After a new round of people treating belief in Jesus like an essential vitamin every human needs, I want to show you why that’s not true. Faith in Jesus isn’t like Vitamin C. Humans don’t need it like that. Nor can we fail to meet all our emotional needs without that faith. In fact, faith in Jesus is entirely unlike an essential vitamin. And today, we’re exploring why.
(This post and its audio ‘cast first went live on Patreon on 10/20/2026. They’re both available there now. Please support my work—see the end of this writeup for options, and thank you for whatever you decide to do! From introduction: Vitamin C in primates; genetic stuff; how the inactivated gene impacts Vitamin C synthesis; a funny post about it. WAKE UP SHEEPLE! BIG ORANGE JUICE WANTS YOU SLEEPING.)
SITUATION REPORT: Essential Vitamin Jesus
When I talk about Christians thinking belief in Jesus is essential, I don’t just mean “necessary,” as we use the word colloquially today. In biology, an essential vitamin is one that a species needs but can’t manufacture internally. Instead, that species must obtain the vitamin through external sources like food. Possibly the most famous example here is Vitamin C. Long ago, humans’ distant ancestors lost the ability to manufacture their own Vitamin C. Apes, monkeys, and humans must eat food containing the nutrient, or else we suffer from scurvy, a serious illness. (We’ll come back to this comparison soon, but for now, that suffices.)
Christians don’t phrase this belief precisely like faith being literally an essential vitamin, of course. But one definitely gets that sense that they think their faith supplies something that humans just can’t manufacture internally. I can’t call many beliefs in Christianity universal, though the universality of humanity’s essential need for faith in Jesus might just qualify as one. At the very least, it qualifies as an official one.
And to demonstrate that point, I’ll use only fairly recent quotes from the wild—and from across Christianity.
Catholics officially believe it. Pope Leo’s on record as thinking all humans need faith in Jesus. In October 2025, he said:
[T]oday we consider how the resurrection of Jesus fulfills the desires of every human heart. [. . .] It is only the resurrected Jesus who can give the true and lasting peace that sustains and fills us.
The mainline flavors of Christianity officially believe it, though they don’t push it too hard or start fights about it. Elizabeth Eaton, the Presiding Bishop of the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), said so in November 2024: “All these people, we all desperately need to hear the liberating word of Jesus and the gospel.” In November 2025, so did the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), also known as the very liberal PC(USA): “Everyone needs Jesus.”
Of course, you can absolutely bet evangelicals officially believe it too. In July 2025, Greg Laurie, a famous evangelical pastor, wrote an entire post about that belief for Crosswalk.com. He insists that even if someone says they’re happy and not “empty” at all, Jesus can totally meet “a very real need in that person’s life.” In fact, he writes that “there is no unbeliever who doesn’t need to hear the gospel message.” (Greg Laurie, by the way, produced the recent Jesus Revolution movie that we talked about here not long ago.)
But this belief collides very uncomfortably with non-Christians who don’t seem to need faith in Jesus at all. Even Greg Laurie admits he has a lot of trouble evangelizing those folks. Today, we’ll explore this belief, see how it influences evangelism7, and then break it all apart.
The essentialness of Christianity as an evangelism goad
Any flavor of Christianity that emphasizes evangelism also embraces the idea of Essential Vitamin Jesus. They must, because as recruiting agents for their churches they cannot allow potential recruits to have any valid reason to reject their product. All reasons for rejection must, therefore, be invalid.
Ironically, churches would likely do a better job recruiting new members if they made themselves fantastic groups to join on their own merits without having to buy into the group’s specific beliefs first. I’ve only seen one big-name, better-known pastor, Tim Keller, even make noises about this route. Instead, evangelism goes the other route: First persuading the targets to accept the group’s beliefs, and only then demonstrating that the evangelist’s own specific group is the only real way to obey the demands of those specific beliefs. These salespeople manufacture the need for their product, so to speak.
