Christian Conscience and Preference
While it may seem like there are more ways than ever to disagree as Christians, the idea that Christians will have differing opinions or ideas on how to best approach any particular issue is not new. Even Paul and Barnabas disagreed on whether or not to take John-Mark with them on their missionary journey (Acts 15:36–41). There have always been Christians like…let’s call them Bill and Anne.[1] Bill and Anne have agreement on some Christian issues (in fact, most Christians agree on far more issues than they disagree with, even though it may not feel that way often times). Let’s call those issues C,D,E, and F. Yet Anne notices that Bill follows a lot of rules she feels are unnecessary and too legalistic. Bill is shocked that Anne doesn’t follow such obvious commandments that he feels are clearly in Scripture. Similarly, Bill notices Anne follows rules that he doesn’t see anywhere in Scripture but Anne feels are very important and God honoring. Let’s call Anne’s unique rules A and B, and Bill’s unique rules G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O (he has a lot!). What we end up with is a situation where Bill’s and Anne’s beliefs overlap like this:
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Conscience_Image1.jpg
What we are talking about here are Bill’s and Anne’s consciences. To be human is to have a conscience. After examining the many uses of conscience in the New Testament, [2] Naselli and Crowley define the conscience as: “Theconscience is your consciousness of what you believe is right and wrong. Consciousness means awareness or sense, and we include that word in the definition to make it more memorable.” [3] Our conscience doesn’t usually operate in the gray, rather it tends to give us black and white / right or wrong decisions. Ultimately, God has the only perfectly adjusted understanding of right and wrong because his will defines both. And the reality is, neither Bill nor Anne nor you and I perfectly match God’s will. No person’s conscience does. So, what Bill and Anne, or you and I and any other Christian ultimately end up with is an overlap like this:
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Conscience_Image2.jpg
Conscience_Image2.jpg
Our Christian life here on this earth is spent trying to calibrate our conscience to God’s will, “for we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). In some instances, our conscience aligns with what God deems as right and good, and we need to only follow our conscience and encourage it in those areas. In some areas, our conscience is actually wrong, and we need to change our belief on right and wrong to align with God. These are not usually that difficult to understand: we shouldn’t murder, we should love and care for others, we should love God with our all heart, soul and mind. The problem often is that our ability to follow God’s clear commands for us lags far behind our knowledge of them, and so we need patience and diligence.
However, much of Christian life doesn’t operate in the easy realm of “the bible clearly says…” but rather in wisdom and prudence calls. We have to extrapolate what God says clearly in Scripture to issues he doesn’t talk about in as clear ways. Whether we can play video games and go to movies and which ones. How far is “too far” in a dating relationship. Should we spend a lot of time on sports and hobbies. We can easily be content to acknowledge that some of these wisdom questions can have many answers. We recognize the answer is going to be different for different people but still can be God honoring. In short, the answer stays at the level of preferences and personal prudence.
But sometimes we become convinced that a particular wisdom call or prudence is absolutely right or wrong. It moves from a wisdom/prudence/preference issue to an issue of conscience.
Often times, as we go through heightened moments of change or emotional concern (e.g. COVID-19, racial tensions in our country, etc) we have to remember that all Christians have to work to understand God’s will and all of us are imperfectly aligned with it. Sometimes we get it, sometimes we don’t. While our goal is to always align with God exactly, God is very concerned about our conscience and how we treat it. Especially when issues of prudence or preference are elevated to a conscience issue, God tells us that anything we do that does not come from faith is sin (Romans 14:23b). It isn’t just wrong to ignore our conscience, we can be in sin by going against our conscience if we have made something that is right or optional to God wrong in our own eyes. So our job becomes two-fold: work to calibrate our conscience, and keep from sinning against our conscience.
As Naselli and Crowley say, you are sinning against your conscience when “you believe your conscience is speaking correctly and yet you refuse to listen to it.”[4] But to avoid this from becoming subjective (e.g. it’s wrong for me but right for you, so let’s not worry), they point to Mark Dever who reminds us that, “Conscience cannot make a wrong thing right, but it can make a right thing wrong.” What God declares wrong and sinful is always wrong and sinful, but we can take something that could be right, or fine, or acceptable, and it can become sin for us because our conscience is convinced otherwise. In these types of discussions we do not want to try to persuade anyone into a position that is sin for them because they are convinced a matter that ultimately may be good and right is wrong for them.
On the other hand, we calibrate our conscience when “Christ, the Lord of your conscience, teachers you through his Scripture that your conscience has been incorrectly warning you about a particular matter, so you no longer listen to your conscience in that one matter.”[5] We constantly come back to Scripture to allow it to convict and change our perceptions that we might know and love God better and find ourselves conformed more to his will. We acknowledge that we will only ever partially know the will of God here on earth and are thankful for his word that guides us continually.
This is important for issues like 1) wearing masks during COVID, 2) the extent of the state’s powers to restrict meetings or social distancing, 3) the best policies to help racial concerns and tensions in our country, 4) how we handle the sordid history of America toward black and brown citizens, and many, many others. For each of these, we may never be able to identify a) which answer comes from a strong/weak conscience, b) when we have confused preference for conscience, or c) which idea (if any) perfectly aligns with God’s will. This doesn’t mean we don’t continue to calibrate our consciences through the word of God, but we can always have the heart that Paul implored the Romans who were having similar disagreements and disunity to have in Romans 15:7—“Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” Then, through care, conversation, and much praying and seeking God’s will, we can continue to talk and find productive ways to bring glory to God through all our endeavors together.
[1] Much of this letter includes paraphrases and partial quotes from chapters one and two Andy Naselli’s & JD Crowley’s great book, Conscience: What it is, How to Train It, and Loving Those Who Differ, Crossway, 2016. We pray this extended admonition encourages you to buy the book and read it on your own!
[2] Acts 23:1, 24;16; Romans 2:15, 9:1, 13:5; 1 Corinthians 8:7, 8:10, 8:12, 10:25–27, 28–29, 2 Corinthians 1:12, 4:2, 5:11, 1 Timothy 1:5, 19, 3:9, 4:2, 2 Timothy 1:3, Hebrews 9:9b, 14, 10:2, 22, 13:18, 1 Peter 2:19, 3:16, 1 Peter 3:21
[3] Ibid, 42.
[4] Ibid, 65.
[5] Ibid, 66