Recently, the "news" program Nightline aired a segment about a group of folks known as The Rational Response Squad, who have issued a challenge to try to get people to commit the "unforgivable sin." The members of this "Squad" spoke with vitriol about the "fear" that the church supposedly inculcates and feeds upon. And they insisted that they (rather nobly) only want to free people from this "bondage to fear." Their website states their purpose as trying to win your soul from the Lord Jesus. "We want your soul," they write brashly. They continue by saying, "Jesus will forgive you for just about anything, but he won't forgive you for denying the existence of the Holy Spirit. Ever. This is a one-way road you're taking here." The challenge involves videoing yourself saying the phrase "I deny the Holy Spirit" and posting it on You-Tube.
What should we as Christians have to say about this?
Well, here are a few comments:
1. Christianity does not instill or feed upon a "bondage to fear" or a "bondage to guilt." Christianity is all about freeing people from the bondage to fear and guilt that they are already experiencing as a result of sin. We do not create fear, nor do we need to. We do not create guilt, nor do we need to. People's consciences and sin do that all by themselves. Christianity provides the solution to the problem, not the problem itself.
2. The solution that they propose will never free anyone from bondage. The freedom that they seek to impart can ONLY be found in Christ.
3. By their own word, they are seeking "your soul." They have an agenda; the opposite agenda of Christianity (can anyone say, "Anti-Christ"!). In other words, they are doing the exact same thing that they fault Christianity for doing. They are inculcating a spirit of fear (that what people have always believed is wrong) and are doing it for the express purpose of gaining "your soul."
4. They misunderstand Mark 3:29 (and related passages) that talks about the "sin against the Holy Spirit." They say, "Jesus will forgive you for just about anything, but he won't forgive you for denying the existence of the Holy Spirit."
In the first place, Jesus will NOT forgive "you" for just about anything. Jesus will ONLY forgive those who have placed their trust in Him, those who rest and receive Him alone as He is offered in the gospel. So, if the "you" includes non-Christians (which it obviously does, because only a non-Christian would want to take this challenge), ALL of their sins (and not just blasphemy, even that against the Spirit) will be unforgiven.
In the second place, Jesus will NOT forgive you "for just about anything." Jesus will and does forgive His people for EVERYTHING, for every single sin they have ever committed and ever will commit-- past, present, and future. That's the gospel! Tell me, where is the fear in this? As the hymn-writer, Horatio G. Spafford writes, Christianity says: "My sin--o the bliss of this glorious thought--my sin, not in part but in whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more; praise the Lord, praise the Lord, o my soul" (emphasis mine). Who needs (or wants) deliverance from this?
In the third place, I don't know of anyone (any reputable scholar, that is) who interprets Mark 3:29 as saying that Jesus won't forgive you "for denying the existence of the Holy Spirit." This sin has nothing to do with the individual denying the EXISTENCE of the Holy Spirit, but with the individual denying the WORK of the Holy Spirit in his/her life. And it is not a one-time act that is in mind here but a settled condition of soul. To cite William Hendriksen (and he is not alone in this sentiment, not by far), this sin occurs "when a man has become hardened, so that he has made up his mind not to pay any attention to the promptings of the Spirit, not even to listen to his pleading and warning voice." In fact, this man even attributes these actions of the Spirit to the devil himself. Then, and only then, Hendriksen says, he "has placed himself on the road that leads to perdition. He has sinned the sin 'unto death'" (New Testament Commentary, 139).
In the fourth place, this sin of denying the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with a mere speaking of words. These Rational Response guys seems to want folks simply to utter these words, as though that is all it takes to condemn a person. It is not the mere speaking of ANY phrase that condemns one, any more than it would save one to utter "I trust Christ." The words, by themselves, mean nothing without the heart condition that accompanies it.
Now, I admit, to utter these words on camera does perhaps take an extra amount of boldness or shrewdness or hardness of heart. But, it could be, as is likely in at least several of the cases, that the people who are doing this, have not really studied the issue, have not heard the gospel (not really heard the gospel), have not been the beneficiaries of the promptings and warnings of the Spirit in their lives. For them to utter the words on camera amounts to gross ignorance, of which the Apostle Paul Himself was forgiven.
All this is to say that their supposed challenge is actually more of a publicity stunt for advocating their own religion: the religion of self.
I would encourage and challenge The Rational Response Squad to take up the Bible and read for themselves (tolle, lege) and to put some of their "rationality" to work discerning what the Scriptures really teach.
5. Let's not be duped, fellow believers. These guys do not have a lock on "rationality." Christianity is NOT irrational! It is wholly rational. But, to be sure, it is more than just rational. Christians have largely abdicated the realm of rational debate to atheists and scientists and others who speak a lot of gobbledegook. Let us stand firm. Let us strive to understand, first, the Bible, so that we can think Biblically about ALL of life, and, second, the world around us, so that we can answer gainsayers like this bunch.
If you are looking for a good starting place to take up the debate between atheism and theism, I would suggest one of my all-time favorites, C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity.
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