Is God unfair? He may very well be, but he is not unrighteous. In chapter 9 of his letter to the Romans, Paul writes: “So can we say that God is unrighteous? Certainly not! He told Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So it depends not on someone wanting it or someone running after it, but on God who has mercy.” There is nothing you can do to win God’s favour; he chooses some people to favour and others not.
Paul goes on to say that God “has mercy on whoever he wants, and he causes whoever he wants to become obstinate”. Certainly in the case of Pharaoh, the Bible says a number of times that it was God who hardened Pharaoh’s heart, so that ultimately God’s glory might be seen. Does this mean that God might even be behind the current plague of ardent atheists? Possibly. After all, as Paul says, “Who are you, a human, to argue against God?”
The church and the gospel do not belong to Christians; they belong to God. The power to change people’s hearts and destinies does not belong to Christians. God is the one who ultimately determines the lot that you end up with in life, and ultimately all we can do is say with Job, “the Lord has given and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”