “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin” (Romans 5:12).

Some Christians have tried to fit Genesis to the theory of evolution by treating Adam as a symbol or the days as long ages of death before the Fall. This paper does not accept that reading as faithful to the text, because it cuts the tie Scripture makes between sin and death, and between Adam and Christ (Romans 5:12–19). It also makes no claim either way about the age of the earth. What it does say is that the conflict is not between Genesis and anything observed today, but between Genesis and theories about the unobserved past, which rest on assumptions that can be questioned.

In conversation

Ask which scientific finding disproves God. Usually none is named. If evolution is named, it is fair to say: "I don't accept it as the explanation of where we came from, but even if you do, it wouldn't explain why there is a universe with laws in the first place."

3. "Miracles are impossible"

What the objection gets right

Most strange stories are not miracles, and Christians should be careful and honest about claims of the miraculous. Credulity is not faith. The Bible itself warns of false signs.

The answer

The classic form of this objection is David Hume's, from 1748: “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.”⁶

There are two problems with this. First, it argues in a circle. How do we know experience against miracles is "unalterable"? Only by ruling out in advance every report of a miracle. That is not examining the evidence; it is refusing to.

Second, it misunderstands what a law of nature is. A law describes what happens when nothing outside nature acts. If I drop a ball, gravity pulls it down; if I catch it, I have not broken the law of gravity, I have added a new cause. If God exists, a miracle is not a broken law but a new cause from outside the system. C. S. Lewis made this argument at length in his book Miracles.⁷

So the question of miracles comes down to two others: does God exist, and is there good evidence that He has acted? The Bible does not ask us to believe miracles in general. It points to particular events, done in public, before hostile witnesses. Peter told a Jerusalem crowd that Jesus was “a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know” (Acts 2:22). The resurrection is the test case.

In conversation

Ask, "If God exists, could He act in the world He made?" Most people grant that He could. Then the question becomes one of evidence, which is exactly where the Christian wants to be.

4. "Jesus never existed, or His story was copied from pagan myths"

What the objection gets right

We do not have a birth certificate or a portrait of Jesus. Most of what we know of Him comes from the New Testament, written by His followers. And there were other religions in the ancient world with gods and heroes.

The answer

That Jesus existed is not seriously disputed among historians of the period, Christian or not. Bart Ehrman, an agnostic New Testament scholar, wrote Did Jesus Exist? in 2012 specifically to answer those who deny it, and he dismissed the mythicist case as poorly argued.⁸

The non-Christian sources are early and hostile. Tacitus, around AD 116, wrote that “Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.”⁹ Josephus, the Jewish historian, wrote in the 90s of the execution of “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James.”¹⁰ Pliny the Younger reported to the emperor around AD 112 that Christians met “before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god.”¹¹ Paul, writing in the 50s, says he met Jesus' brother: “other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother” (Galatians 1:19). Mythical figures do not have brothers whom you can go and meet.

The "copied from pagan myths" claim usually comes from internet lists comparing Jesus to Horus, Mithras or Dionysus. When you go to the ancient sources themselves, most of the supposed parallels (virgin birth on December 25, twelve disciples, crucifixion, resurrection on the third day) are not there; they appear in modern books that do not cite primary texts. The older scholarly idea of a widespread pattern of "dying and rising gods" came largely from James Frazer's The Golden Bough, and it has been heavily criticized since. Ehrman himself argues that the first Christians were shaped by Jewish ideas, not pagan ones.

The Gospels read like what they claim to be: accounts rooted in a real place and time. Luke dates the start of John the Baptist's ministry to “the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee” (Luke 3:1). Myths do not begin like that. And Peter flatly denied the charge: “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16).

In conversation

Ask for the primary source of a claimed parallel: "Where in the ancient texts does it say Horus was crucified?" Do it gently. Most people have simply trusted a video. Offer to look at the sources together.

5. "Jesus never claimed to be God"

What the objection gets right

Jesus did not usually go about saying the words "I am God." He often called Himself "the Son of man," and He spoke of the Father as distinct from Himself. Some of His claims are indirect.

The answer

Indirect does not mean unclear. His hearers understood Him perfectly, and several times they tried to kill Him for it.

He claimed God's name. “Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). Every Jew knew the name God gave at the bush: “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14). The crowd took up stones.

He claimed equality with the Father. “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). Again they took up stones, and said why: “because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God” (John 10:33). John records the same reaction earlier: they sought to kill Him because He “said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18).

He did what only God does. He forgave sins against God, and the scribes asked, “who can forgive sins but God only?” (Mark 2:7). He received worship: the women “held him by the feet, and worshipped him” (Matthew 28:9), and Thomas said, “My LORD and my God” (John 20:28) without rebuke.

He claimed to be the judge of the world. At His trial the high priest asked if He was “the Christ, the Son of the Blessed,” and Jesus answered, “I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:61-62). The high priest tore his clothes and called it blasphemy.

The apostles taught the same. John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Paul: “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). And the generation after the apostles said it plainly. Ignatius of Antioch, writing on his way to martyrdom around AD 110, wrote: “For our God, Jesus Christ, was, according to the appointment of God, conceived in the womb by Mary.”¹² Pliny's report that Christians sang “to Christ as to a god” shows that even outsiders knew what they believed.

This is why C. S. Lewis said the "great moral teacher" view is not open to us: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.”¹³

In conversation

Read John 8:58-59 or Mark 14:61-64 together and ask, "Why did they want to kill Him for saying that?" Let the text do the work.

If Jesus is who He claimed, His view of Scripture matters: He treated it as the word of God. But many people doubt that the Bible we hold is the one that was written. These five objections deal with the text itself.

6. "The Bible is full of errors and contradictions"

What the objection gets right

The Bible contains real difficulties: passages that seem to disagree, numbers that are hard to reconcile, accounts told differently. Christians who claim there are no hard passages have not read carefully. Honest readers have wrestled with these for centuries.

The answer

A difficulty is not the same as a contradiction. A contradiction means two statements cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time. Most alleged contradictions fail that test once you look closely. They fall into a few kinds.