And manufacture it they do, albeit to little success. In February 2025, Bethany Global University, an evangelical missionary school in Minnesota, published an earnest, heart-felt blog post about how utterly necessary missionary work is for people around the world. They wrote of non-Christians in “unreached” areas, “They are being starved of their daily bread.” In August 2025, Parkway Church expressed a similar sentiment: “Every human being – regardless of morality, ethnicity, political orientation, or socio-ecomonic [sic] status – needs the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Cru had a hilarious post in January 2026 trying frantically to reconcile their apparent belief in predestination with the utter necessity of evangelism: “Evangelism is important because the world needs to know the truth about redemption in Jesus!” (But also, “Does God need us to evangelize to save the world? No. And yet it’s a role God willingly gives us.” We may need to come back to that idea later. It’s just too funny, and I’ve heard too many Christians say similar things.)
The sources of belief in Essential Vitamin Jesus
Officially, the New Testament contains many exhortations to evangelize based on the necessity of belief. In that Parkway Church blog post, the writer lavishes praise on the Apostle Paul in Romans chapters 9-10. The writer selects relevant bits from these chapters (this bit is from Romans 10:14-15):
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? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?
Meanwhile, the Bethany Global University post offers the Great Commission to justify missionary work. Their writer quotes Matthew 28:18-20, but it appears in longer form in Mark 16:9-20.
Incidentally, Mark manuscripts originally concluded with verse 8. Early Christian leaders might have begun referring to a “longer ending” in Mark around the mid-2nd century, and by the 4th century that “longer ending” begins appearing regularly in manuscripts.
But the idea of the “Great Commission” certainly coincides with many evangelists’ desires and business plans, so obviously they’re going to present it as essential! For centuries, this idea has driven Christian missionaries. So naturally, Cru, an evangelistic college group, draws upon it as their #1 reason why evangelism is essential.
A 2025 sermon riffing on the “Y’all need Jesus” meme offers a number of other Bible verses that feed into the necessity of evangelism, namely these:
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” [John 14:6]
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. [Galatians 2:20]
Another 2025 sermon does the same, but lands on another verse to sell how important it is to believe:
“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” [John 14:9, with Jesus speaking]
See? It’s not just a silly meme chiding people displaying excessive, gratuitous sinfulness. It’s a reflection of cosmic truth, like all memes are. Yes, yes. Absolutely.
How this belief collides with reality: The problem of happy pagans
A while ago, we talked about how “happy pagans” destroy Christian evangelism. In effect, if Essential Vitamin Jesus claims are to be believed, then anybody lacking this vitamin needs to be demonstrably worse-off than someone having it. Such a person should eagerly embrace evangelism, which promises to fulfill that essential need. (Remember, we’re using “essential” in the Vitamin C sense.)
But that’s not what happens. Most targets reject evangelism attempts. Indeed, most non-Christians reject the idea that Christians have anything that heathens desperately need on an essential basis. Any attempt on evangelists’ part to suggest such a need doesn’t survive impact with actual evangelism targets.
I can see why, too.
After all, if someone lacks enough Vitamin C, medical tests can easily show that lack in a concrete, measurable way. The person displays concrete, visible signs of the deficiency—like the classic sign of bleeding gums. Once the person gets proper amounts of the vitamin, then the tests show that too, and the signs fade away.
Unfortunately, there’s literally no sign of someone needing or having Essential Vitamin Jesus. Holding Christian beliefs in no way guarantees someone’s got enough of it, according to Christians themselves (and, I suppose, the Bible as well—see Matthew 7:22). Being non-Christian entirely is thought to guarantee the lack, but non-Christians themselves don’t tend to feel any such lacks in their lives. And even if they do, they don’t see Christianity as a way to meet those needs.
Randy Newman, over at Desiring God, tries to use temporal happiness as a “pointer” to his specific beliefs—claiming that yes, joy in life is possible, which is the usual evangelical move, but he asks: Don’t his targets want to really feel the realest bestest joy of all?
He doesn’t claim to have converted anyone this way, however, which almost certainly means he has never converted anyone this way. But he still offers it as an evangelism suggestion. Don’t forget the rule:
How Christians explain away happy pagans reminds me of something
When evangelism coaches even touch on the serious problem of people who don’t seem to need Essential Vitamin Jesus, they generally only have a few ways of explaining it away. All of these ways remind me of comments I’ve gotten about my decision never to have children. Thankfully, I’ve never gotten too much flak over it (and not much at all since hitting my 40s—this is behavior directed younger women, usually). But what I’ve gotten has always followed familiar forms.
