Why Men Do Not Believe

(While this study is meant to be primarily a study of those who reject Christianity on the grounds of disbelief some of what is said  would apply equally to those who call themselves Christians but hold to false doctrine in one realm or another.)

Paul in writing to the Thessalonians asked the brethren to "pray for us that the word of the Lord may spread rapidly and be glorified, just as it did also with you; and that we may be delivered from perverse and evil men; for not all have faith." (2 Thess. 3:2 NAS) The question I want to deal with in this article is why do men not believe?  This is a question that has bothered me over the years for it seems to me only natural to believe.  Yet, I cannot deny what is obvious to all, just as Paul said, "not all have faith."  What does the Bible have to say about the reasons for unbelief?

Paul said of himself, in talking about his past, how he was a persecutor of Christians and then says "I was shown mercy, because I acted ignorantly in unbelief." (1 Tim.1:13 NAS) Thus there was a time in Paul's life when he was an unbeliever.  Yet, Paul, then known as Saul, was an honest man for he says elsewhere in Acts 23:1 while standing before the Council or Sanhedrin that "I have lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day" (NAS) or, as the NKJV puts it, "in all good conscience."

It would be easy to say unbelievers are all dishonest but we have already shown that will not work for Paul's case proves that some unbelievers are honest, perhaps the majority, for who can say?  Paul, or Saul, was on the scene quite early in days of the beginning of the Christian religion.  In Acts 7 we are told that those who stoned Stephen "laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man name Saul." (Acts 7:58 NAS)  And then we read in chapter 8 the first verse that "Saul was in hearty agreement with putting him to death." (NAS)  This was in the very earliest days of Christianity.

One wonders why Saul was blinded to the miracles that were occurring in Jerusalem?  Working back from Acts chapter 7, back from the time of Stephen's stoning, we find in Acts 6:8 (NAS), "Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people."  The footnote to verse 8 in the NAS says "attesting miracles".  Is it likely Saul was totally unaware of these, of what had been going on?  Was he unaware of how Ananias and Sapphira had been miraculously struck down?  Was he unaware of Peter healing the lame man?  Was he unaware of the veil of the temple being rent on the day of Christ's crucifixion?  Were the priests denying that?  More questions could be asked.

It is highly unlikely that Saul was totally unaware of everything that had been transpiring.  He says in Acts 22:3 that he was raised in Jerusalem. That does not necessarily imply he was an eyewitness but one is reminded of what Cleopas said to Jesus, unknowingly, on the road to Emmaus, "Are You the only one visiting Jerusalem and unaware of the things which have happened here in these days?" (Luke 24:18 NAS)  That was said before the disciples generally knew that Jesus had risen from the dead but one wonders if much the same could not be said of Saul in the days of which we speak.  Are you the only one who does not know of the miraculous events occurring here in the name of Jesus Christ?

Yet, Saul was an honest unbeliever.  My point is this, here we have a man with a world of evidence before him but he is not willing to accept it?  Why not?  How do we explain it?  I cannot except for one statement that Paul made later. 

I refer to Gal. 1:13-14 (NAS), "For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure, and tried to destroy it; and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions."   Vine says the Greek word here for zealous means "an uncompromising partisan".  Thayer says one burning with zeal.  Not just zealous but burning with zeal.

With unbelievers who are truly deeply religious but are not able to see the truth on matters clearly revealed in God's word the only conclusion one can come to is that zeal has blinded the mind and heart. 

Paul says in Rom. 10:2 of his fellow countrymen, "I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge." (NAS)  They were where he once was - religious but unbelievers – zealots. 

To me in looking back over all of this the one lesson that ought to be burned into our minds is that zeal does not make right.  Zeal proves nothing about truth or error.  The Catholics were zealous while burning men at the stake as Saul was in agreeing that Stephen ought to be put to death.  Many other examples could be given.  Don't trust zeal.

Extreme zeal blinds.  Zeal can blind a man to the truth, giving him tunnel vision, all the while destroying his ability to reason.  So, one of the things that prevents men from believing is a zeal for the error they hold.

This zeal is a zeal for a false religion.  We see this in radical Islam but it might be a zeal for science (evolution), or humanism, or secularism.  One definition for religion is simply "a cause, principle, or belief held to with faith and ardor." (The Merriam Webster Dictionary)  Those who do not believe in God believe in something and whatever that is becomes to them a form of religion.  For some it was communism in years gone by, for others Nazism.  The Bible even describes covetousness as being idolatry thus a God that is worshipped.

We also learn from Paul's case that truth is not dependent on my feelings about it.  I may well be totally opposed to the truth in all good conscience but that will not make my error into truth nor will it turn the truth into error.  Jacob believed a lie and was sure Joseph was dead.  His feelings did not make the error truth.  Trust your feelings and you risk your eternal life.  Trust what God's word says and not your feelings about it.  Trust and obey for that is the way.  Yet, I think there is little doubt that in religion today feelings prevail over what is plainly written.  How I feel about it is what seems to matter.  It is also what will destroy.  It is not how we feel about a matter but rather it is what does God say about the matter - that is the thing that counts and makes the difference.

Men also fail to believe when their minds will not allow them to think other worldly.  The truth is incomprehensible to them, beyond belief.  They can only believe what they see or know with their senses.  It is kind of like the way most people feel about UFO's just as a wild example.  It just cannot possibly be so.  It is incomprehensible.

A good Bible example of this was when Jesus went back to his hometown – Nazareth.  The Bible reads in Matt. 13:54-58 (NAS), "And coming to His home town He began teaching them in their synagogue, so that they became astonished, and said, 'Where did this man get this wisdom, and these miraculous powers?  Is not this the carpenter's son?  Is not His mother called Mary, and His brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?  And His sisters, are they not all with us?  Where then did this man get all these things?'  And they took offense at Him.  But Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is not without honor except in his home town, and in his own household.'  And He did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief."

