Seeing Straight

I think I should have been rather more careful in my last posting than I was.  Despite my tendency towards universalism (a hope which I believe all christians should share) there is clearly a very important question which cannot be ignored, summed up in what for me, at least, is the most important thing Christ ever said about himself and his mission: For truth I came into the world. Without truth there can be no salvation because the latter depends entirely upon our incorporation in God, and love and lies simply do not go together.
It is important to realise that a mistake, or a misapprehension, is not the same thing as a lie.  In a way which the first two are not, a lie has a quality of determined self-will about it, even if it has become habitual and in the process no longer recognisable as untrue by the liar himself.  And the liar can face no greater threat to his happiness both temporal and eternal than that of at last coming to believe that black is white, and vice versa.  This is surely the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit - unforgivable not because forgiveness is not offered, but because it cannot be accepted by the one to whom it is offered, simply because he is now unable to recognise reality even when it (or He) stares him in the face.
When I returned to New Zealand in 1985 after sixteen years in England, I was solemnly infromed by a friend of the family that programmes in the Maori language had virtually taken over the television networks.  I suggested we had a look at the TV Times - or whatever was to hand at that time - to see if this claim was true.  It wasn't.  And not only that, but Maori broadcasting  in the nineteen-eighties was notable for its near non-existence.  I expected to hear a sigh of (politically incorrect) relief, but not a bit of it.  The friend of the family had to agree that the TV Times said what it said, but the slightly hurt little smile indicated a determination to believe otherwise - and also a certain degree of righteous martyrdom as well.  I suspect that's just how the powers of evil deal with reality too.  And only repentance can put it right, not because God loves a groveller, but because to repent is to acknowledge the facts and to renounce the lies. 

[Originally published on my now-defunct blog Speculations and Certainties]