Up until about a week ago, I was great! I was strong in my faith, and things were going well when one day I suddenly awoke from sleep to a thought so horrible I was in a sweat, my heart was thumping and ever since, I have been in extreme anxiety. I had thought for an instant about the verse on Jesus being a demon, and I had imagined it being so. I am a Christian so I know the thought is utterly false, but I am so mortified that I can’t get rid of thought. The more I try to stop it, the more it comes back.

I am in turmoil! The passage about the unforgivable sin makes me so afraid, that now I am a mess. That horrible thought keeps creeping back and I want it to go away. I keep telling Jesus that I am sorry, and powerless to get rid of this false image of him. It is like living in hell. Please help me!

So common is it to be tormented in this way that this dear woman has nothing to be embarrassed about. Nevertheless, rather than risk causing her the slightest discomfort I will conceal anything that might identify her. We’ll call her Kate.

Few of us regularly have a demon appear before us and start talking to us. And yet we have all had evil spiritual powers trying to tempt us. Since they rarely speak to us in an audible voice, how do they tempt us? By putting thoughts in our minds – thoughts that seem like our own but are from them.

Churning around in our mind are not just our own thoughts but the occasional thought direct from God and the occasional thought direct from God’s spiritual enemies. It is not unusual for God to put thoughts and ideas into our minds that we mistake for our own thoughts. Likewise, it is common for us to mistake as our own thoughts things whispered into our minds from spiritual powers that hate us and hate our Lord.

Kate was so upset by those blasphemous thoughts because such blasphemy is disturbingly contrary to her own views of Christ. To a casual observer it is obvious that thoughts so contrary to her own thinking could not be her thoughts. Because they were happening in her very mind, however, it was hard for her to be convinced they did not originate from her. She was experiencing a hideous invasion by evil powers of the most intimate part of her – her innermost thoughts. It is such a terrible violation of her person that I refer to it as spiritual rape. Every Christian – even Jesus, who was tempted in all ways like us when on earth – suffers this.

“Where’s the Scriptural proof?” you might ask.

Matthew 4:5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.

Who, according to this Scripture, took the holy Son of God to the top of the temple? It wasn’t Jesus’ doing, nor was it God’s.

Matthew 4:8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.

Everyone knows there is no mountain in the world from which one’s natural eyes can see “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” The devil not only somehow managed to get Jesus’ body where he wanted it to be, he thrust a vision into Christ’s very mind. If the devil slipped that into the mind of the sinless Son of God, we can expect no less. No Christian wants it, but it is normal. In fact, it is inevitable. Nevertheless, despite the repulsive violation, we, like Jesus, can remain pure.

Unlike God, the devil can only be in one place at a time. So in our case, we are almost certainly attacked by one of the devil’s henchmen, rather than the devil himself, but it makes little difference and so most Christians, myself included, often refer to him when it is technically one of his subordinates who actually does it.

The sneak attack began when Kate was most vulnerable. How dare he start his ambush when she was asleep! Most attacks occur when we least expect it and least deserve it. It’s not for nothing that our enemy is called the Evil One. He plays dirty.

Kate knew that the lies speared into her head were not true. That knowledge is all she needs to maintain her spiritual purity. No matter what floods her mind, she is safe spiritually because she believes the truth about Jesus.

Nevertheless, “mortified” is how Kate described her reaction to the haunting devastation of being plagued by thoughts she wanted nothing to do with. Examined in the cold light of day, however, it is not the slightest surprising she couldn’t get those hideous thoughts out of her mind. If Kate had woken up to find a deadly snake in her bed, she might escape unharmed but the experience would have terrorized her, just like the thought she had woken up with terrorized her.

Had Kate escaped a snake in her bed, she would have been safe. The experience might have lasted just a couple of seconds. Nevertheless, it would have so shaken her that to her dying day it is unlikely she would ever forget it. For the first few weeks the memory would rarely leave her. The vivid, recurring memories would be most unwanted, but a perfectly natural reaction to a traumatic experience.

