Five Common Objections to Christianity

“What objections are you most afraid that people will bring up when you share the gospel with them?” I asked this question to a group of church friends several years back in an effort to understand why Christians hesitate to share truth with others. My friends replied with several objections that Christians might encounter in witnessing discussions. Here are five common objections, along with the way I try to respond if these challenges arise.

First Objection: A loving God wouldn’t send people to hell!

“You thought that I was one like yourself.” This is how God replies to his opponents in Psalm 50:21. We assume that God’s love is like our love. Since we would never send people to hell, neither would God.

We often confuse acceptance and tolerance with love, but biblical love is an altogether different thing. Whereas acceptance and toleration is vague, apathetic, and tries to ‘get along’ with everyone, biblical love is solid, strong, and clings to what is good while rejecting evil. God, being the definition of biblical love, is under obligation to reject evil, and that includes unrepentant sinners. We see the goodness of God in that he offers us hope and salvation.

What option does God have when, after sacrificing his own child and putting him through the ordeal of the bloody cross, a rebellious sinner refuses to submit, and continues to reject his salvation? When such a person is acting as an agent of rebellion in the very world that God created to demonstrate his goodness and greatness? Love is not morally neutral. Love has a backbone. If I love Jews, I must hate the holocaust. If God loves his Son, he surely cannot ignore the ongoing disrespect of sinners who refuse to acknowledge the Son.

Second Objection: Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?

I’ve dealt with this objection in much more detail here, but let me summarize the approach. Just like the love discussed above, we are not morally neutral either. Because of our connection with Adam, we enter this world with a depraved sin nature– all of us. Not only do we inherit guilt, we also develop it as we practice sin each day. This means that no one is a good person. We deserve nothing from God, and yet all of us receive more than we deserve. The bad things that happen in our lives are stirred up by Satan, and yet they are under the control of God. He actively permits these things to occur to us in order to show us our need of him and the dreadful effects of sin.

Ultimately, God will show himself to be more than equal to the evil things of this world. The greatest crime that ever happened in the history of humanity is the death of Christ. Yet God used the death of Christ to bring salvation to the world. If the cross can be turned by God for good, then God can turn anything for good. This does not mean that it will be obvious in this world. But as Paul says in Romans 8:28, “And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

Third Objection: Why did God make man since he knew we would sin?

Because He has great and glorious purposes which he has not revealed to us. We know some of the reasons why. He intends to show the glory of Christ. “All things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16). God ultimately created everything as a way to reveal his own greatness. (Which he should- it wouldn’t be right for such greatness to be hidden!). “You created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

Ultimately, God doesn’t really tell us more than this. It’s enough for us to know that he has a good reason in all that he does. Attempts to pry into his reasoning beyond this are likely the result of human pride and don’t help our faith.

Fourth Objection: I don’t believe in the Bible.

What if I say that I don’t believe in guns to a person who is about to shoot me. Will that change their ability to shoot? The Bible is a spiritual weapon that pierces the conscience and brings conviction of sin, as well as a message of hope to sinners. Even if someone doesn’t believe in the Bible, you can still tell them the message of the Bible.

Many atheists and agnostics are deeply convinced of the purity of Jesus’ teaching when they read the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. They recognize that it contains something that is spiritual and other-worldly. If someone says that they don’t believe the Bible, ask if you can still share its message as something that they could consider, whether or not they believe it. Then describe the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, and point out their own need for a Savior. You might ask about their lives and show how Jesus provides them with hope in what they are experiencing.

Fifth Objection: I believe in evolution.

The Bible clearly teaches in a literal six day creation, but if you make this the focus of your evangelistic discussion you are likely to get sidetracked from the gospel. Because this is such an important topic (and even Jesus believed in the historicity of Adam and Eve as seen in Matthew 19:4), some people will try to object by simply mentioning evolution as an incontrovertible fact.

In order to show that evolution does not invalidate the biblical story, without getting into the details of evolution, I find it helpful to ask “where did it all come from originally?” Whether you believe in evolution, the big bang, or creationism, there has to be an original cause that set the events in motion. This is elementary: every effect has a cause. Evolution does not explain why evolution happened. If there is a great mover who set the events of the world in order, then we have already made progress in the idea that there is a godlike being.

In this way, you can easily move past the evolution objection and continue in your discussion of the gospel. However, I think it is helpful to throw out a few shots at the idea of evolution itself. 

Without delving into a full discussion of the topic, you can mention the two unprovable tenets of evolution: 

(1) abiogenesis – the idea that life comes from nonlife. 

(2) Change from ‘kind’ to ‘kind’ – there is no fossil evidence (or any other evidence) of transition species. 

These are core tenets of evolution, but there is no evidence to support either. It is helpful to weaken the foundations of evolution, since faith in the Bible will require a person to reconsider their own ‘scientific’ beliefs about the origin of life. Still, I do not recommend focusing on this during a gospel conversation.

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