Friday, February 14, 2014

Journal: FaceBook and the Unforgivable Sin

“Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” 
- Jesus (Mark 3:28-29)

FaceBook proudly announced that it now supports over fifty definitions of gender from which to choose when crafting a profile. Over fifty! If this doesn't speak to our culture's confusion over gender identity I don't know what does. What it also speaks to, whether we care to acknowledge it or not, is how prevalent the "unforgivable" sin has become among us.

I'm not suggesting that FaceBook has committed the unforgivable sin (it is, after all, a company not a person). Nor am I saying that being confused about your gender (or certain about your confused gender) is the unforgivable sin. What this turn of events shows us, however, is that many people have wondered into that dark and desperate place that is fertile soil for the "eternal sin."

Just what is this eternal, unforgivable sin? Jesus clearly states that the sin that is outside of the boundaries of forgiveness is blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. What He means by blaspheming the Holy Spirit is clear from the context in which He makes this statement. He had just driven a demon from a person, which is a work of God. His adversaries, who rejected the idea that Jesus is God, attributed His power to Satan. Thus blaspheming the Holy Spirit by saying that what is of God is not of God and, if you really want to make sure you're blaspheming the Holy Spirit, attributing God's work to Satan.

This brings us back to FaceBook and it's fifty-plus gender choices. What FaceBook has done is simply to acknowledge the realities of our culture, especially the realities that stem from rejecting God's Word on the matter of human sexuality. In another discussion with His adversaries, Jesus pointed out that "from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female’" (Mark 10:6). Creating human beings in two specific, clearly defined genders is the work of God. For some time now our culture has fallen into the unforgivable sin by rejecting God as our Creator. But lately a new way of blaspheming the Holy Spirit has emerged through our views of sexuality. Not only are people rejecting the binary nature of gender as God has created it, they are making God the source of their sexual sins by claiming that "God made me this way." They've doubled-down on the unforgivable sin.


But before clearly identified male and female heterosexual Christians get too smug about getting their sexuality right, we need to understand why Jesus was pointing out the unforgivable sin in the first place. His goal wasn't to condemn His Holy Spirit-blaspheming adversaries to well-deserved eternal suffering, but to warn them of the consequences of persisting in their sins. We live in a spiritually dark world in which many people are perishing through the very things they are celebrating. Following Jesus' lead, we should recognize our obligation to hold back those who are staggering toward death by warning them of the dangers that they face and leading them to the grace of a God who can even cleanse them of their "unforgivable" sins -- just as He has cleansed us from our sins of fear, hate, confusion, and blasphemies.

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