The Mythical Native

So you’re speaking to someone about the gospel. And suddenly he gets that ironic glint in his eye. He folds his arms, steps back and says, “Well, what about the people who have never heard? What about people not born in Christian cultures, or even in cultures with some other religion? Hey, what about the native on some remote South Sea island, who has never even seen a white person and knows nothing about Western culture? If you have to believe the gospel to be saved, then isn’t that poor guy going to hell? And how is that fair? After all, he never even had a chance.”

He smiles smugly at you, confident you won’t be able to field that one. And you stumble.

Well, what about it? How can we believe in salvation if not everybody has a chance? How fair can it be to proclaim the gospel if the truth is that God simply doesn’t make it available to everyone? What about a ‘nice guy’ who isn’t, simply by virtue of birth or upbringing, even aware of the gospel?

How do we answer that one?

Not hard, actually. But if you’ve never thought about it, it might set you back on your heels. Maybe you’ve even pondered that question yourself. Do you think there’s an answer?

Caution

Firstly, before you try to respond you’d better check to see if you’ve understood. Sometimes the person isn’t really asking the question you think he or she is. Sometimes to ask, “What about those who have never heard” really means “What about my Uncle Phil or Aunt Audrey or my friend Tom who died suddenly and wasn’t a Christian?”

You don’t want to get into answering as if their question were merely hypothetical if it isn’t. You want instead to honor their personal investment, and to get more specifics so you can decide how to respond to very real grief and concern.

However, most times when you get such a question it’s not about any real person; rather it’s a kind of hypothetical brush off, or even a deliberate challenge intended to show God is not just or to prove your faith is irrational. After all, if God can’t at least offer a decent opportunity to everyone, then (so goes the logic) he surely is not fair or just, and no one is obliged to take him or the gospel seriously.

The Mythical Native

I call this objection “the Mythical Native Dodge”. It’s often used by unbelievers to take the heat off themselves when they are faced with the gospel. But it’s also a matter of some concern to sincere Christians who just don’t know how to think this issue through.

But I think it’s time to retire this old objection. And why? Well, for at least six reasons. There may be more, but I think these will do nicely. Let me have a run at explaining that and see where we go:

1/ The Mythical Native is Not a Real Person

When someone raises the above objection, you can be certain they have no particular case in mind. They really do not know any such situation. Ask them, and they won’t say, “Well, I was thinking of Matumbe” (or Jianfeng, or Jasminder, or whoever). They’re merely posing a hypothetical.

And truth be told, secular persons are not notorious for overseas charity work. It would be a stretch to suppose that they actually care a fig for the Matumbes, Jianfengs or Jasminders of the world — they just want to shut down their own creeping feeling of responsibility, not worry themselves over the eternal state of remote peoples.

Moreover, in this world of universal communication where even natives in rags carry cell phones, the number of people who could possibly fit the Mythical Native profile are scant indeed, and fewer by the minute.

Still, there could be some — hypothetically speaking — and perhaps in a spirit of charity (to our objector, even if not to any actual native) we should figure out a better response.

2/ The Mythical Native is Not Without the Knowledge of God

Contrary to the objection, a native in the jungles of Borneo is not without resources. Romans 1:19-20 tells us that the hand of God is written all over nature, and indeed, within the hearts of every member of mankind. It says that all of us DO know God, but some of us suppress that insight.

Now, how much we know, and precisely what content we know may be different for different people. No one thinks that an illiterate rural dweller has the same insight as a modern Western theologian, but God says that we all have an instinctive awareness of the existence of God and of our duty to him. It is not possible, therefore, for the Mythical Native to be completely devoid of awareness of God. No such case can exist.

The same surely applies to the mentally handicapped and children. According to the revelation within them and the witness of the world around them, and according to the measure of their capacity, they are morally responsible agents. We need not worry about that.

3/ The Mythical Native is Known Absolutely by God*

As human beings, we are limited by time and space. We are also limited by actuality. We speak of “what would have happened if X or Y had occurred” instead of what actually did happen, but no such real circumstance ever takes place, by definition. The hypothetical, the possible, and the alternate are always closed off from us.

Not so with God, of course. He knows all things absolutely: the actual, in all times and places, and the possible as well. He knows what would have happened if things were other than what they actually are.

Want proof? Okay: how about the men of Tyre and Sidon, or of Sodom. The Lord says that if they had seen miracles like his they would have repented. How could he make such a claim if he did not know what they would have done, even though they did, in fact, do otherwise? Likewise, we find in the story of the rich man and Lazarus that Abraham is able to tell the rich man what his relatives would do if a thing that is not going to happen actually did happen.

