Living With Your Honest-To-God Self:The Lifelong Task #4
Living With Your Conscience
by Ken Wilson
Series: We can only get as close to God as we are willing to be our
honest-to-God selves before Him. Living with your body, personal
past, ancestral past. Today: living with your conscience.
Begin by reassuring those tormented by an excess of shame, or compulsive conscience focused on a besetting weaknesses, never satisfied. My goal is to be gentle-tender around your conscience, not inflame anyone's shame-meter; hope you can relax.
Conscience is a function of our humanity. It is not the Holy Spirit, though the Spirit can influence the conscience. It's part of us. It gets formed as we do: genetic factors, upbringing, society, and the things we focus our hearts on. [Childhood brush with compulsive conscience--Strep] May be formed well or poorly: most of us, mixed, hit or miss. In some areas reliable, in others, not so much.
Core meaning of word same in English and NT GK: "to know with"; 'science' from latin, "to know"; con-science, to know with. Gk word for conscience: suneidesis [eid is see/know; sun is with]
What a remarkable capacity: to know ourselves with ourselves. Few mammals able to recognize themselves in a mirror: chimp, elephant, humans. A dog in front of a mirror sees a dog not knowing he's the dog, dawg. Self awareness--having one part of the self stand apart from the self to be aware of the self--a real parlor trick!
Capacity to be self-aware empowers us--keep an eye on ourselves, make judgments about how we're doing to make course corrections--but it also complicates us. We're aware of the blemish on our nose and imagine people staring at it. It can be a royal pain, confounded con-science, seeing or knowing ourselves with ourselves.
In Bible and general use, conscience is especially our capacity to measure-judge-evaluate the morality of our actions, thoughts, feelings. Which is why we confuse conscience with God, because he has that capacity too. So the voice of conscience can feel like the voice of God. But they are distinct voices….
In Romans, Paul says: "For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing." (Ro. 7:19) The voice making the observation is conscience: the self knowing itself.
But for the believer, conscience is not the final arbiter. God is.
Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. (1 John 3: 18-23)
My dear children, let's not just talk about love; let's practice real love. This is the only way we'll know we're living truly, living in God's reality. It's also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves. (1 John 3: 18-20, The Message)
He is addressing those who suffer under a harsh conscience.
Being harder on yourself than God is--more demanding, more critical--doesn't do God or yourself any favors.
Sometimes believers add insult to injury by slapping God's name and authority on the dictates, voice & feelings of their own conscience.
It has the appearance of devotion to God, may simply be what the Bible calls taking the name of the Lord in vain. This command, part of Top 10, not about cussing but slapping God's name on your own thoughts & opinions.
If I were to stand here and say, "A vote for Barak Obama [or John
McCain] is a sin against God" what would be wrong with that?
It's not that one couldn't make the case for either one being the
better candidate, but to slap God's name on it--fear of using the
Lord's name is what keeps you from doing that.
[1996 someone told me: A vote for X is a sin against God. Could you hand me the phone? What phone? Your direct line to God]
Conscience is a God-given capacity, to be sure. We're equipped with a moral compass. But dictates-tone-voice of conscience issue from a lower court, not the highest one. Conscience serves us "under God" not "as God."
A conscience may be overly harsh, or mistakenly clear.
Take Paul, who wasn't the beat himself up sort. You don't see in his letters, "You know, maybe I was a little harsh with Peter when I rebuked him in public….I feel bad that I kicked John Mark off my team just because he went home early on one of our trips."
In 1 Corinthians Paul treats the issue of conscience. First he says the obvious: For who knows a person's thoughts except that person's own spirit within? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. (1 Cor. 2: 10-11)
Basic point: just as every person is in the best position to know their own thoughts (why it annoys us when others judge our motives) God's spirit knows God's thoughts best.
But he's also learned to be humble about his self knowledge: I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of people's hearts. At that time each will receive their praise from God. (1 Cor. 4: 3-5)
I may have a clear conscience and be guilty! I may be wrong about my area of expertise: myself!
How does a guy like Paul get that humility? From experience.
He was treating people like trash, thinking he was doing God a favor. With a clear conscience! Polluting his religion, thinking he was purifying it.
This is an occupational hazard of religion isn't it? Fuel your tank with Godly conviction, strike a match, light a fuse, but oops! you're pointed in wrong direction--and do more damage because of your convictions.
How did religious zealot Paul come to see the error of his ways? His clear but mistaken conscience was overruled by the voice of Jesus.
He was used to living his life according to his best lights. He easily absorbed the Law--he was an able student, advanced beyond his years. He could integrate the Law into his own temperament and opinions and come up with a potent concoction. But the voice of Jesus slipped in and went to a place deeper than conscience….
"For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him with whom we have to do" He. 4:12-13
It happened on his way to Damascus….the voice of the edgewise word slipped in deep: Saul, it's not easy to kick against the goads! You're hurting yourself, dude! Who are you and what are you talking about? I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. The brothers that you're killing are your own. (see Acts 26:14-16)
Whether it's a gentle whisper or a whimsical but searing voice like that, full of personality different than your own, yet coming from within, slipping a word in edgewise between soul and spirit, joint and marrow: the effect is to humble you, because you've heard a voice from inside yourself that knows you better than you know yourself.
Our task is to learn to recognize the voice--not see the flash or fall to the ground [great if it happens]--but to recognize the voice, even if it's a still small voice, gentle as a little movement of air across your face, more quiet than a whisper.
Maybe you have an easy-to-live-with assured conscience. Your mother told you that you could no wrong and you believed her!
Or you might have a pestering conscience that could dress down Mother Therese at her holy best.
The voice of Jesus can overrule either: can get a stubborn mule of a conscience to wake up or comfort the bruised reed of a conscience with a tender word.
The point I'm making is this: a Christ follower is meant to be a kind of internal trinity: the doing-thinking-feeling self, the co-knowing self measuring itself, and the voice of a living and active word with the personality of Jesus.
Too many Christians leave discipleship all to their conscience: Feed their conscience Christian truth and then leave their conscience the job of making themselves Christian.
"Talk a little, pick a little," do a little, judge a little, all in God's name. Just us in there with our Christianized conscience, now approving, now condemning us. That's not Christianity, that's moralism.
To be a Christian is to let Jesus into the mix so it's a trinity in there. We do-think-feel; we judge-discern-evaluate ourselves with our best lights, but we also "sanctify Christ as Lord" in our hearts, aware that Jesus has a rightful home in us. And we learn to listen for his living and active word in us.
The word may jump off the page into our hearts as we meditate on Scripture. It may come through the Spirit in other ways: a song, a prayer, a conversation. Our job is to tune our ears to the voice.
Examples: Nicholson conference: heart thumping, eventually sobbing as though I've done something terribly wrong--busted!--but I don't yet know what it is. It's all coming "from within." Then voice--thoughts I don't seem to be generating, but which come from within me: "You've taken the Vineyard name under false pretenses."
2001 Low ebb, low energy, can only do lowest energy prayer: silence. Then voice from within: "Ken, meet Ken." (I think you'll like this guy, I want you to meet him as a friend.)
"My own soul let me more have pity on. Let me be to my sad self hereafter, kind." -- Gerard Manley Hopkins
[The key to assuring our troubled conscience in 1 Jn 3 (how it is that we assure our hearts when our hearts condemn us) is by committing ourselves to loving "the brothers." Close this series with "Living with our Communal Self (our brothers.)"]
Getting Along with Your Conscience Before God
1. Bring your conscience with you and surrender to God together. You and your Jiminy Cricket kneeling together.
Have you ever done that? Taken your self and your inner compass and together surrendered to God?
"Sanctify Christ as Lord in your heart….and keep a good conscience"
2. Consciously invite the Spirit to influence your conscience.
Influence: inform-shape-act on
+ To awaken your conscience to things it's not sensitive to currently.
+ To comfort-reassure your conscience when it is being too harsh.
Jesus wants to act on our conscience: to cleanse our conscience so we can boldly stand before the throne of grace.
Are you open to influence? Tell him.
3. Treat your conscience with the respect & consideration you owe a spouse.
A spouse, not a God. A partner, not a ruler.
Ignoring your spouse? That's not good for a marriage.
Don't make your conscience scream before it can be heard.
Learn to listen to your conscience, to better converse with it.
Talking to my dental hygienist Mary Pawloski about tooth pain. Teeth are not intelligent signalers of pain. Off-on switch.
Normally subtle "pain continuum": itch, heat, pressure, OUCH!
Bug lands feel itch, you can swat it off, before it bites….
What if you're at loggerheads with your conscience-spouse?
He's making demands you can't fulfill, etc.
She's critical all the time and you can't please her.
Converse. Find a trusted third party and talk. Air it out.
Confession isn't just announcing your sins to a confessor. It's also bringing your troubled conscience to someone and talking it over…..