God and Grace

You wrote:

I cannot think that an intelligent person, with any understanding of probability and statistics, would not do this.

I'll confess to having pondered the "what-if" scenario: what if I'd been born Hindu in a town north of Delhi? Would I be a follower of Christ right now? Probably not.

I suspect that underlying your question is something that's troubling you. I could be wrong about this, but let me raise a question:

Is your concern here that some in the world, raised in a different culture, may not have the probability of coming to a Christian decision, and therefore face eternal damnation?

Am I right? Does that trouble you?

If so, then let me offer this comfort: God is free to extend Grace to whomever it pleases Him. To suggest that God needs us to do something -- profess faith, respond to an "alter call," raise my hand and shout "Amen" ... whatever -- limits God. This is how I respond when someone wonders whether an infant who dies is going to hell, just because they didn't have an opportunity to "come to Christ" in an overt way. The extension of Grace is not a transaction, not a quid pro quo. God is free to extend Grace to that infant as He sees fit.

Now, that said, I think there's a world of difference between a person who goes through their life a Hindu, let's say, being as kind and considerate as they can be towards others and in all other ways not really knowing the Gospel ... and someone who outright rejects Christ after being provided a good understanding of what the Gospel is.

I don't know any of this, of course. But it strikes me as likely wrong of contemporary fundamentalists who think that God is shackled in the extension of Grace because someone fails to utter some magic series of words, or is not fully immersed for 5.3 seconds in some baptismal pool.

But that's just me.