Curiosity Killed the Cat: What Happens to the 'Unlearned'?

Dear Reader,

I keep circling back to a question that makes my stomach knot: What if telling someone about Jesus actually makes it harder for them to reach heaven?

The Oncology Nurse

There's a woman I'm imagining—let's call her Ayako. She's an oncology nurse in Osaka. She works sixteen-hour shifts, holds patients' hands when their families can't visit, and prays at the neighborhood shrine on New Year's Day because that's what everyone does. She's never heard the name "Jesus Christ" except maybe in a Hollywood movie subtitle. The nearest church is an hour away by train, attended mostly by Filipino migrant workers.

Is Ayako going to hell?

Most people would say no—she's "unlearned." She never had a fair shot. But then I think about James, a Vietnamese-American Buddhist in California. He's heard campus preachers. He's been invited to church by coworkers. He thinks Christianity has "some good points" but doesn't see why he'd give up his Sunday mornings. And then there's Henry, white, Midwestern, third-generation Christian. He goes to church because not going would mean Thanksgiving dinner without his family.

The Spectrum Problem

If "unlearned" means Ayako is saved by default, where does James fall? He's been exposed, but not really—not in the way Henry has been, with cultural reinforcement and social consequences. James had a pamphlet handed to him once. Does that count? Does curiosity about Christianity make you more damned than if you'd never Googled "What do Christians believe" in the first place?

I might be wrong here, but the "unlearned" category seems impossibly fragile. Is it binary—you either know or you don't? Or is it a spectrum, where Ayako is at 0%, James at 15%, and Henry at 90%? If it's a spectrum, then salvation starts to feel like a lottery ticket dependent on your zip code, family tree, and whether you happened to walk past a street preacher on the right day.

Romans 10:14 (ESV)

This verse haunts me. "How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?" It sounds like a call to evangelism. But it also sounds like a trap. If Ayako doesn't know, she's unlearned. If I tell her and she doesn't convert—because there's no church within reasonable distance, no Christian community, no cultural scaffolding—have I just moved her from "unlearned" to "accountable"? Have I made her salvation harder?

What I Missed

What I'm struggling with is the incentive structure. Henry stays Christian partly out of fear of family rejection. James isn't compelled because there's no pull factor—no community, no consequence. Ayako isn't exposed because Japanese has no linguistic fingerprints of Christianity ("Jesus!" as an exclamation doesn't exist there). If salvation hinges on response to the Gospel, but response hinges on infrastructure—social, cultural, linguistic—then missionary work in places without that infrastructure starts to feel less like rescue and more like risk.

I don't have an answer yet. Maybe the "unlearned" are judged differently. Maybe God accounts for context in ways I can't fathom. Maybe I'm overthinking a mystery that's not mine to solve. But the question lingers: If I bring the Gospel to someone who doesn't have the conditions to respond, am I opening a door or closing one?

What I'm Trying

• Praying before assumptions. Before I make claims about who's "in" or "out," I'm trying to sit with this prayer: "Lord, I don't know how You judge. Help me trust Your justice is better than mine."
• Reading the contested positions. I'm working through C.S. Lewis's The Last Battle (the "good pagan" chapter), alongside theologians who disagree with him. I want to understand the range, not just pick a side.
• Asking missionaries about infrastructure. I'm reaching out to people who've done long-term work in non-Christian contexts. How do they think about this tension? Do they worry about it, or have they reconciled it in ways I haven't seen yet?

A Collect for Guidance (Thursday, from Morning Prayer, p. 23)
Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A Personal Prayer
God, I'm afraid of getting this wrong. I'm afraid that my curiosity about You might be a liability—that asking questions makes me less safe than if I'd never asked at all. I don't understand how exposure works, or where the line is between "unlearned" and "accountable." I don't know if Ayako is closer to You than I am, or if her distance from a church building means something I can't see. Help me trust that Your mercy is wider than my categories, and that my job isn't to solve this puzzle but to love the people in front of me. If I'm supposed to share what little I know, give me the courage to do it without fear of making things worse. Amen.

—Still Wondering

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