If a gun is put to your head and you are threatened to convert to another religion, and you lie out of fear. By swearing allegiance to that religion, do you genuinely believe in their theology, or are you just saying that to keep from being martyred? Can you choose TRULY to accept a new theology/religion under pressure, or can you only fake it? 

Conviction comes from outside information that convinces you, right? One can’t turn their mind to receive something they aren’t confident of internally. So, is it possible to force someone to make themselves believe something? Don’t people usually only believe something they are told that they receive? Can you FORCE yourself to believe in Santa Claus? If crusaders and colonizers ministered to non-Christians with the free option to reject, it would be more effective than threatening them to coerce conversion.

Believers are supposed to share the gospel and let the gospel itself convince others. If they don’t believe, then it is their loss. Matthew 28:18-20 says to “teach” all nations, not conquer and enslave all nations. One can not threaten a person with “good news” (the gospel). It doesn’t make any sense to say, “Christ died for your sins, now repent or die”. The natural response to that is, “Well, if Christ died for my sins, why do you have to kill me?” Furthermore, you can’t threaten someone with good news. Imagine the doctor telling you that you are cancer-free while holding a scalpel to your neck. Are they trying to harvest your organs because you are healthy? Or a lawyer congratulating you on a victory in court, while holding a gun to your head. Are they trying to rob you? Good news brings hope to the hopeless; therefore, it cannot threaten anyone. It’s about speaking truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), which is the opposite of fear (1 John 4:18, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7).

Anyone who shares information with others, like a teacher and their students, may not hear or receive, which is their problem. Not everyone who goes to school graduates; some fail and drop out. Dropouts can’t say they weren’t taught because, in reality, they just didn’t care to listen and apply. Forced conversion is what leads to false converts who pretend to be Christian on the surface but keep the pagan traditions of their ancestors in secret. Those who have not abandoned sinful practices and false gods have not truly submitted to Christ, and they won’t inherit the covenant promise of being partakers in his eternal kingdom. Therefore, the Christians who try to force people to become Christians with threats are not bringing people into the Kingdom, so they are not actually following the Great Commission. God’s grace can extend and cause people to believe despite mistreatment on first contact, but how many more people could have been won over by love?

Is faith (belief in something) a work you act on and can force, or is it a response of conviction about something presented to you by evidence outside of yourself? Faith comes by hearing the word (Rom 10:14-17), and a person cannot believe something they haven’t heard before. That is why Christians are to share the gospel, so that all can hear the gospel and have the option of receiving it.