Different details of the same event. Matthew mentions two women at the tomb (Matthew 28:1), Mark three (Mark 16:1), John one (John 20:1). Mentioning one does not deny the others. Witnesses who agree word for word are usually suspected of collusion. Independent witnesses give the same event from different angles. The homicide detective J. Warner Wallace, formerly an atheist, found that the Gospels fit the pattern of true eyewitness accounts.¹⁴

Different parts of one event. Matthew says Judas “went and hanged himself” (Matthew 27:5); Acts says “falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst” (Acts 1:18). Both can be true of the same body.

Different purposes. Matthew arranges much of his Gospel by theme; Luke says he wrote “in order” (Luke 1:3). Neither claims to give every event in strict sequence. Writers summarize, round numbers and quote the sense of a speech, as all ancient historians did.

Misreading the genre or the words. Proverbs says, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him” and in the next verse, “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit” (Proverbs 26:4-5). Placed side by side on purpose, they teach wisdom: there are times for each.

Gleason Archer, a scholar of the biblical languages, wrote a whole encyclopedia working through the hard passages in biblical order.¹⁵ The honest response to a claimed contradiction is to look at the passage itself, in context, rather than trust a list.

Behind this objection lies a bigger one: whether God has spoken at all. If He has, we expect His word to be true: “God is not a man, that he should lie” (Numbers 23:19). This paper holds the King James Bible to be the inerrant word of God, and it holds that position not by ignoring hard passages but by finding, again and again, that they yield to patient reading.

In conversation

Ask which contradiction troubles them most, and look at it together. If you don't know the answer, say so, and promise to look it up. Then do.

7. "We don't have the original manuscripts"

What the objection gets right

It is true. No original handwritten letter of Paul or scroll of Moses survives. Everything we have is a copy.

The answer

That is true of every ancient book. We have no original of Plato, Caesar or Tacitus either. The question is not whether we have originals, but whether the copies let us know what the originals said. For the Bible, the answer is better than for any other ancient book.

The Greek New Testament survives in well over five thousand handwritten manuscripts, catalogued by the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Münster, plus early translations and countless quotations by early church writers.¹⁶ No other ancient work comes close. F. F. Bruce made the comparison with classical texts in his short book The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?¹⁷

For the Old Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls changed the picture. The Great Isaiah Scroll, found in 1947 and dated to around 125 BC, is about a thousand years older than the medieval Hebrew manuscripts that the King James translators' Hebrew Bible was built on. The Israel Museum, which holds it, describes its text as generally in agreement with the traditional Hebrew text of the medieval codices, though it contains many variant readings, alternative spellings, scribal errors and corrections.¹⁸ A book copied by hand for a thousand years came through recognizably the same.

There is also a theological answer. God promised to keep His words: “The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever” (Psalm 12:6-7). Isaiah says the same: “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever” (Isaiah 40:8). The church did not lose the word of God and have to reconstruct it from scratch. It received and kept it.

In conversation

Ask whether they doubt our knowledge of Julius Caesar or Plato on the same grounds. Most do not. Then the question is why the Bible is held to a stricter standard than any other ancient book, when it has far more evidence.

8. "There are so many Bible versions, they can't all be right"

What the objection gets right

They can't all be right where they disagree. There are dozens of English versions, and in some places they do not just phrase things differently, they include or omit whole verses. That is a real question, and Christians who shrug it off are not being honest.

The answer

Most of the differences between English versions come from two causes: how freely the translators rendered the original, and which Greek text they followed. The King James Bible of 1611 was translated from the Hebrew Old Testament and from the Greek Received Text, the text the churches had read and copied for centuries. The translators explained their method in their preface, "The Translators to the Reader."¹⁹ Most modern versions since the late nineteenth century follow a different Greek text, edited from a smaller number of manuscripts.

That is why a reader comparing versions will find passages that stand in the King James and are bracketed, footnoted or missing in others: the long ending of Mark (Mark 16:9-20), the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53 through 8:11), the Ethiopian's confession (Acts 8:37), and the witness of the three in heaven (1 John 5:7), among others. This paper stands with the King James and the Received Text. You can see every place where the 1611 and the modern Critical Text part ways, verse by verse, at kylelauriano.com/library/changes, and judge for yourself.

The existence of many versions does not mean the word of God is lost. It means readers must ask which text and which translation are faithful. That is a question worth taking seriously, and it has an answer.

In conversation

Don't let this become a fight about translations before the person has met Christ. Point them to a King James Bible and the free 1611 Reader, and to the changes ledger if they want to see the differences. Then read the Gospel of John together.

9. "The church picked the books it liked at the Council of Nicaea"

What the objection gets right

The New Testament did not arrive as one bound book. There was a process, over centuries, by which churches recognized which books belonged, and some books (Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, Revelation) were questioned in some places for a time.

The answer

The popular version of this objection, that Constantine and the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 chose the books and suppressed others, is a modern legend; novels such as Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code spread it. The Council of Nicaea dealt with the Arian controversy over the deity of Christ, and with the date of Easter. The canon was not on its agenda.

What actually happened is simpler. From the start, the churches read the books that came from the apostles and their close companions. Peter already speaks of Paul's letters alongside “the other scriptures” (2 Peter 3:16). By the second century the four Gospels and the letters of Paul were in wide use. Later lists confirm what the churches were already reading. In AD 367 Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, listed in his Easter letter exactly the twenty-seven books of our New Testament.²⁰ Regional councils later in that century agreed. F. F. Bruce traced the whole process in The Canon of Scripture.²¹

The tests were whether a book was apostolic, whether it agreed with the faith handed down, and whether the churches everywhere received it. The "lost gospels" such as Thomas or Judas failed those tests. They were written later, mostly in the second century or after, and they teach a different religion: secret knowledge for the few, rather than a crucified and risen Lord for all.

For the Old Testament, the canon was the Bible of Jesus Himself, which He described in its three parts: “the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms” (Luke 24:44). Josephus wrote that the Jews held a fixed number of sacred books.²² Books like 1 Enoch and Jubilees are valuable as witnesses to what Jews of the time believed, and the site's library includes some of them for that reason, but they are history, not Scripture.

In conversation

Ask where they heard about Nicaea choosing the books. Then point them to the actual records of Nicaea, or to Athanasius' letter. Most people are glad to learn the real history.

10. "The Bible is just ancient mythology"

What the objection gets right

The Bible contains accounts of things modern people find hard to believe: a talking serpent, a world-wide flood, a sea parted, a man swallowed by a great fish. It also shares a world with other ancient writings that have their own creation and flood stories.