Critics of my decision take it as a personal affront, somehow. In response, they’ve got to invalidate me as a person somehow. They must paint me as secretly feeling lonely and sad about my decision, or knowing deep down that motherhood would have really been my best path, or put some serious deficiency in my heart leading to the decision—ignorance, selfishness, rebellion, lack of forethought regarding my own eventual old age, wanting a life of unapproved sex without “consequences,” etc. My actual reason, just not wanting kids or to be a parent, can’t possibly be that simple, can it? It has to be a symptom of degeneracy and inferiority.
In similar ways, people who don’t feel they need Essential Vitamin Jesus must be convinced that they are lacking somehow for not feeling the lack of it—or insulted into feeling the lack, like how pickup artists do negging.
One common retort is that atheists totally secretly believe (and therefore know their need for a life of faith). But they just deny having that belief/need. Creationist Ken Ham’s fond of that one, if his August 2025 tweet is anything to go by. Another Creationist, Jason Lisle, wrote something similar in January 2025:
But many Christians often make a critical mistake: they assume that what the unbeliever says about himself and his beliefs is true. They assume that the unbeliever has correctly evaluated his own beliefs and has truthfully stated them.
And a common quote attributed to R.C. Sproul (a famous evangelical) accuses non-believers of just not wanting to believe due to moral deficiencies.
Why Essential Vitamin Jesus isn’t true even for Christians themselves
Sometimes, though, Christians punt to mystery with “common grace.” This Christianese phrase describes the goodness that exists on Earth because of Jesus: ordinary human acts of kindness and charity, the signs of moral conscience even in unbelievers, etc.
An April 2026 post by Gary DeMar even takes the idea one step further. He asserts that people who don’t understand their deep need for Christian faith are “borrowing moral capital.” And he thinks that situation can’t possibly last forever! DeMar’s post is a great example of how Christians dehumanize their enemies—atheists, in this case. It’s just a longform Argument from Morality. That’s a very well-loved apologetics trick. (Also, wow, DeMar is bad news even by evangelical Calvinist standards.)
That Jason Lisle post even gives us an example of the Law of Conservation of Worship:
We were created to worship and serve the God we all know in our hearts (Deuteronomy 6:5, 11:13). So, when people reject that God, their need to worship will manifest in sinful ways. That is, they will worship something else.
Either way, the punt ends with an assertion that non-believers don’t see their need for Christian faith because their culture surrounds them with the results of that faith in others. It provides them, as well, with substitutes for faith in the form of “something else” that isn’t Christianity that they can “worship.”
Folks, if I were trying to sell Christian faith to otherwise contented people, then wild horses couldn’t drag that kind of concession out of me. It functions as a direct contradiction to the essentialness of faith.
If faith were so essential to humanity, then absolutely nothing could possibly replace it. (Like trying to replace citrus juice with vinegar to prevent scurvy. It’s not ascorbic acid, so it doesn’t work!) Its presence or absence could easily be gauged in concrete, measurable, quantifiable ways. Its existence could be tested and falsified, to use scientific terms.
None of that appears in actual Christianity, however.
The mere fact that evangelists must struggle with contented people’s rejection of the need for belief, that they must offer concessions based on the need being met in other ways apparently, that they can’t even reliably tell us what this need looks like and what its fulfillment looks like, tells me that something’s seriously wrong with their beliefs about it. This is exactly the kind of difficulty people have in describing things that don’t really exist.
As usual, though, it’s not the reality of Christianity that’s the dealbreaker. It’s the general response of Christians to that reality. That’s the dealbreaker here.
And almost none of them will ever realize it.
NEXT UP: Apologists’ suggestions for converting secular Americans is hilariously off-base. We’ll check out one such guide next time. See you soon! <3
Please support my work!
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being part of our community! Here are some ways you can support my work:
