Naselli / Crowley Conscience

What It Is, How to Train It, and Loving Those Who Differ
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4335-5077-5
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

There is an increasing number of divisive issues in our world today, all of which require great discernment. Thankfully, God has given each of us a conscience to align our wills with his and help us make wise decisions. Examining all thirty New Testament passages that touch on the conscience, Andrew Naselli and J. D. Crowley help readers get to know their consciences-a largely neglected topic-and engage with other Christians who hold different convictions. Offering guiding principles and answering critical questions about how the conscience works and how to care for it, this book shows how the conscience impacts our approach to church unity, ministry, and more.

Andrew David Naselli (PhD, Bob Jones University; PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is professor of systematic theology and New Testament at Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis. He is planting Christ the King Church in Stillwater, Minnesota.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Naselli, Andrew David

Crowley, J. D.

Leseproben

1

What Is Conscience?

Most people probably think of the conscience as the “shoulder angel.” Comic strips and films often depict an angel dressed in white on a person’s right shoulder and a demon dressed in red and holding a pitchfork on the person’s left shoulder (see figure 1). The angel represents the person’s conscience, and the demon represents temptation. The angel attempts to persuade the person to do right, and the demon tempts the person to do wrong.

Figure 1. Shoulder angel vs. shoulder demon

This picture resonates with people because we commonly experience internal conflicts that seem like voices in our heads arguing about what to do in a particular situation. What is right? What is wrong? Thankfully, we’re not left to popular perception in regard to conscience. We have the Bible to teach us what conscience is and is not. In chapter 2 we’ll attempt to define conscience from the Bible. But first we want to lay out some introductory principles about conscience, principles that we’ll unpack throughout the rest of the book. Most of them are pretty obvious, but it’s possible that you haven’t thought much about them.

Conscience Is a Human Capacity

To be human is to have a conscience. Animals don’t have a conscience, even if they often seem to. I (J. D.) have a dog, Lucy, whose tail is almost permanently fixed between her legs, her eyes always averted, always guilty. We think she was mistreated as a puppy. But in spite of all appearances, Lucy doesn’t have a conscience—not even the trace of one. She doesn’t have a conscience because she doesn’t have the capacity for moral judgment. Our cat doesn’t have a conscience either, but you already knew that.

Notice we said conscience is a capacity. Like other human capacities such as speech and reason, it’s possible for a person never to actualize or achieve the capacity of conscience. A child dies in infancy, having never spoken a single word or felt a single pang of conscience. Another child is born without the mental capacity to make moral judgments. Others, through stroke, accident, or dementia, lose the moral judgment they once had and the conscience that went with it. Still, to be human is to have the capacity for conscience, whether or not one is able to exercise that capacity.

Conscience Reflects the Moral Aspect of God’s Image

It shouldn’t surprise you that you have a conscience. You’re made in the image of God, and God is a moral God, so you must be a moral creature who makes moral judgments. And what is conscience if not shining the spotlight of your moral judgment back on yourself, your thoughts, and your actions. A moral being would expect to make moral self-judgments.

So conscience is inherent in personhood. It is not the result of sin. It is not something that Christians will lose after God glorifies them. This means that Jesus, who is fully human, has a conscience. Unlike our consciences, though, Jesus’s conscience perfectly matches God’s will, and he has never sinned against it.

Conscience Feels Independent

But what ought to surprise you is that you would even care about the verdict of your conscience. Yet you do care, intensely. Many have taken their lives because of a secret guilt—a sin that no one else knew except that impossible-to-suppress voice within. Others have gone mad from the telltale heartbeat of a guilty conscience.

But when you think about it, why should you care what your conscience says about you? If you heard that a judge accused of a crime had decided to hear his own case, you’d laugh. First he sits on the bench and reads the charges. Then he jumps down to the witness stand to defend himself and then jumps back up to the bench to pronounce himself “not guilty.” What a joke! And yet you judge yourself every day, and it doesn’t feel like a joke. It’s deadly serious. Why?