Similarly, Kate was experiencing a natural reaction to the trauma of waking to thoughts that shocked and repulsed her because they were so contrary to her heart-attitude to Jesus. Her reaction, in fact, was proof of her sincere devotion to Christ.

Kate couldn’t remove the thoughts from her mind. “The more I try, the more it comes back,” she agonized. Many people write to me with similar stories. I have found that they are usually very sensitive people who are deeply shocked and disturbed by having such a thought, and their very reaction seems to inflame the situation. This, in fact, is exactly what one would expect.

Try telling yourself, “Whatever I do, I must not think of blue giraffes.” It is inevitable that you’ll think of them. The more I raise the stakes – such as threatening to beat you if you think of blue giraffes – the more you will be plagued by the thought of blue giraffes. One’s very anxiety about it and desperation not to think of them will increase the problem.

It’s like walking on a plank that is high off the ground. The more you fear falling, the more nervous you will be and the greater the chance that you will actually fall. So it is that the more you fear thinking something blasphemous, the more likely it is to happen. That’s not for any spiritual reason. It’s purely psychological. On the other hand, the less concerned you are about the thought and the more you ignore it and focus on other things, the more it will fade from your thoughts.

It is astounding how high a proportion of those who e-mail me fearing that they have committed the unpardonable sin suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), or some other psychological difficulty. This shows that in most cases, uncontrollable blasphemous thoughts are not a theological matter or even a spiritual one, but the product of a psychological condition that is not only most unpleasant, but exceedingly unfair. Ironically, the more anxious one is to please God, the more severe the affliction.

Fearing that God will not forgive us is like fearing a harmless spider. The fear is awful but it is groundless. Someone with a phobia about spiders does not need to be lectured about trusting God and made to feel spiritually inferior. It is simply a most unpleasant, irrational fear for which there is no shame in seeking psychological help. Many Christians plagued with the irrational fear of being unforgivable are suffering from psychological problems that medication might help. Medication can’t save anyone’s soul, only Jesus can. But medication has the potential to stop some Christians from suffering needless torment. Whether it be a fear of harmless creatures, or a fear that God has suddenly turned unforgiving, if medication can ease the fear and help one act more rationally, I’m all for it. Medication is far from perfect – it can have side-effects and what works for one person might not work for another – but if it helps a person think more rationally about spiritual things, and consequently cling to biblical truth that all sin is forgivable through simple faith in the power of Christ sacrifice, then I see such medication as a plus.

I know that in practice it is difficult, but in theory Kate should try to be as unconcerned as she can about the repulsive thoughts buzzing around in her mind. Like someone swearing in her presence, it is unpleasant but it is not her doing. Those thoughts are the devil’s doing, not Kate’s. She can simply ignore them and let the devil take the blame for them. None of us will ever stop the devil and his horde from being evil, so we can just let them do their thing and focus on glorifying our Lord.

Let’s return to the analogy of finding a snake in one’s bed. If it turns out to be merely a toy, it would be far easier to be rid of the recurring memories. The greater the trauma, the harder it is to get it out of one’s mind. Kate’s fear that she was committing the unpardonable sin was adding to the trauma and so helping to perpetuate the recurring thoughts. Her fear was yet another dirty trick from the Evil One. She was not committing the unpardonable sin. Despite uninvited thoughts clouding her mind, she did not genuinely believe that Jesus was of the devil. And even if someone had actually believed that in the past, it wouldn’t matter, provided that person no longer believes it. For as long as a person believes Jesus is of the devil, that person’s sin cannot be forgiven since he or she would not ask for God’s forgiveness in the name of someone he/she believes to be of the devil! If that person changes his/her attitude to Jesus, however, forgiveness again becomes possible.

Jesus was tempted with horrific things – even to bow down and worship Satan. So let’s not despise ourselves if we, too, face horrific temptations. They indicate how evil our enemy is; they do nothing to suggest that we are ungodly. We don’t have to own the thoughts that come to us, nor be disturbed by them. We can simply reject them as being untrue and continue to enjoy closeness with our loving Lord.

There are surprising medical factors influencing devastating guilt feelings and sacrilegious mental images or thoughts. See the next page for an overview of this. Then we will explore a wide range of testimonies.