Everyone, has tendencies and temptations that blatantly go against God’s will for their lives. Yet, we engage in it, as a form of release, or comfort, or pleasure, which we enter in because we don’t yet trust God enough to be our all. The more we act on these tendencies or temptations, the more our moral compasses seem to point south; “no, look, you don’t need God here in this part of your life”. Our moral compasses, become more fine-tuned as we read the Bible, pray and listen to God’s voice and the promptings of the Holy Spirit. So oppositely, it becomes harder and harder to hear God and feel a sense of wrong, or pulling away from God, as we continue to fulfill ourselves with temptation. We become hardened to conviction, and the more we blaspheme the Holy Spirit, at some point, He leaves us completely (Mark 3:29).

For example: You can blaspheme God, He’ll forgive you. You can blaspheme Jesus, He’ll forgive you. If you blaspheme the Holy Spirit, you are, by definition, rejecting and discarding the very nature put into you (if you are regenerated Christian) that allows you TO BE forgiven. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit puts you beyond repentance, and therefore beyond forgiveness. By this I mean, if you reject the Holy Spirit’s convictions in your life, you stop being able to see and feel that you are rejecting God. You have no opportunity to ask for forgiveness if you see no wrong in what you’ve done. “Repent and believe”, “Godly sorrow”.

Say you engage in something, kind of think its wrong, and so then repent. But yet you find yourself doing it again. This time, taking a risk that someday God will forgive you, even though you are somewhat sorry. And so you do it again. and again.  “How far do you think I can go before God won’t forgive me anymore? I’m willing to find out, I suppose”. and again. and again. Banking on cheap grace. At this point, your heart is so hardened to the Word of God, that you no longer consider it wrong, in fact, perhaps considering that this is part of your personality, or that God made you to enjoy this act of sin. You start to think, “Well, why is God so restricting! If I enjoy this thing, why would he deny me the right to do it just to love Him? I don’t think He would”. So you start making your own judgement calls about the nature and character of God, without the Bible and the Holy Spirit’s guiding; meaning really, you are just making a sin-filled blind perspective on God, in order to fulfill the pleasures you desire, yourself, and trusting only yourself, to make it happen.

Picture this, courtesy of John Piper:

Instead, many professing Christians today have such a sentimental view of God’s justice that they never feel terror and horror at the thought of being utterly forsaken by God because of their persistence in sin. They have the naïve notion that God’s patience has no end and that they can always return from any length and depth of sin, forgetting that there is a point of resistance which belittles the Holy Spirit so grievously that he withdraws forever with his convicting power, leaving them never able to repent and be forgiven.

They are like the buzzard who spots a carcass on a piece of ice floating in the river. He lands and begins to eat. He knows it is dangerous because the falls are just ahead. But he looks at his wings and says to himself, “I can fly to safety in an instant.” And he goes on eating. Just before the ice goes over the falls he spreads his wings to fly but his claws are frozen in the ice and there is no escape—neither in this age nor the age to come. The Spirit of holiness has forsaken the arrogant sinner forever.

He knows it is dangerous… says to himself, “I can fly to safety in an instant.” but his claws are frozen in the ice

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All this to say, would you want someone in church leadership who is blatantly and openly choosing this path, rejecting the Word of God and not trusting God? I think not. (1 Tim 3:1-12)

What would be worth following them for? Granted, no one is perfect. But those in leadership positions must be the most attentive to the Holy Spirit, the most willing to change, to be humble, to seek righteousness, because they will be judged more harshly. They are responsible for  teaching about the God of the universe!

And so I will say only this. I disagree profusely with the recent  the decision of the Lutheran Church. Not because I think gay people are going to hell. (Everyone is going to hell, unless they have a relationship with Jesus.) Not because I think they are loose-moralled and flamboyantly promiscuous. (There are way more straight people who are like this.) But simply on the stance that, its one thing to be a member of a church, to be working out your struggles and sins, but its a whole other thing to be LEADING it.

If you knew that your pastor had alcohol and drug issues, wouldn’t you ask him to step down? First of all, he should take time to start to heal his addictions, and the heart behind it. He should not be lying or hiding this from the congregation. How much stress would that be, to have to try to deal with his own tremendous issues, while attending to all the others in his church? He would not make for a good shepherd, or for a reliable source of teaching.

In the same way, those who openly reject certain parts of the Bible, and not others, are kidding themselves, and mocking God. Who are you to say you can take this part and disregard that part? When speaking with atheists, even they agree with this reasoning: How would you know if God wasn’t just a figment of your imagination, unless there were some things about his nature and what he says to us, that are objectionable to our way of living? We cant’ just go on changing God to suit our times or our interests, or more gravely, our sins. That simply will not do. God is never changing.

How would you know if God wasn’t just a figment of your imagination, unless there were some things about his nature and what he says to us, that are objectionable to our way of living?

I hope I have made a suitable argument, without offending anyone beyond a reasonable amount. There are many things people say that offend me, but that is simply because I hold those things so dear to me that I take them personally, and find myself aggravated. I hope I have shown my theological basis for this in love. This decision is wrong. There’s nothing I can do about it now, nor will I pursue anything to rectify it. I will only state what I have seen and known to be true. This decision applies to a very sensitive subject; it is a sin that is wrapped up in “love and blessings” (even their own arguments for it are such).  However, there are just as many other causes and issues that seem exponentially more “wrong” because their destructive nature is more obvious. We must not trust our own senses and our own eyes and hearts, because they deceive us daily.