HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 17, 2025 – This is one of the more difficult articles I’ve had to write for this blog. It’s a touchy subject, but it needs to be aired. It concerns our interactions with people who are not born-again and have no interest in becoming born-again. In other words, it concerns nearly everyone we come into contact with every day and therefore it concerns our day-to-day lives. How we deal with these people can make or break us spiritually, so listen up.

As always, we need to look to Jesus first and foremost to see how he interacted with those around him. How did Jesus treat people who had no desire to know and love God? Did he force himself on them, following them around and pestering them with Bible quotes? Did he slip a Gospel teaching into his conversations with them without their knowing it? Or did he go all Bible-thumping fire and brimstone and warn them that they’d burn in hell unless they followed him? The answer is, of course, “no”, Jesus didn’t do any of those things. He didn’t even stop his followers from leaving him, if they wanted to leave. He didn’t chase after them and try to entice them back into the fold. He just let them go. Jesus’ focus, as should be ours, was to teach those who free-willingly came to him with the right motivation.

But what about people who try to attach themselves to us with the wrong motivation, who don’t know God and Jesus and have no desire to know them? If you’ve been born-again for any amount of time, you’ll likely have noticed that you’ve become a magnet for… certain people. They may be family members or perhaps they’re friends or acquaintances you knew prior to your rebirth, but what they all have in common is a desire to insert themselves into your life, even if you haven’t seen them or spoken to them in years. In most cases, these people are unaware that they’re being used spiritually to entice you into behaviors you left behind when you were born-again. But they’re persistent, these people, and they typically use as a hook your shared personal history with them.

Again, these are not people who are coming to you because they crave what you have spiritually; they’re coming to take away what you have spiritually—to find chinks in your spiritual armor to exploit—so you need to be very cautious around them.

Still, a few relationships are inviolable, regardless of whether these people are reborn or not. I’m referring here to your relationship with your mother and father. The Commandment says we’re to honor our parents, so we’re to honor them, no exceptions. We honor them by interacting with them respectfully and speaking kindly of them to others, even if they give Jack the Ripper a run for his money. This directive to honor our mother and father comes directly from God and therefore is inviolable. Break it at your extreme peril.

But beyond our mother and father, God gives us no directives other than to treat people as we would want to be treated. I like people to be polite to me, so I’m polite to them. I like people to be honest with me, so I’m honest with them. But I don’t necessarily need to be kind when kindness isn’t called for, though whatever I say or do, I say or do it with the aim of maintaining a clear conscience and right-standing before God. This may look like standoffish-ness or even outright rudeness, but we have no directive from God to cater to people’s whims and demands on our time. Just because someone reaches out to us doesn’t mean we have to respond, if we know their motivation for reaching out is not good, is not godly. And we can know their motivation is not godly because God gives us discernment to know.

Many people cried out to Jesus as he walked from village to village, but he only responded to and spent time with those who wanted what he was offering. He didn’t force the Gospel on people; he shared it with those who free-willingly came to him with godly intent. Every day, we interact with dozens if not hundreds of people, most if not all of whom want nothing to do with God and Jesus. They’re not coming to us to hear the Gospel. Some will even target us, intentionally or unintentionally trying to harm us spiritually. We’ll know who these people are when they come around; they’re not hard to discern. The bait and hooks are nearly always the same. If you spend even a small amount of time with them, they’ll give you a sense that you’re being dragged down because they are dragging you down. That’s their motivation, whether they know it or not. And that’s how you know you can’t be around them.

You have no directive from God to be around certain people just because they want to be around you. If they don’t want God and Jesus, they want your harm: There’s no other way to put it. Be polite, but steer clear of them. You don’t even have to tell them why you’re steering clear of them. They are a test and a temptation and a constant moral hazard.

As a born-again believer, you have no obligation to entertain devils.

So don’t.