The answer

The Bible does not read like myth. Myths are set in a timeless "once upon a time" among gods and heroes. The Bible is set in named places, under named kings, with genealogies, dates and ordinary detail, and it often makes its own heroes look bad. Abraham lies about his wife. David commits adultery and murder. Peter denies Jesus. Myth flatters its heroes; the Bible does not.

Archaeology keeps confirming the Bible's world. The Tel Dan inscription, found in 1993–94, mentions the "House of David," once dismissed as legend.²³ A stone found at Caesarea in 1961 names Pontius Pilate as prefect of Judaea.²⁴ The ossuary of the Caiaphas family, discovered in Jerusalem in 1990, bears the name of the high priest at Jesus' trial.²⁵ The Pool of Siloam, where Jesus sent the blind man to wash (John 9:7), was uncovered in 2004.²⁶ The Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen spent decades showing how the Old Testament fits its ancient setting.²⁷

What of the parts that sound miraculous? They are not mythological if God is real and acts. And the fact that other ancient peoples remembered a great flood is what we would expect if there was one. Jesus spoke of Noah and the flood as history: “the flood came, and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:27). He spoke of Jonah as history too (Matthew 12:40). If He rose from the dead, His view of these events carries weight.

The New Testament writers knew the difference between myth and testimony, and they claimed testimony: “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you” (1 John 1:3).

In conversation

Ask what makes a text mythology rather than history. Then compare the opening of Luke's Gospel with the opening of any ancient myth. The difference is plain.

Some people do not doubt that the Bible is old or well preserved. They doubt that it is good. These five objections are moral ones, and they are often the most deeply felt.

11. "The God of the Old Testament is a moral monster"

What the objection gets right

The Old Testament contains passages of terrible judgment: the Flood, Sodom, and above all the command to destroy the Canaanite nations. These are hard passages, and a Christian who reads them without being troubled has not understood them. The charge is associated today with Richard Dawkins, and the Christian philosopher Paul Copan answered it in a book whose title takes up the phrase: Is God a Moral Monster?²⁸

The answer

Several things must be held together.

The judgment was judgment, not ethnic hatred. God told Abraham that his descendants would wait four hundred years before entering the land, “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (Genesis 15:16). God waited centuries. When Israel did enter, God told them plainly that it was not because they were better: “Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee” (Deuteronomy 9:5). The practices named in Leviticus 18 and Deuteronomy 12 include child sacrifice. And God warned Israel that the same land would vomit them out if they did the same (Leviticus 18:24-28), which is what later happened in the exile.

Mercy was offered. Rahab of Jericho heard what God had done, believed, and was spared with her family (Joshua 2:9-11; 6:25). God's rule for nations is stated in Jeremiah: “If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them” (Jeremiah 18:8). Nineveh repented and was spared.

The language of war is often sweeping. Copan argues that the Bible's battle reports use the stock language of ancient Near Eastern war accounts, in which "utterly destroyed" is often a way of saying "decisively defeated"; the same books record that the peoples were still there afterward.²⁹ That does not remove the difficulty, but it means some popular retellings are worse than the text.

God has the right to judge. This is the hardest point for modern readers. If God gives life, He has rights over it that no human has. Every human being dies; the question is only when and how. The Judge of all the earth is not under our jurisdiction: “Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?” (Romans 9:20).

The God of the Old Testament is the God of the cross. The same God who judged Canaan came in the flesh and took judgment on Himself. The moral outrage that drives this objection is itself borrowed from the Bible's own standard of justice. Without God, there is no "monster," only events.

In conversation

Don't rush to defend. Say, "That passage troubles me too." Then ask what standard they are using to judge God, and where it comes from. Point to Rahab, and to the cross.

12. "The Bible supports slavery"

What the objection gets right

The Bible does regulate slavery and servitude in the Old Testament, and the New Testament tells slaves to obey their masters without calling for the immediate end of the institution. Some slave-owners in America quoted the Bible to defend the system. Those facts must be faced.

The answer

The first thing to see is that the Bible condemns the kind of slavery that built the Atlantic slave trade. It made kidnapping a capital crime: “And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death” (Exodus 21:16). Paul lists “menstealers” among the lawless (1 Timothy 1:10). The trade that seized Africans and sold them was manstealing from beginning to end. Those who defended it from the Bible were defending what the Bible condemns.

Second, Old Testament servitude was largely a form of debt labour, with limits. A fellow Israelite who sold himself through poverty was to be treated “as an hired servant” and released (Leviticus 25:39-40). Runaway slaves were not to be returned: “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee” (Deuteronomy 23:15). That law alone set Israel apart from every surrounding code. It is also true, and should be said plainly, that the law allowed Israel to hold foreigners as permanent bondservants (Leviticus 25:44-46). Like divorce, which Jesus said Moses allowed “because of the hardness of your hearts” (Matthew 19:8), the law regulated a fallen practice rather than endorsing it as God's ideal.

Third, the New Testament planted seeds that grew into abolition. Paul told slaves, “if thou mayest be made free, use it rather” (1 Corinthians 7:21). He told masters to give their servants “that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven” (Colossians 4:1). He sent the runaway Onesimus back to Philemon, “Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved” (Philemon 1:16). And he wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

Christians drew the conclusion. Gregory of Nyssa, in the fourth century, preached a sermon on Ecclesiastes that condemned slavery outright: “You are condemning to slavery human beings whose nature is free and characterised by free will,” and, “For how many obols did you value the image of God?”³⁰ In Britain the long campaign against the slave trade and slavery was led in Parliament by the evangelical William Wilberforce, and the Slave Trade Act of 1807 ended the British trade.

In conversation

Grant the hard verses honestly. Then read Exodus 21:16 and Philemon together. Ask where the moral conviction that slavery is evil came from, historically. A great deal of it came from people reading this book.

13. "The Bible oppresses women"

What the objection gets right

The Bible gives men and women different roles in marriage and in the church, and some passages are hard for modern readers. Men have also used these passages to excuse abuse and contempt, which the Bible itself condemns.

