Recently, I was reading a Bible lesson about sharing Jesus with others, and one of its suggestions was: “Get to know someone and build a friendship with them over time.”

On the surface, this sounds quite reasonable. After all, if we are going to influence people for good, we need to get to know them. They need to know we care about them, and ultimately, they need to know we genuinely have their best interest at heart, which genuine friends do. So again, on the surface, this suggestion sounds very reasonable. 

Yet something about the advice didn’t settle quite right with me. So, I began to reflect on it. My memory brought up 2 Corinthians 6:14–17:  

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Beliala? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

Therefore “come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you” (NIV84).

This passage is not speaking only of marriage; it is also speaking of forming friendships and other kinds of relationships with those who are not aligned with God and His kingdom. Paul also wrote to the Corinthians:

Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character” (1 Corinthians 15:33 NIV84).

So what is the balance? On the one hand, we are to evangelize the world and make disciples of Jesus. And sharing truth with others is enhanced when we have a trusting relationship with them, a friendship. But on the other hand, the Bible cautions us against making friendships with non-believers, and even warns that doing so doesn’t convert them, it also corrupts us!

As I reflected on this, I realized how reality works, how human relationships work, and how hearts, minds, and brains work, which led me to realize that while we are to be friendly toward non-believers, we are not to develop close-knit friendships with them, not allowing them to enter into the circle of our hearts where genuine friends reside. Why?

What are the dangers of becoming friends with non-believers? When we accept someone into our lives as a friend, they enter into a position of trust. We experience them as being for us, and we become less objectively critical of their input. We value their presence, love, and connection, so we are reluctant to set firm boundaries for fear of losing them. This makes us more vulnerable to tolerating, going along with, accepting, and participating in activities, discussions, entertainments, and even food, drink, and substances we would not otherwise have participated in.

Our unbelieving friends will:

• Introduce their ideas, concepts, values, and beliefs into our lives. As unbelievers, they will introduce distortions—error—into our minds that we may or may not even recognize. If we do, we will have to process those distortions and make decisions that would have never been before us. If we don’t recognize the distortions, then our minds are slowly corrupted.
  
  
• Exert an influence beyond mere ideas, beliefs, and values. Their attitudes, emotional responses, the things they affirm, and the things they denigrate in how they treat us influence our responses and what we value. Their moods, emotional responses, and the things they get excited about have an “infectious” impact on us and can inflame our feelings, causing us to get excited about something we would not otherwise have been interested in.
  
  
• Introduce media (books, movies, games, music, etc.) that will be antagonistic to the Spirit of God, which will exert an influence upon us.
• Introduce other people into our lives who are also not aligned with God and who will bring their ungodly influence upon us.
• Normalize the ungodly and unhealthy, and that normalization will desensitize us to the worldly and increase our willingness to go along.

All of this, and more, can happen even when we just associate with non-believers, but here is the big danger and often critical piece on whether we are corrupted by their influence or, perhaps, matured and sharpened by the exposure: whether we have, in our hearts and minds, made them our friends or not!

If we have made unbelievers our friends, then they now occupy within us a position of trust, a position of value, a position of importance, and we are less critical of what they bring into our lives, less willing to offend, more willing to accept, more tolerant, less willing to walk away, and, thus, their errors and negative values and perspectives are more easily accepted and internalized within us and, thereby, corrupt us.

If, however, we are friendly to them but do not allow them into our hearts as friends, then we remain vigilant. We will hear their ideas, their perspectives, and whatever else they bring with a healthy critique, evaluating them in the light of truth. When they bring forth something that is counter to our values, our beliefs, we are more likely to dig in and study and pursue truth than to accept their distortion—and this process of exposure without being friends may actually sharpen us.

I have seen and experienced this very thing in my life:

When I attended a public university and was associating with those who did not believe in God (my atheist professors and other students), when they would present ideas that were counter to what I believed, it drove me to study deeper and clarify my beliefs. Their challenges led me to identify things I had been taught that didn’t make sense and remove them, but, at the same time, it did not lead me away from God or cause me to embrace their own errors, but it led me into a deeper relationship with God and a more solid reality-based understanding of Him and His designs for life.

But when I attended a Christian university, I perceived my students as fellow Christians and allowed them into my circle of friends, and many of them were not converted Christians, but legal Christians—something I did not appreciate at the time. Thus, they were able to introduce ideas, concepts, music, and other media into my life that I was not as critical about and that worked to cause me problems in my walk with Jesus.

So, I would not recommend making friends with unbelievers as an evangelism method, but I would recommend getting to know people and being friendly with them—always keeping clear boundaries and discernment. We do not want to become friends with those who are living their lives based on the spirit of fear and selfishness and who have not been reborn with the Spirit of Christ. That does not mean we are not friendly to them, or that we do not associate with them; it means we do associate, but we keep proper emotional and relational boundaries. We do not let them into our hearts as friends to be trusted until they can be trusted, and that requires that they are reborn with a new heart and right spirit.

So, when it comes to friendships, assess the person’s attitude—is the non-believer interested in truth, are they inquiring, searching, and hungry for truth? And is that demonstrated by their attitude, their openness, and then their willingness to apply what they are learning? Do you see in your interactions with them growth and movement toward health, spiritual and relational? If you see that growth, then invite them to give their heart to Jesus, and when they do, and are reborn, then you can move forward with developing a friendship.