I was studying Matthew 12:31-32 this week getting ready for a sermon when I ran across the “Blasphemy Project.”
This is the brainchild of Richard Dawkins, an Oxford University professor of ethology and evolutionary biology. Prof. Dawkins is also an atheist and an outspoken critic of religion. Since 9/11 he has stepped out his campaign against religion. As he says…

“Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labeled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!” (The Guardian, 2001-10-11”Has the World Changed?”)

The Blasphemy Project is an on-line challenge Dawkins has created. He is offering free copies of his video, “The God Who Wasn’t There” to anyone who will make a video renouncing the Holy Spirit and post it on www.youtube.com. There’s much more about this challenge at: http://richarddawkins.net/article,425,The-Blasphemy-Challenge,The-Rational-Response-Squad

The idea comes from a teaching of Jesus which appears in several of the Gospels. The version I was studying is from Matthew and reads:

“Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come."

Prof. Dawkins seems to take the point of view that the passage is about crime and punishment. God lays down an arbitrary rule, “Don’t talk bad about the Holy Spirit.” There is an arbitrary punishment for this rule which he interprets as being condemned to Hell for all eternity. Though he doesn’t come right out and say it, I have the sense that Prof. Dawkins sees no strong correlation between crime and punishment (someone please set me straight if I’m not being fair.) An impulsive (or even an accidental) disrespectful statement will be punished with eternal damnation.

This is a simplistic reading of the passage. While it is certainly held by some Christians, it is in now way correct. The Message version of the Bible does a lot to make the meaning plainer:

“There's nothing done or said that can't be forgiven. But if you deliberately persist in your slanders against God's Spirit, you are repudiating the very One who forgives. If you reject the Son of Man out of some misunderstanding, the Holy Spirit can forgive you, but when you reject the Holy Spirit, you're sawing off the branch on which you're sitting, severing by your own perversity all connection with the One who forgives.”

In Christian theology the Holy Spirit is the power that makes forgiveness possible. To “blaspheme the Spirit” is much more than saying something disrespectful. It is to reject the source of forgiveness. To paraphrase another scripture (Galatians 5:22) anytime a person demonstrates the qualities of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control that person is acting under the Spirit’s power.

I imagine Dr. Dawkins would argue that a person doesn’t need to believe in the Holy Spirit to demonstrate these qualities. That is true, but it is different from what I am saying. If a person demonstrates these qualities in his or her life, the theological understanding is that person is living under the power of the Spirit. Whether the person affirms that reality in no way affects the truth of the statement.

To genuinely blaspheme the Spirit is to deny this power with your whole life. A person saying “I renounce the Holy Spirit” who lives a life of love, forgiveness, gentleness, generosity, etc. can’t expect that statement to be taken at face value. That would make no more sense than to condemn a loving, faithful, devoted husband for saying to his wife, “I hate you!” The statement is hurtful, but the truth is in the lifetime of love, not the moment of thoughtlessness.

The real blasphemy, the thing that can’t be forgiven, is to turn against that reality. To do that you have to fill your life with hate, misery, fear, impatience, cruelty, stinginess, infidelity, brutality, and excess. If you do that you can’t be forgiven. That’s not an arbitrary punishment; it’s just naïve to imagine that you can be forgiven when you have rejected the very idea of forgiveness.

I can understand some of where Dr. Dawkins is coming from. He’s a scientist and there are Christians who regularly intrude on the domain of science. He is also correct that religion has been used as a rationale for some terrible wars and oppression throughout history. He is mistaken in labeling religion the cause of these excesses though.
People like Pol Pot and Stalin were strictly rationalist/secularist/materialist and they committed some of the worst genocides in history.

I’m not outraged at Blasphemy Project or even annoyed. I’m just disappointed. It seems mean-spirited and juvenile. If we’re going to debate let’s do it fairly and with some mutual respect. There’s no sense in sniping, especially not with the hatred loose in the world these days. Better to focus on the things that are really important.

For myself, I’m going to focus on what I call living according to the Holy Spirit.