So God is not just God of the actual, but also of the speculative, the hypothetical and the possible. That’s what omniscience really means. Thus God knows who would or would not receive him, had they been given different information or circumstances than they actually experienced. And though as human beings we are not able to speculate on those things, God surely knows ALL that would or could happen.

Thus God knows if any Mythical Natives would receive him, and which ones never would. And he can deal with every one of them according to perfect knowledge of what they have done, and what they would have done had they a full revelation of the gospel as well. He won’t make any mistakes about that.

4/ God Speaks to Mythical Natives

Not only is the Mythical Native NOT without resources to know God, God himself intervenes to make his existence, power and authority clear to everyone. If being God means much, it means that he can overrule at least basic circumstances of time and space and reveal himself in particular ways to particular people.

And why not? He’s done it many times in history — to Abraham, to Moses, to Elijah, to Samuel, to Paul, to John … When God wants to speak, he does: and he picks out individuals when he wants to, and can reveal to them personally what he is under no obligation to reveal to everyone else.

So who knows what the Mythical Native does or does not know? God knows, but you and I are certainly in no position to say, and in no need of worrying.

5/ God Does Right, Even to Mythical Natives

“Shall not the Judge of all the world deal justly?” asks Abraham, the father of the faithful. The question is clearly rhetorical. God does right by everybody, and by virtue of that is rightfully the Judge of all. That is what Christians have traditionally believed, and any account of God that doesn’t take that into account is not the Christian account.

Ours is a God of justice. He simply does not do things in an unfair or idiosyncratic way. We Christians, trusting in his goodness and knowing his character, wait for him in confidence that at the end of the day his judgments will all be shown to be perfectly right. If the final judgments of God are not completely to our satisfaction at present, then that is a very good thing for us all. It is because of this that the Day of Grace remains open, and there is still a chance for people (not just Mythical Natives) to believe the gospel.

Which brings us around to …

6/ You, My Friend, Are NOT the Mythical Native

If you’re speaking to someone who asks about the Mythical Native, the chances are very good he wants you to get away from speaking about him. He does not want to face his own situation of distance from God, the certainty of judgment or his personal duty to respond to God’s call of salvation. That is why he is professing concern for people he has never met, does not know, and really does not care about.

It’s a ruse. Don’t buy in. Having dispatched all the nonsense about Mythical Natives, turn again to your conversation partner directly.

Really, it matters very little what God does with Mythical Natives if God is speaking to you right now. It also matters little who does not know the gospel, when you, in fact, do. Whatever else we can say about the Mythical Native, his situation is not the one we have in hand. Instead, we have a living, breathing Christian, one sent by God to talk to you about your own situation, right now, standing in front of you, an educated and perhaps cynical unbeliever, pointing out that full moral responsibility falls on those who know the truth and reject it.

The question comes back to this: forget the Mythical Native — what will YOU do with the truth. When the Lord returns and judges, he will not ask you how you solved the problems of the Mythical Native, but what you did with his Son.

So Christians who find themselves in a conversation about the Mythical Native need to be gracious, but step up and drive the message home. Make it personal again. After all, it is a personal issue: what will you do with God’s Son?

Hope for Not-So-Mythical Natives

Okay, that’s my take on the Mythical Native Dodge. I hope it helps you sort though some of these issues. A final key thought, though: most objections to the gospel are just evasions. People do indeed know that God is speaking to them, and I have yet to meet the person who has never in the privacy of his or her own room and in the secret counsels of his or her heart trembled at the prospect of judgment.

I think we can count on that. The Bible says that’s the common human experience, and I have found it to be true. Christians have nothing for which to apologize when they draw that conviction to the surface. As painful as that might be, we are operating like physicians, pointing out the disease only in order to cure, not to induce hopelessness.

However, we must not provoke such awareness of sin without the intent to heal. And when we speak of these things, we must do all we can to deliver the medicine that relieves the pain we have identified. The Mythical Native is but one of the many dodges that the human heart throws up to defend itself against the gospel; but if we back off, that does not mean the pain goes away. It just means there is no solution on hand.

So keep the conversation going — as long as can be reasonably managed — in the ever-present hope that you may have the chance to speak the gospel into this person’s life. After all, God’s goal is that all this world’s “natives” — bushmen and business people alike — may hear, respond, and ultimately become citizens of the kingdom of God.

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* Credit to Dr. David Gooding for pointing out this one.