The answer

The texts should be read as they stand, not explained away. Paul writes that “the head of the woman is the man” (1 Corinthians 11:3). He writes, “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law” (1 Corinthians 14:34). And he writes, “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve” (1 Timothy 2:12-13). Notice that Paul grounds this in creation, not in the customs of his city, so these passages cannot honestly be set aside as "merely cultural." Churches that hold to Scripture differ in how they apply them, for example in what counts as teaching or speaking in a gathering, or how 1 Corinthians 11 applies to head coverings today. This paper does not settle those questions for you. Read the passages for yourself in context.

But the same Bible that gives these instructions gives women a dignity no ancient culture matched. Woman was made in God's image as fully as man: “in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). Paul, in the same chapter about headship, adds: “Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:11). Husbands are commanded, “love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it” (Ephesians 5:25), and to give honour to the wife “as being heirs together of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7). Headship in Scripture is a call to self-sacrifice, not a licence for tyranny.

Jesus' own conduct astonished His followers. His disciples “marvelled that he talked with the woman” at the well (John 4:27). Women travelled with Him and supported His ministry (Luke 8:1-3). Deborah judged Israel (Judges 4:4). Phebe served the church at Cenchrea (Romans 16:1), and Priscilla, with her husband, taught Apollos the way of God more perfectly (Acts 18:26).

Most striking of all, women were the first witnesses of the resurrection. Mark records that Jesus “appeared first to Mary Magdalene” (Mark 16:9), in the ending of Mark that stands in the 1611. In that culture, a woman's word carried little weight in court. Josephus records the rule of his day: “let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex.”³¹ God chose women to carry the first news of the greatest event in history.

In conversation

Don't hide the hard texts or rush past them. Read them, then read Jesus with the women around Him, and the resurrection morning. Ask whether "different roles" must mean "less worth." In Christ it does not.

14. "The Bible's view of sexuality is hateful and outdated"

What the objection gets right

Christians have often treated sexual sin, especially homosexuality, as if it were worse than their own sins of greed, gossip or pride. Some have been cruel. Many people who experience same-sex attraction have been mocked or driven away by people who called themselves Christians. That is sin, and it should be confessed.

The answer

The Bible's sexual ethic is not built on a list of forbidden acts but on a picture of marriage. Jesus went back to creation: “he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?” (Matthew 19:4-5). Sex belongs within the lifelong covenant of one man and one woman. Everything outside it, whether adultery, fornication or homosexual acts, falls short, and Scripture names each of them (Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10).

That standard condemns everyone. Jesus said that lust in the heart is adultery already. No one is outside the reach of the law, and no one is outside the reach of grace. Paul writes to a church full of people who had lived the very lives he lists: “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11).

Is it outdated? The ethic was counter-cultural when it was given. Greco-Roman society tolerated much that the early church refused. It has always been out of step with some age; that is not the same as being wrong. And Jesus offers more than a rule. He offers Himself, who “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

Many have found that. Rosaria Butterfield, a tenured professor at Syracuse University who lived as a lesbian, described her conversion through a pastor's patient friendship in The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert.³² A guest on my show told her own story.

Brittany Sivels told her story on The King Is Coming Show (TKIC #52): two decades in homosexuality and lust, and then, in her telling, a three-day fast that changed everything. Watch it in her own words: youtube.com/watch?v=JJ0SsSLQgEg Brittany's account of what happened to her, shared as her testimony — weigh it for yourself.

In conversation

Lead with the person, not the issue. Listen to their story. Be honest that you are a sinner too. And be clear: Jesus said to the woman taken in adultery, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8:11). Both halves matter.

15. "The Bible is outdated and irrelevant"

What the objection gets right

The Bible was written in a world without electricity, democracy or the internet. Some of its laws, such as the ceremonial laws of Israel, are no longer binding on Christians, and the New Testament says so. Reading it well takes care.

The answer

Technology changes; people do not. The Bible speaks to what has not changed: guilt, death, pride, lust, envy, loneliness, the search for meaning, the fear of judgment. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). That diagnosis was not outdated in the twentieth century, the bloodiest in history, and it is not outdated now.

The Bible's moral core is as fresh as ever: “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Micah 6:8). Jesus' summary of the law is still the best summary anyone has given: love God with all your heart, and your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:37-39).

It is true that not every command applies the same way now. The sacrifices, food laws and priestly rituals of the law of Moses pointed to Christ and were fulfilled in Him; Jesus said, “I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matthew 5:17). The book of Hebrews explains how. That is not the Bible becoming outdated. It is the Bible telling one story that moves forward to Christ.

And God does not change: “For I am the LORD, I change not” (Malachi 3:6). And of the Son: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). The word of a changeless God is not outdated because the calendar has moved.

In conversation

Ask what in the Bible feels irrelevant. Then ask what they think about guilt, death, and whether life has a purpose. Those are the Bible's subjects, and they are never out of date.

These are the heaviest objections. They are asked in philosophy classrooms, but more often in hospitals and at gravesides. They need answers that are true and that do not hurt the hurting more.

16. "Evil and suffering disprove God"

What the objection gets right

The amount of suffering in the world is staggering, and much of it seems pointless. Any honest believer has felt the force of this. The Bible itself asks the question again and again, in Job, in the Psalms, in Habakkuk.

The answer

The objection has two forms. The logical form says an all-good, all-powerful God and evil cannot both exist. Lactantius reported it in the name of Epicurus around AD 313: God “either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling.”³³ J. L. Mackie restated it in 1955.³⁴ Alvin Plantinga answered it in 1974: if God has a good reason to allow evil, such as creating beings who can freely love, there is no contradiction.³⁵ Even many atheist philosophers now grant that the strict logical version fails.

The evidential form says that so much evil makes God unlikely. Here the Christian has several things to say.

Evil needs a standard. To call the world's suffering evil rather than merely unpleasant, you need a real standard of good. Without God, the universe has, in Richard Dawkins' words, "no design, no purpose, no evil and no good."³⁶ The objection uses a moral law that only God can supply.

We cannot see the whole. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD” (Isaiah 55:8). Joseph's brothers sold him for evil, and God used it to save many lives (Genesis 50:20). That we cannot see God's reason does not show He has none.

The Bible explains why the world is broken. The world was made good, and fell through sin (Romans 5:12). Creation itself was subjected to futility and “groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (Romans 8:22). The Christian is not surprised that the world is broken. He would be surprised if it were not.