The why is a great mystery. No one knows why the conscience feels so much like an independent third party, but it probably has something to do with the relationship between two universal realities that Paul discusses in Romans chapters 1 and 2. Romans 1:19–20 claims that all humans know intuitively by the witness of nature that God exists and must be absolutely powerful. Romans 2:14–15 goes on to teach that everyone also has a conscience, an imperfect-but-accurate-enough version of God’s will, as standard equipment in their hearts. Then verse 16 makes a link between the conscience and the day of judgment. Listen to these two passages side by side:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. (Rom. 1:19–20)

For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Rom. 2:14–16)

Put together, these passages seem to explain conscience like this: though we all have a sense that what’s going on in our conscience is secret, we also have a sense that an all-powerful, all-knowing God is in on the secret and will someday judge those secrets at his great and terrifying tribunal. We’re not saying that people actually reason it out like a syllogism but that all of us intuit very strongly our accountability to an all-powerful, all-knowing God, even if we suppress that intuition, as Romans 1:18 claims. Perhaps that is why the voice of conscience seems so much like an independent judge rather than a kangaroo court.

Conscience Is a Priceless Gift from God

The conscience is a gift for your good and joy, and it is something that God—not your mother or father or anyone else—gave you.

Consider your sense of touch. That sense is a gift from God that can function as a warning system to save you from great harm. If the tip of your finger lightly brushes the top of a hot stove, your nervous system reflexively compels you to pull back your hand to avoid more pain and harm. Similarly, the guilt that your conscience makes you feel should lead you to turn from your sin to Jesus. God gave you that sense of guilt for your good.

The conscience is also a gift from God for your joy: “Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves” (Rom. 14:22b). Like everyone else, you long to be “blessed” or happy. That’s how God wired you. The ultimate way to nourish this longing is to satisfy it with the deepest and most enduring happiness, God himself, and then share that deep joy with others by loving them. Your chief end is to glorify God by enjoying him forever.1 You can intensify that satisfying pursuit if you understand that your conscience is a priceless gift from God, learn how it works, and then cultivate it so that you can love others.

Conscience Wants to Be an On-Off Switch, Not a Dimmer

Conscience is all about right or wrong, black or white. It doesn’t do gray scale very well. It doesn’t nuance. It doesn’t say, “It’s complicated.” It leads your thoughts to either “accuse or even excuse” (Rom. 2:15), to pronounce guilt or innocence. Because conscience wants to make such stark pronouncements, it is of utmost importance that you align your personal conscience standards with what God considers right and wrong, not just with human opinion. Otherwise, your conscience will pronounce guilty verdicts on matters of mere opinion.

Your Conscience Is for You and You Only

Conscience is personal. It is your conscience.2 It is intended for you and not for someone else. And the conscience of others belongs to them and not you. You cannot, must not, force others to adopt your conscience standards. MYOC. Mind your own conscience. Accepting this one principle would solve a large percentage of relationship problems inside and outside the church. (More on this in chapter 5.)

No Two People Have Exactly the Same Conscience

If everyone had the same conscience standards, we wouldn’t need passages like Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8, which teach people with differing consciences how to get along in their church. Let’s use the triangles in figure 2 to compare the consciences of two Christians, Anne and Bill.3 The letters in the triangles stand for various rules of right and wrong. Though not identical, Anne and Bill’s consciences overlap significantly in what they view as right and wrong (C, D, E, F, and dozens of other rules). In fact, people usually agree much more in matters of conscience than they disagree.

Figure 2. Two consciences

Notice, however, that Bill’s conscience has more rules than Anne’s (rules G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O). Anne sees Bill assiduously following these unnecessary rules, such as staying away from movie theaters and never playing video games, and she rolls her eyes at such “legalism.” All the while, Bill is shocked that Anne can ignore these...