Unpardonable Sin

"Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.” - Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.

A hundred years ago, G. K. Chesterton said in his book Orthodoxy. "...for I thought (and still think) sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin." One may first ask, "Well who's right?" My question is, "Are these guys talking about two different things or not?"

The story here begins in the third chapter of the Bible's second (Mark's) Gospel. Amidst trying to have a meal with His followers, Jesus is thoroughly interrupted by a crowd and some "teachers of the law." In the two chapters prior, Jesus gets baptized, fasts forty days and shuts Satan up, gets some disciples, drives out demons, heals a bunch of people and prays in between, meets Matthew, dines with sinners, gets interrogated about fasting AND the Sabbath, completes His search of all twelve disciples, and finally, where we begin, is accused by his own family and the religious teachers. So we can tell that his relationship with these individuals has started off very shaky.

Speaking carelessly, they said Jesus was possessed by Beelzebul, basically the Hebrew word for Satan. Then Jesus made that statement I began with. Essentially, the teachers called God the devil.

Earlier, I also suggested a possible parity of sincere pessimism and the instance of the blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. Firstly, let's be clear of what sincere pessimism is, as distinct from insincere pessimism. The latter is displayed when one, in expecting good over bad, grants his hope onto another. In doing so, he's also displaying faith and love. However tainted with pessimism this hope may be, the worst it can become is insincere pessimism. It happens when an older sister lets her constantly clumsy younger brother do the chore he's been begging to do, hoping but doubting he'll succeed. Sincere pessimism is the hopeless, doubtless grimace of caring no longer, believing no longer nor loving any longer.

Sincere pessimism is the inability to doubt in another because of the inability to hope in another. It is when one cannot even fathom the success of a particular other. It is when a parent could hope nothing for their own child. It is when a person tells another, "Thank God I'm not like you."

Again, were Christ and Chesterton referring to two different things? What kind of person must one be to look God in the face and see a devil? A sincerely pessimistic person. They must feel so hopeless, that they'd doubt God would love them enough to die for them. They would first believe a self-proclaimed Messiah to be a devil than to believe God would put humility before reputation. For you to see sin in the sinless, to curse the blessed, to rebuke the only thing in this entire universe capable of saving your soul, is for you to give up all hope.

The Bible is not a story of fairy tales, but imagination, not make-believe but of what makes belief. To look God in the face and see the unimaginable love, or to look God in the face and utter the unpardonable slander.

The Complete God

It is certainly easy to end up falling victim to erroneous decisions, dangerous people and hence, difficult circumstances. It's not a stretch to say God Himself has faced grim circumstances. Nevertheless He retains His perfection. For us people who know nothing but imperfection, it gives us an opportunity to see how perfect God really is. Inherent in His perfection is completeness, for perfection implies He lacks nothing and has never lacked. Hence He is whole; hence He is complete.

For the first fifteen hundred years of His relationship to Israel, it is clear that God's revelations were limited in context. There were always only specific people who'd directly commune with God, people such as Moses, the Aaronic priesthood and after their sin of the golden calf, the Levites. But God was known to an exclusive group who managed the holiness of the people, who were even commanded to bear the iniquity of the nation by means of certain rites (Leviticus 10:17).

Now however, with the New Covenant, we know what God is like. Firstly, according to Colossians 1:15, Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. Therefore, we have been revealed the true nature of what it means to be divine. Secondly, we have an "advocate", a sort of invisible social worker guiding us (John 15:26). This "advocate" is the Holy Spirit.

And what do we learn about God? We learn that God knows true freedom, firsthand. For being a complete character, needing nothing, there is no circumstance which can take Him outside of Himself. This is the true freedom. Take a person, who believes freedom is circumstantial. But all I'd have to do is place him back in that circumstance and he'd be bound once again. This freedom is false because it is temporal. God urges us to a permanent freedom, one that is unending and unchanging.

It is from this completeness that we get the "lacking nothing" of James 1. It is from completeness that we get Matthew 5:48, a highlight of the Sermon on the Mount. Be perfect as God. Be complete. Be whole. Lack nothing.

From a personal perspective, dealing with sexual impurity( in New York City!) is a perfect example. I must master completeness in character or else fall to sin each time temptation arises.
A complete person can be tossed into a storm of temptation but walk out unscathed. What is your weakness? Flaw? What's holding you back? Without gaining "lacking-nothing", how do you expect to meet that need?