God has entered the suffering and will end it. The cross is God's answer, not in a sentence but in an act. And the end is sure: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death” (Revelation 21:4).

In conversation

When someone raises this in grief, do not argue. Sit with them. Weep with them, as Jesus wept at Lazarus' tomb (John 11:35). The arguments are for another day. When it is raised as a debate, ask what makes evil evil, if there is no God.

17. "What about natural disasters? No human chose those"

What the objection gets right

The free-will answer does not obviously cover earthquakes, cancer or tsunamis. No one chose them. Children die of diseases that no human caused.

The answer

Scripture does not separate "moral evil" and "natural evil" as neatly as philosophers do. It says that when man fell, the creation fell with him. God said to Adam, “cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee” (Genesis 3:17-18). Paul says, “For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope” (Romans 8:20). Natural evil is the world groaning under the curse of human sin.

That does not mean each disaster is a judgment on the people it strikes. Jesus was told about eighteen people killed when a tower fell in Siloam, and He said: “think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:4-5). Disasters are not a scoreboard of who is worse. They are a warning to all of us that life is short and judgment is real.

And they are not the end. The same passage in Romans says creation was subjected “in hope,” “Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). The broken world will be made new.

History shows something else, too. When plague struck Alexandria in the third century, the bishop Dionysius wrote that while pagans “deserted those who began to be sick, and fled from their dearest friends,” most of the Christians “were unsparing in their exceeding love and brotherly kindness,” caring for the sick even at the cost of their lives. The historian Eusebius preserved his letter.³⁷ The sociologist Rodney Stark argued that this care helped the church grow.³⁸ Disasters do not show that God does not care. They show what His people are for.

In conversation

Ask what they would expect to see if the Bible's account were true: a good world, fallen, groaning, awaiting renewal. Then ask if that is not exactly what we see.

18. "Eternal hell for finite sins is unjust"

What the objection gets right

Hell is the most terrible doctrine in the Bible, and it should never be spoken of lightly or with relish. A Christian who can talk about hell without grief has not understood it. Many people have also been taught distorted pictures of hell that come more from medieval paintings than from Scripture.

The answer

The Bible teaches hell plainly, and Jesus taught it most of all. He said the wicked “shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal” (Matthew 25:46): the same word, "everlasting" and "eternal," for both. He described it as a place “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:44). He told of a rich man “in torments” in hell (Luke 16:23), across “a great gulf fixed” (Luke 16:26). Paul writes of those who “shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). Revelation ends the story: “whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15). This paper will not soften what Jesus did not soften.

Why is it just? First, the seriousness of a crime depends partly on whom it is against. To strike a stranger is wrong; to strike a king, in the old law, was treason. Sin is against an infinitely holy God, and its guilt is not measured only by how long it took to commit. Second, those in hell do not stop sinning; Scripture shows no repentance there, only the rich man's wish that someone else be warned. C. S. Lewis put it this way: "I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside."³⁹ That is part of the truth. But Scripture is clear that hell is also God's active sentence: “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).

Third, the judgment will be exactly just. People are judged “according to their works” (Revelation 20:12). Jesus said the servant who knew his master's will and did not do it “shall be beaten with many stripes,” but he that knew not “shall be beaten with few stripes” (Luke 12:47-48). There will be no injustice at the judgment of God.

Most of all, God does not want anyone there: “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezekiel 33:11). He is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). And He has done the most that could be done: He sent His Son to bear the punishment Himself. The real question is not why God judges sin, but why He offers mercy at all.

In conversation

Speak of hell with tears, not triumph. Then speak of the cross. The person who fears hell is closer to the kingdom than the person who laughs at it.

19. "What about people who never heard?"

What the objection gets right

Billions of people have lived and died without hearing the name of Jesus. If salvation is only through Him, this seems to put them at a terrible disadvantage through no fault of their own. The question deserves an answer, not a shrug.

The answer

Start with what is certain. God is just, and will do right: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). No one will be condemned for rejecting a message they never heard. People are judged for their response to the light they had.

Everyone has some light. Creation shows God's power, so that men are “without excuse” (Romans 1:20). Conscience shows God's law, “written in their hearts” (Romans 2:15). And Scripture says no one, anywhere, has lived up to the light they had: “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). Every person needs a Saviour, whether they have heard of Him or not.

God seeks out those who seek Him. Paul told the Athenians that God set the nations in their places “That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us” (Acts 17:27). When the Roman officer Cornelius prayed and gave alms, God sent an angel to tell him to send for Peter, who brought him the gospel (Acts 10:30-33). Peter concluded, “God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him” (Acts 10:34-35). The pattern in Scripture is that God brings the gospel to seekers, not that He saves them without it.

Beyond that, Scripture does not answer every speculation, and we should not invent answers it does not give. What it does give is a command: “how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent?” (Romans 10:14-15). The answer to the unreached is not a theory but a missionary.

In conversation

Gently turn it: "That's a real question, and I trust God to be just with them. But you have heard. What will you do with Him?"

20. "A God who demands blood sacrifice is barbaric"

What the objection gets right

The idea of a father requiring the death of his son sounds monstrous when it is put that way, and some preaching has made it sound like an angry God being calmed down by an innocent victim. The charge is sometimes phrased as "cosmic child abuse."

The answer

That picture gets the cross wrong in three ways.

The Son was not an unwilling victim. Jesus said, “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again” (John 10:18). The Father and the Son are one in will: “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). The cross is not one person punishing another against his will. It is God Himself, in the person of the Son, choosing to bear what we deserved.

It was love, not rage. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). God did not need to be persuaded to love us. The cross is how His love met our guilt without pretending the guilt was not there.

Sin is real and deadly. The Bible says that “without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22) because sin is not a small stain but a capital offence: “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). The sacrifices of the Old Testament taught Israel, year after year, that sin costs a life. They pointed forward to the one sacrifice that could actually take it away. Isaiah saw it: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).

A judge who simply ignored crime would not be loving; he would be corrupt. At the cross God remained just and became the justifier of those who believe (Romans 3:26). If you can think of a better way for a holy God to forgive guilty people without lying about their guilt, it would be worth hearing. Christians have never found one.

