The Unpardonable Sin

Mt 12:31 Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.

There's been a great deal of debate and controversy over the centuries over the unpardonable sin. To know what Jesus was talking about, it is necessary to understand the context in which he was speaking. Jesus was healing people of all kinds of afflictions and diseases, but the religious authorities were accusing him of healing by the power of Satan. Jesus was healing by the power of God, so by calling this power demonic, they were in fact slandering God's Holy Spirit.

But what does this really mean today, and is it still possible to commit the unpardonable sin? Many fundamentalists interpret Jesus' warning in a characteristically superficial manner. They would have us believe that the unpardonable sin is basically a refusal to confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and it is impossible for a born-again Christian to commit the unpardonable sin, because God will forgive any sin commited by a Christian.

But that isn't what Jesus was saying at all. In fact, he explicitly says "And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven." So it is not a matter of who confesses Jesus as Lord and who doesn't - that isn't the point. Jesus specifically said that it wasn't about what people said about him, or whether or not people believe in Him. The real issue is slandering the Holy Spirit.

Let's take what I believe to be a good example of the unpardonable sin from the news of this past week. Then I'll go into more detail about why this is exactly the sort of thing that Jesus was talking about.

Last week, four days before Christmas, the Congress passed a bill cutting programs like food stamps, student loans, child support, health care, foster care funding, and school lunches for the poor to the tune of $40 billion ( they wanted to give another $100 billion tax cut to rich people like Bush). Dick Cheney cast the deciding vote in the Senate, and afterwards Bush lavishely praised the measure as an example of fiscal responsibility.

Then right after praising a measure that will certainly cause a great deal of harm and suffering for thousands of people, Bush gave a Christmas message in which he encouraged Americans to help the poor. In other words, after taking action to sign into law a measure that will inflict real harm on the poor, Bush covers his actions with empty rhetoric about helping the poor. It was the kind of hypocrisy rarely seen in any president - but also an example of the unpardonable sin.

I've been reading a book entitled "The Nature of Evil" by Daryl Koehn. It's a very interesting book, in that it critiques various works of literature as a way of studying the psychlology of evil. It's about how we learn to hide and rationalize the evil that we do. We all do this to some extent, which is why we always have to be on guard against returning evil for evil, and search our hearts for the real motives behind our actions. Because there might come a point that we've become so good at lying to ourselves and rationalizing the evil that we do, that we are no longer able to think clearly or to choose any other course. We could become hopelessly trapped inside our own web of rationalizations.

The unforgivable sin - to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit - is seen not only when we attribute to Satan the good works that the Holy Spirit is doing. It is also when we disguise all the evil works we are doing, and pretend they were done under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The unpardonable sin is whenever somebody does something that is demonstrably and objectively evil - like stealing from the poor to give to the rich - but then they go much further to involve God in their cover-up , by using Christmas to hide evil deeds behind empty words of Christian charity. This is not only a sin - this is slander against the Holy Spirit.

It would have been better for Bush if he had recognized that what he was doing was evil. In his own mind, he likely rationalized to himself that he had balanced the books and done more good last week by encouraging others to give to charity, than the harm he'd done by slashing $40 billion from programs for the poor. But this is typical of the false rationalizations people make in order to justify the evil that they do. It is extremely doubtful that his Christmas message convinced anyone to do anying positive. Like children who follow the example their parents set rather than what they tell them to do, what Bush did by coldly slashing programs for the poor just before Christmas was a much more convincing argument, than some standardized Christmas homily obviously written by somebody else. Even if somebody happened to follow his advice and give money to the poor only because he suggested it, it would be they and not Bush who dererves credit for their actions. And the fact of the matter is, only about $4 billion is donated by individuals to charities specifically aimed at helping the poor in the United States every year. That's one tenth the amount Bush had just cut in federal programs for the poor.

Because Bush doesn't have any insight into his true motives, he progressively becomes more evil. Religious hypocricy is a skill like any other, and the better people get at concealing their harmful actions behind empty words and rationalizations, the more evil they are capable of doing. If Bush knew what he was doing was evil, then he would still have the opportunity to repent from the evil he had done and change course. But religious hypocrites don't have that option, so he cannott change course. I seriously doubt that he sees through many of his own lies anymore. I'm sure he has a good rationalization for every lie and evil act that he does as president. People can get so good at lying to others, that ultimately they become the biggest suckers when it comes to believing their own lies. The reason pathological liars can often pass a lie detector test, is that they have gotten to the point that they actually believe their own lies.

Jesus said: "If the light that is within you is darkness - how great is that darkness!" What that means is that if what you believe to be good is actually very evil - how hopelessly lost you are! If our religion consists of doing harm to other people in the name of God - we are spiritually worse off than any atheist. It is one thing not to believe in God at all. It is another to attribute the evil that we do to God. The former may be a mistake or even a sin, but the latter is an unforgivable sin, and the worse kind of slander against the Holy Spirit.

Religious hypocrisy unchecked can quickly become an unpardonable sin - not because God cannott save us and cleanse us from all our sins. But because we have set ourselves upon a course where our actions become progressively more evil. There is a process of sanctification, and the road of religious hypocrisy, and they lead us in opposite directions.

Hannah Adendt writes: “What makes it so plausable to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can…exist under the cover of all the other vices…Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.” With every other sin, God can bring us to repentance as long as our heart is in the right place. Hypocrisy is the only sin that we arrogantly wave in God’s face.

It is no accident that Jesus railed loudly and very often against religious hypocrites. Because hypocrisy is more than just another sin. With people like George Bush, it eventually becomes a way of life. There are those who hypocritically warn us about the ‘homosexual lifestyle’ . But make no mistake - it is their lifestyle – the lifestyle of religious hypocrites- that's the one threatening our lives and liberty today – that's the real threat to our nation and the world. Not only because of the religious hypocrites who murdered 3,000 people on 9-11, but also the religious hypocrite who used 9-11 as a pretext for murdering 100,000 Iraqis in his greed for oil. The church of religious hypocrisy has more members than any other denomination in the world, primarily because it includes the worst people from every religion.

The very worst atrocities have always been done by those who rationalized they were ridding the world of evil – or ‘evildoers’. Bush would be much less dangerous if he were only a crook and a con man. He would not be as threatening if he had some insight into his greedy motives and lust for power – if he could see through all his own lies, and knew that his rationalizations were superficial and false. But Bush is someone who doesn’t like to think very deeply about things - that isn’t who he is, and that isn’t what a religious hypocrite does.

Bush is the sort of man who can coldly slash $40 billion in programs for the poor, and still think himself compassionate just because he gives a speech full of empty platitudes about helping the poor. It makes him much more dangerous than if he knew what he was doing was a con and did it anyway. His lack of intentionality actually makes him capable of doing far greater evil. A crook that is just a crook still has a certain grip on reality - he knows how far he can go before getting caught or self-destructing. But there are no rational limitations on religious hypocrites who misinterpret their motives and misjudge the objective effects of their actions upon others - they are disconnected from reality. That’s why their self-destruction is a foregone conclusion. That's also what makes their particular sin unpardonable. It’s only a question now of how many more people Bush is going to take down with him over the next three years.