They said of him, "Where did this man get this wisdom, and these miraculous powers?"  That should have been real easy to answer if you are willing to admit the man did miracles.  However, all human reasoning was against Jesus being associated with deity in any way for they had known him and his family all of their life.  It made no sense to them.  It just could not be.  It was impossible.

Another example was when Jesus was resurrected.  You remember when Mary Magdalene saw Jesus after he was resurrected and then went back to the disciples and told them.  The Bible says, "They refused to believe it." (Mark 16:11 NAS)  Then when the two who were with Jesus on the road to Emmaus came back and reported the same to the disciples, after Mary had, the Bible says, "they did not believe them either." (Mark 16:13 NAS)

They were like Saul on the road to Damascus; they had to personally experience a miracle to believe.  Jesus had to come into their presence and when he did he rebuked them for their unbelief (Mark 16:14).  Men do not rise from the dead.  How is it possible?  It was beyond the realm of all human reason and experience, too wild to imagine. 

What do we learn from these two examples - Jesus' trip to his home town and the disciple's refusal to believe the resurrection?  We learn that some cannot believe because their mind set is such that if a thing is outside the realm of human experience and personal knowledge it is unfathomable and cannot be.  It is ridiculous to give such a thing consideration.

Today we might say they have a scientific mind set.  If a matter is outside the realm of scientific study, unrelated to all known laws of physics and science, then there can be no truth to the thing.  Much of the world today does not believe in life after death or a resurrection of dead men.  Their mind set will not allow it.  Nothing exists that is beyond the realm of human scientific knowledge, as they see it, for that would be impossible, nothing other worldly that is, nothing of another dimension or realm of existence.

They are so stuck in this way of thinking about life that they have come up with what they consider the scientific answer to the earth's creation and life on earth.  They will tell you what happened millions and millions of years ago with a straight face and will consider you a fool if you doubt them.  They are convinced men evolved from sea creatures that crawled up on shore millions and millions of years ago and evolved.  They do not think that a thing incredible.  They can believe that for they think they can reason that out scientifically.  The only foolishness with them is the idea of "God".

But, what else does the Bible have to say about why men do not believe?  Paul says in 2 Cor. 4:3-4 (NAS), "And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God."

When a person is young and seemingly has what he or she perceives to be 40 or 50 years of productive life left in this world it is easy to get so caught up in education, acquisition, achievement, career building, marriage, and raising a family that there is no time or interest in a spiritual life.  This continues when once started pretty much into old age.

These are people who don't believe because they have never given themselves a chance to believe.  There is always too much to do to even give thought to God or the gospel.     

Luke describes these people as those beside the road, "who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart, so that they may not believe and be saved." (Luke 8:12 NAS)  The Bible says, "a natural man, does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised." (1 Cor. 2:14 NAS)  The natural man is the man caught up in that which is natural to man – the desire for the life of this world.  The things related to God are foolishness to him the Bible says.

In Matthew's account of the parable of the sower Jesus says of such a one of whom we are speaking that he did not understand the word and thus "the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart." (Matt. 13:19 NAS)  He does not say why such a person does not understand but we know without his saying simply by asking a couple of questions.  Did God give to us his word in such a way that it could not be understood and thus was to be hidden from man?  What was God's intent when he gave us his word?

A man who does not understand God's word is a man who has no desire to give it the time and attention necessary to learn it for he has other things of more interest on his mind.  He is Paul's natural man of 1 Cor. 2.

The natural man here is one whose mind is centered solely on achievement in and enjoyment of this world.  Jesus said, "How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another, and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?" (John 5:44 NAS)  This is the kind of man we are talking about, a man centered on achievement or acquisition in this world.

Then there are men who simply enjoy sin which the Bible speaks of as the "passing pleasures of sin." (Heb. 11:25 NKJV)  Jesus said, John 3:19-20, "And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil.  For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed." (NAS)  "Men loved the darkness" is just another way of saying they loved sin.  This group of people don't want to believe.

I have not at all exhausted a study of this subject of why men do not believe but there comes a time when an article must end lest we end up with a book.  I want to conclude with this.  I believe based on this study that belief is a choice.  If it was not how could we be condemned for not believing?  "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned." (Mark16:16 NKJV)

We believe what we want to believe and we can always find a way to justify our belief.  This is true in politics and it is true in religion.  That said, there is always a motive for believing the way we do.  We believe the way we do because that is what we want. 

If the God of the Bible does not exist it frees us up to enjoy what the Bible calls "the passing pleasures of sin" (Heb. 11:25 NAS) and without any threat of retribution.  We can achieve and receive the adoration and praise of men.  It is a lot more convenient if God does not exist.  We really do not want him to exist; we do not want the Bible to be true if our love is for this life and this world. 

Those who do not believe have the same evidence as those have who do believe.  What makes the difference then?  Often it comes down to just this one thing.  The believer has a desire for "a better, that is, a heavenly country." (Heb. 11:16 NKJV)  The unbeliever is satisfied with this world and does not want another.

If he believed he would have to change his life.  He loves this world.  It is soothing to the soul to not give the Bible a thought.  We believe what we want.  The unbeliever wants to believe it is not so for he has a great stake in it not being true.  He has staked his eternal life on it not being so.  The Bible cannot be true for if it is he is condemned.  He has no desire to believe that.  We believe what we want to believe.  That is why disbelief is a sin.  It is sin because it was a choice.  Bad choices in life just about always lead to disaster.  The Bible being true surely the choice of disbelief will be no exception.