In conversation

Ask, "Do you think sin is serious?" If so, someone has to bear its cost. The cross says God bore it Himself. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).

For many people, the biggest obstacle to Christ is Christians. These five objections are about the church's record, its claims and its people. They require more confession than defence.

21. "Christians are all hypocrites"

What the objection gets right

Many are, at least in part. A Barna Group study of young Americans outside the church, reported in 2007, found that 85 percent saw present-day Christianity as hypocritical.⁴⁰ The authors, both Christians, did not dismiss the finding. That is a fair charge.

The answer

No one condemned religious hypocrisy more fiercely than Jesus. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity” (Matthew 23:27-28). He warned that some who called Him "Lord, Lord" would hear, “I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23). The objection agrees with Jesus.

But two things should be distinguished. A hypocrite pretends to be what he is not. A struggling Christian admits he is not yet what he should be. The church has never claimed to be a society of good people. It is a hospital for sinners: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:8-9).

And the presence of fakes does not prove there is nothing real. Counterfeit money exists because real money is worth copying. The question is not whether some Christians are hypocrites, but whether Jesus is who He said. You will not be judged for their hypocrisy, but for your response to Him.

In conversation

Agree first. Apologize for the wrongs, if you have been part of them. Then say, "Don't judge Him by us. Look at Him." Jesus also said, “first cast out the beam out of thine own eye” (Matthew 7:5). That applies to all of us.

22. "Religion causes wars: think of the Crusades"

What the objection gets right

People have fought, killed and persecuted in the name of Christ. The Crusades included massacres, and the wars of religion after the Reformation devastated Europe. Christians must not deny or excuse this.

The answer

Jesus did not command it. When Peter drew a sword to defend Him, Jesus said, “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword” (Matthew 26:52). Before Pilate He said, “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight” (John 18:36). He commanded, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you” (Matthew 5:44). Paul wrote, “Recompense to no man evil for evil” (Romans 12:17) and “avenge not yourselves” (Romans 12:19). When Christians have killed to spread or defend the faith, they have disobeyed their Lord, not followed Him.

It is also worth being honest about the other side. Most wars in history have been fought over land, power, wealth and nationalism, with religion often a banner rather than a cause. And the twentieth century showed that removing God does not remove violence. Regimes that made atheism official policy, such as the Soviet Union, persecuted churches and killed their own people on an enormous scale. The problem is not religion. It is the human heart, which Scripture describes exactly: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9).

The faith also gave the world hospitals, care for the poor, and the conviction that every person bears God's image. When it is true to its Lord, it produces people like the Christians of plague-stricken Alexandria, who nursed the dying when others fled.

In conversation

Don't defend what was indefensible. Say, "Those who did that disobeyed Jesus." Then ask whether the problem is God, or the human heart that God says needs to be made new.

23. "The church covers up abuse and scandal"

What the objection gets right

It has, in many places and denominations. Leaders have abused children and the vulnerable, and institutions have protected the abusers rather than the victims. Famous ministers have fallen into sexual sin and financial fraud. This has done great harm, and the harm is real.

The answer

Scripture condemns it in the strongest terms. Jesus said, “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6). Peter wrote that “judgment must begin at the house of God” (1 Peter 4:17). God does not cover for His church; He judges it first.

The Bible also gives the civil authorities the duty to punish crime: the ruler is “the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil” (Romans 13:4). That means abuse is not a matter to be handled quietly inside a church. It must be reported to the police. A church that hides a crime against a child is disobeying Romans 13 and defying Matthew 18.

If you have been hurt by someone in a church, what was done to you was not of God, and you were not wrong to be angry. Jesus is not the one who failed you. He is the one who said a millstone would be better for the man who did it. He is also the one who came “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10), and He can be trusted even when His people could not.

In conversation

Listen. Believe the person enough to take it seriously. If a crime may have happened, encourage reporting it. Do not defend an institution at the cost of a victim. Later, when they are ready, the question of Christ can be separated from the failure of those who used His name.

24. "You're only a Christian because of where you were born"

What the objection gets right

Where and how we are raised shapes what we believe. A child born in Saudi Arabia is far more likely to be Muslim, and one born in Thailand to be Buddhist, than one born in Alabama. Many people who call themselves Christian have never examined the faith; they simply inherited it.

The answer

How someone came to a belief does not decide whether it is true. That mistake has a name in logic: the genetic fallacy. A child raised in a family of mathematicians may believe two plus two is four because his parents told him, and he is still right. The question is not where you learned a belief, but whether there are good reasons for it.

The objection also cuts both ways. If belief is just an accident of birth, so is unbelief: a person raised in a secular home in Europe is far more likely to be an atheist. Then the skeptic's view is also an accident of birth. If we are to get past our upbringing, the only way is to look at the evidence itself, which is what Christianity invites.

And inherited religion is not the same as saving faith. Scripture warns that many who say "Lord, Lord" are not known by Him (Matthew 7:21-23). Christianity has spread most where it was not the faith of the culture: in the Roman Empire under persecution, and in our own time across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Many have come to Christ from other faiths at great cost; Nabeel Qureshi, raised a devout Muslim, told how he examined the evidence and came to faith in Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus.⁴¹ Others discover that a religion they were raised in was never a real relationship with Christ.

Criselle Mendoza told her story on The King Is Coming Show (TKIC #51): baptized at twelve in Iglesia Ni Cristo, and yet, in her telling, she was not saved until 2025. Watch it in her own words: youtube.com/watch?v=_7vjNP6A_z8 Criselle's account of what happened to her, shared as her testimony — weigh it for yourself.

In conversation

Agree that upbringing matters. Then say, "That's why I don't want you to believe because of me or your parents. I want you to look at Jesus for yourself." Offer to read a Gospel together.

25. "All religions lead to God, and it's arrogant to say otherwise"

What the objection gets right

Christians have sometimes been arrogant, treating people of other faiths with contempt. People of other religions are often sincere, kind and devout, and many of their moral teachings overlap with Scripture's. Humility is required.

The answer

The claim that all religions lead to God sounds humble, but it is not. It says that every religion that claims to be uniquely true, including Christianity, Islam and Orthodox Judaism, is wrong about that. That is a very large claim to make about billions of people's beliefs, and it is usually made without studying what those religions teach.

