The Upside-Down Wager: How Pragmatic Resistance to Christianity Gets Life (and Eternity) Backward

You’ve probably heard someone say it—or maybe thought it yourself:

“As far as I know, this is the only life I get. Becoming a Christian would mean giving up things I enjoy—my sexual freedom, my Sundays, my grudges, my autonomy. I just don’t want to live that way.”

On the surface, this sounds like pragmatic reasoning. If life is short, why not squeeze every drop of pleasure from it? Why risk missing out? But this logic is not as rational as it sounds. In fact, it’s a deeply foolish wager—not just because it gambles with eternity, but because it misjudges the true nature of life right now.

A Wager Without Wisdom

This kind of reasoning is strikingly similar to Pascal’s Wager—but in reverse. Pascal argued that if Christianity might be true, then prudence demands you take it seriously. If you commit and you’re wrong, you lose little. But if you refuse and you’re wrong, the loss is infinite. It’s a high-stakes wager with eternal implications.

But those who reject Christianity because they don’t like its implications are making a bet of their own. Their wager goes like this:

“I’m going to live as if Christianity is false—because I don’t want to change how I live if it turns out that it's false.”

It’s a short-term, appetite-driven gamble—made not in the pursuit of truth, but in defense of personal preference. And it’s a dangerous one.

Misjudging the Good Life

The error isn’t just in dismissing eternal consequences. It’s also in badly miscalculating what’s actually good in this life. Many people perceive Christianity as a set of joy-killing restrictions—on sex, on pride, on autonomy, on pleasure. But that’s a fundamental misreading of what Christianity is.

What they call costs—chastity, forgiveness, sacrificial love, repentance—are actually the means to healing, wholeness, and deep joy. And what they call freedoms—resentment, indulgence, casual sex, spiritual apathy—are just slavery wearing a different dress.

They think they are defending their happiness by resisting Christ, when in reality they are undermining their own ability to experience it. As C.S. Lewis put it,

“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us… like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”

They don’t see that the “restrictions” of Christianity are not fences meant to deprive, but boundaries that protect and orient the soul toward true flourishing.

The Folly of Self-Protection

Here’s the deeper irony: the very things people think they’re preserving by rejecting Christianity—their pleasure, their time, their freedom—are often the first casualties of their own worldview. The pursuit of unbounded sexual freedom leads to broken relationships and spiritual emptiness. Refusing to forgive leads to bitterness that corrodes the heart. Avoiding moral accountability might feel like freedom, but it fosters narcissism, anxiety, and relational collapse.

It’s not just that they’re making a bad bet about the next life. They’re misunderstanding this one—mistaking poison for medicine and medicine for poison.

True Wisdom Reframes the Question

The wise person doesn’t just ask, “What do I want right now?” They ask, “What kind of person do I want to become?”and “What is the truth about my condition and the world I inhabit?”

Christianity doesn’t just offer a way to die well—it offers a way to live well. It doesn’t call us to abandon joy, but to discover a deeper and more resilient form of it. And most importantly, it doesn’t ask us to wager blind. It presents a crucified and risen Savior whose life, death, and resurrection are anchored in history, witnessed by generations, and capable of transforming hearts today.

So to those who resist Christianity for pragmatic reasons: you’re not just gambling with eternity—you’re already losing what matters most. You’re clinging to illusions of freedom while rejecting the only path that offers peace, purpose, and transformation.

What feels like sacrifice may be salvation. What looks like loss may be the beginning of real life.