Fr Ronald Rolheiser
There is nothing as psychologically and morally dangerous as lying, as denying the truth. Jesus warns us that we can commit a sin that is unforgivable which (in his words) is a blaspheme against the Holy Spirit.
What is this sin? Why is it unforgivable? And how is it linked to not telling the truth?
This is the context where Jesus gives us this warning. He had just cast out a demon and some of the people who had witnessed this believed, as a hard religious doctrine, that only someone who came from God could cast out a demon. But they hated Jesus, so seeing him cast out a demon was a very inconvenient truth, so inconvenient in fact that they chose to deny what they had just seen with their own eyes. And so, against everything they knew to be true, they affirmed instead that Jesus had cast out the demon by Beelzebub, the prince of demons. They knew better. They knew that they were denying the truth.
Jesus’ first response was to try to make them see their lie. He appeals to logic, arguing that if Beelzebub, the prince of demons, is casting out demons, then Satan’s house is divided against itself and will eventually fall. But they persist in their lie. It’s then, in that specific context, that Jesus utters his warning about the danger of committing a sin that cannot be forgiven because it blasphemes the Holy Spirit.
In essence, what’s in this warning?
Warping
The people whom Jesus addressed had denied a reality that they had just seen with their own eyes because it was too difficult for them to accept its truth. So, they denied its truth, fully aware that they were lying.
Well, the first lie we tell is not so dangerous because we still know we are lying. The danger is that if we persist in that lie and continue to deny (and lie) we can reach a point where we believe the lie, see it as truth, and see truth as falsehood. Perversion is then seen as virtue, and the sin becomes unforgivable, not because forgiveness is withheld, but because we no longer believe we need forgiveness, nor in fact do we want it or remain open to receiving it.
Hell is never a nasty surprise waiting for a basically honest, happy person”
Whenever we lie or in any way deny the truth, we begin to warp our conscience and if we persist in this, eventually we will (and this is not too strong a phrase) pervert our soul so that for us falsehood looks like truth, darkness looks like light, and hell looks like Heaven.
Hell is never a nasty surprise waiting for a basically honest, happy person. Hell can only be the full flowering of a long, sustained dishonesty where we have denied reality for so long that we now see dishonesty as truth. There isn’t anyone in hell who is repentant and wishing he or she had another chance to live and die in grace. If there is anyone in hell, that person, no matter his or her private misery, is feeling smug and looking with a certain disdain on the naivete of those who are honest, those in Heaven.
Living
And how is that a “blaspheme against the Holy Spirit”?
In his letter to the Galatians, St Paul lays out two fundamental ways we can live our lives. We can live outside of God’s spirit. We do that whenever we are living in infidelity, idolatry, hatred, factionalism, and dishonesty. And lying is what takes us there. Conversely, we live inside God’s spirit, the Holy Spirit, whenever we are living in charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, longsuffering, fidelity, gentleness, and chastity. And we live inside these whenever we are honest. Thus, whenever we lie, whenever we deny reality, whenever we deny truth, we are (in effect and in reality) stepping outside of God’s spirit, blaspheming that spirit by disdaining it.
Satan is the prince of lies. That’s why the biggest danger in our world is the amount of lies, disinformation, misinformation, and flat-out denial of reality that’s present most everywhere today – whenever, it seems, we don’t find the truth to our liking. There is nothing more destructive and dangerous to the health of our souls, the possibility of creating community among ourselves, the future of our planet, and our own sanity, than the flat-out denial of the truth of something that has happened.
When reality is denied: when a fact of history is rewritten to expunge a painful truth; when you are told that something you witnessed with your own eyes didn’t happen; when someone says, the holocaust didn’t happen; when someone says “there never was slavery in this country”; or when someone says “no kids died at Sandy Hook”, that doesn’t just dishonour millions of people, it plays on the sanity of a whole culture.
When something has happened and is subsequently denied, that doesn’t just make a mockery of truth, it plays havoc with our sanity, not least with the one who is telling the lie.