The religions do not say the same thing. They disagree on whether God is personal, whether He is one or many or none, what is wrong with humanity, and how it is put right. On one historical fact they flatly contradict each other: Christianity says Jesus was crucified, and the Qur'an says He was not (Qur'an 4:157).⁴² Both cannot be true. Sincerity does not make something true; a person can be sincerely wrong.

Jesus made an exclusive claim: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). His apostles repeated it: “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). It is not arrogant to repeat what He said. It would be arrogant to change it. And the claim is not "our group is better." It is "we are all sinners, and God has opened one door, and it is open to all." “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 45:22).

The difference shows in what each path demands. Most religions offer a ladder: follow the path, earn your way. The gospel says the ladder cannot be climbed, and God came down: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). Some of my guests walked a long way down other paths before they found that.

Mike Shreve told his story on The King Is Coming Show (TKIC #46): a kundalini yoga guru who, in his telling, was born again on a Tampa roadside. Watch it in his own words: youtube.com/watch?v=oqAq58bDC4k Mike's account of what happened to him, shared as his testimony — weigh it for yourself.

In conversation

Ask, "Which religions do you think are true? What do they teach about Jesus?" Then show, gently, that they disagree. Respect the person; don't pretend the disagreement isn't there.

Underneath many intellectual objections are personal ones. Sometimes the argument is the real issue; sometimes it is a wall built around something else. These five are the objections people often hold closest.

26. "Faith is blind; I only believe what I can prove"

What the objection gets right

Some Christians have spoken of faith as if it meant believing against the evidence, or not asking questions. Mark Twain's famous joke, “it was the schoolboy who said ‘Faith is believing what you know ain't so’” lands because some believers live that way.⁴³

The answer

The Bible does not ask for blind faith. It defines faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is trust in what God has shown, about what we cannot yet see. John wrote his Gospel so that readers would have grounds: “these are written, that ye might believe” (John 20:31). Paul “reasoned with them out of the scriptures” (Acts 17:2). The Christian is told to give "a reason" for his hope (1 Peter 3:15).

And nobody lives by proof alone. You cannot prove that the world existed five minutes ago, that other people have minds, or that your memory is reliable. You trust these on good grounds. The statement "I only believe what can be proved" cannot itself be proved. Everyone lives by trust; the question is whether the trust is well placed.

Faith, in the Bible, is like a man who has examined a bridge and then walks across it. The examination is not the faith; the walking is. But the walking is reasonable because of the examination. Christianity invites you to examine the bridge, especially the resurrection, and then walk.

In conversation

Ask, "What do you trust without proof?" Everyone has an answer. Then ask what evidence would make trust in Christ reasonable, and offer to look at it together.

27. "I'm a good person; I don't need religion"

What the objection gets right

Many people who are not Christians are kinder, more honest and more generous than many who are. Being religious does not make anyone good, and Jesus Himself said so.

The answer

The question is not whether you are good compared with others, but whether you are good enough for God. Jesus summed up His standard: love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:37-39). No one has kept that for a day. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Even Isaiah, a godly prophet, wrote, “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6).

Good deeds cannot pay for bad ones. A man on trial for theft cannot point to all the days he did not steal. The law says, “by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Galatians 2:16). That is not because good works do not matter. They matter greatly, but as the fruit of a forgiven life, not the price of one.

Christianity is not religion in the sense of a system for good people to get better. It is rescue for people who cannot save themselves: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” (1 Timothy 1:15). The person who thinks he does not need it is like a man who thinks he does not need a doctor because he feels fine, while the scan shows the disease. Jesus said He came for the sick.

In conversation

Don't argue that they are bad. Ask, "If God's standard is to love Him with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself, have you kept it?" Let them answer honestly. Then tell them about grace.

28. "I'm too bad for God to accept me"

What the objection gets right

The person who says this is often more honest about sin than the person who says Objection 27. They know they have done real wrong, and they feel its weight. That is the beginning of wisdom, not the end of hope.

The answer

No one is too bad for God, because salvation was never about being good enough. Paul called himself the chief of sinners; he had hunted Christians and “beyond measure” persecuted the church (Galatians 1:13). David was an adulterer and a murderer, and wrote, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4), and was forgiven. A thief dying on a cross next to Jesus said, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom,” and Jesus said, “To day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:42-43).

The invitation is wide: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18). Jesus said, “him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37). In the parable of the prodigal son, the father saw his son “a great way off,” and “had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). The father ran.

What God asks is not that you clean yourself up first, but that you come: turn from your sin and trust Christ. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:7).

In conversation

This is not an objection to argue with but a wound to tend. Read Luke 15 or Luke 23:39-43 together. Tell them about Paul. Let them know that the fact that they feel their sin is itself a sign that God is drawing them.

29. "Christianity is just a crutch for people who need comfort"

What the objection gets right

Many people do come to faith in hard times, and faith does bring comfort. Sigmund Freud argued in The Future of an Illusion (1927) that religious belief is an illusion born of wish-fulfilment, the longing for a protective father in a frightening world.⁴⁴ If some believers hold their faith only for comfort, the charge sticks to them.

The answer

That a belief is comforting does not make it false. A man lost at sea is comforted by the sight of a lifeboat; that does not mean the lifeboat is imaginary. The question is whether it is real.

The argument also works in reverse. If believers may want God to exist, unbelievers may want Him not to exist, because a God who judges is uncomfortable. Scripture says exactly that: “men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). Wishes can push either way. That is why the matter must be settled by evidence, not by guessing at motives.

And the Christian faith is a poor candidate for wish-fulfilment. A religion invented for comfort would not require repentance, forbid revenge, command love for enemies, warn of hell, or promise followers that “In the world ye shall have tribulation” (John 16:33). The God of the Bible is not a tame projection of our wishes. He confronts us, often in ways we would never have chosen.

Augustine, who pursued pleasure and philosophy for years before his conversion, began his Confessions by saying to God, “Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.”⁴⁵ If we were made for God, it is no surprise that we long for Him. A longing does not prove the thing longed for, but it is what you would expect if it exists. As for the crutch: Jesus did not come to give strong people a crutch. He came to raise the dead.

In conversation

Agree that faith comforts. Then ask, "Is it true?" That is the only question that matters. Comfort built on a lie would be worthless; comfort built on the risen Christ is not.

30. "Maybe later; it doesn't really matter right now"

What the objection gets right

Nobody should be pressured into a decision they do not understand. Faith forced by fear or manipulation is not real faith, and this paper has tried to apply no pressure. It is also true that most people have more pressing things on their minds than eternity on any given day.

The answer

This may be the most common objection of all, though it is rarely said aloud. It is not an argument against Christianity; it is a decision to put it off. And Scripture speaks to it directly.

Life is uncertain. “Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth” (Proverbs 27:1). James asks, “For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” (James 4:14). Jesus told of a rich man who planned bigger barns for many years of ease, and God said to him, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee” (Luke 12:20).

And what follows is certain: “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). That is why the Bible puts the invitation in the present tense: “behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2), and, “To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Hebrews 3:15).

There is a sober example in Acts. When Paul preached the resurrection in Athens, “some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter” (Acts 17:32). Later, King Agrippa told him, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian” (Acts 26:28). We are not told that either ever came back. "Later" has a way of becoming "never."

If the claims of Christ are false, they do not matter at all. If they are true, nothing matters more. They cannot be merely somewhat important. And if they matter that much, the time to look into them is now.

In conversation

Respect their freedom; never manipulate. But be honest: "I'm not going to pressure you. I just don't want you to put off the most important question there is." Then leave the door open, and keep praying.

This part is for believers. Knowing answers is not the same as helping people. Many Christians have won arguments and lost friends. Scripture tells us not only what to say, but how.

Principles for the conversation

Listen first. “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him” (Proverbs 18:13). Find out what the person actually believes and why. Often the stated objection is not the real one.

Be gentle. “And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth” (2 Timothy 2:24-25). Repentance is God's gift. Your job is to be faithful, not forceful.

Answer the person in front of you. “And of some have compassion, making a difference” (Jude 1:22). The grieving mother asking about suffering needs something different from the philosophy student. The angry ex-churchgoer needs something different from the curious friend.

Admit what you don't know. "I don't know, but I'll find out" is an honest answer, and it builds more trust than a bluff.

Keep a soft voice. “A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger” (Proverbs 15:1).

Bring it back to Jesus. Most objections, followed far enough, come back to one question: who is He, and did He rise? Paul's method in Thessalonica was to show from Scripture “that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ” (Acts 17:3).

Pray. Arguments do not change hearts. “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him” (1 Corinthians 2:14). Only God opens eyes. Pray before, during and after.

Sample conversations

What follows are illustrations, not transcripts of real conversations. They show the shape of a good exchange: listening, granting what is true, asking questions, pointing to Christ. Use your own words.

When a friend says, "There's no evidence"

Suppose a coworker says over lunch, "I just don't see any evidence for God."

You might answer: "That's fair to say. Can I ask what kind of evidence you'd be looking for?" Listen. If they say "something scientific," you might say: "I don't think God is the kind of thing a lab can test, any more than a lab can test whether history happened. But there are things that point to Him: the fact that the universe had a beginning, how finely it's set up for life, and the fact that we all know some things are really wrong. And the main thing Christianity rests on is a historical claim, that Jesus rose from the dead. Would you be willing to look at the evidence for that with me sometime?"

The goal is not to finish the case over one lunch. It is to open a door.

When a friend says, "Christians are hypocrites"

Suppose a neighbour says, "I tried church. Everyone there was fake."

You might answer: "I'm sorry. Honestly, I'm a hypocrite sometimes too. Jesus was harder on religious hypocrites than anyone. Can I ask what happened?" Listen. Then: "I don't want to defend what you went through. But I'd hate for the worst Christians you've met to keep you from Jesus. What do you think of Him, apart from them?"

When a friend says, "I'm too far gone"

Suppose a friend confides, "God couldn't want someone like me, after what I've done."

You might answer: "Can I tell you about Paul? He helped kill Christians, and God made him an apostle. And one of the men crucified with Jesus was a criminal who asked to be remembered, and Jesus said, 'To day shalt thou be with me in paradise' (Luke 23:43). You're not too far for Him. He's not waiting for you to clean up first. He's waiting for you to come."

When a friend is grieving

Suppose a friend has lost a child and asks, "Where was God?"

You might say very little. "I don't know why this happened. I'm so sorry. Jesus wept at His friend's grave, and I think He weeps with you." Then stay. Bring a meal. Come back next week. The arguments can wait for another day, if they are ever needed. What is needed now is presence.

Keeping the conversation going

Most people do not come to faith in one conversation. When a talk ends, you might say: "Thanks for being honest with me. I'd love to keep talking about this. Would you be willing to read the Gospel of John, or Mark, and tell me what you think of Jesus?" Then follow up. Pray for them by name. Be the kind of friend whose life makes the gospel believable.

Thirty objections, from the existence of God to "maybe later." Some are intellectual, some moral, some personal. Each has a real point to grant, and each has an answer that is better than many people have been told.

Where the objections lead

Follow almost any objection far enough, and it comes back to one person. Does God exist? Look at the man who claimed to be God and rose. Is the Bible reliable? Look at how He treated it. Is God good, given suffering and hell? Look at the cross, where God took suffering and judgment on Himself. Are Christians hypocrites? Look at Him, not at us.

That is why Paul could stake everything on one event: “And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). And it is why he could say, before a king, that “this thing was not done in a corner” (Acts 26:26). The evidence is public. You are invited to examine it.

A next step

If you are a skeptic, here is an honest step you can take: read one of the Gospels from beginning to end. Mark is the shortest; John was written “that ye might believe” (John 20:31). Read it free in the 1611 Reader at kylelauriano.com/library. Ask one question as you read: who is this man? And if you are willing, pray the prayer of the father in Mark 9, who wanted to believe and wasn't sure he could: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24).

If you are a believer, be ready. Learn the answers, but more than that, love the people who ask the questions. Listen. Grant what is true. Point to Christ. Pray. Leave the rest to God.

An invitation

The gospel is simple and it is urgent. We have all sinned. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, and rose again the third day. God now “commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31). Turn from your sin and trust Christ. When the first hearers asked what to do, Peter said, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38).

There is no pressure here, only an open door. “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Free truth, no pressure. My story, and more, is at kylelauriano.com/about.