Dear friends,
Some topics are such a universal way of thinking that it is surprising to see how rarely they are mentioned in the Bible. Conscience is such a topic that is critical to our behaviour and mustn’t be undermined, yet the Bible’s teaching on conscience is more connected to its education than its slavish following. This is a tricky subject to explore. If you have questions or comments that you want to follow up on this topic, we are always glad to read them, but we don’t promise to respond. Simply write to respond@twm.email.
Yours,
Phillip
Phillip Jensen: In this week’s episode, we will be looking at the topic of conscience. We explored assurance of salvation last week, which is such a pivotal part of gospel ministry. But why is conscience also an important issue to us?
Peter Jensen: Last week, we referred to the great hymn, Blessed Assurance.
Phillip: Is there a great song about conscience?
Peter: Yes—the song Give A Little Whistle,1 which of course comes from the great Disney film Pinocchio, tells us to “Always let your conscience be your guide.”
Phillip: And it’s sung by Jiminy Cricket.
Peter: “Always let your conscience be your guide” sounds like good advice. What’s wrong with it?
Phillip: It isn’t. It’s not even in the Bible.
Peter: No—it sounds like it would be, though. It sounds right, but you’re saying it’s not.
Phillip: No, because conscience can change over time, due to something called ‘rationalisation’. That is, you may say, “I thought this was wrong, but now that I’m doing it, I don’t think it’s wrong anymore.” Furthermore, conscience changes from culture to culture. Think back to our society and our lifetime. Back when we were younger, there was a word which was used commonly among Australians: ‘wowser’. Nowadays, that word is an exclamation; you may say, “That’s a wowser of a thing!” when referring to something positive. But that word wasn’t positive when it was created.
Peter: No. You wouldn’t want to be called a wowser.
Phillip: Right at the end of the 19th century, a man called John Norton claimed that he created the term. But he was a very disreputable man who was the editor of a newspaper called Truth. This newspaper was a terrible rag that he used to blackmail people with, and he was very disreputable—so much so that for a while the New South Wales government passed a law stating that you could be libelled when you were dead, which prevents history writing. It’s the only country in the world that had such a law, but it was to protect John Norton from having the truth told about him. He claims to have invented this word, but seeing he was such a liar, I’m not sure he did. But he claimed the word stood for ‘We Only Want Social Evils Remedied.’ He claimed that the word was created to mock the Puritanical ban on alcohol, gambling, Sunday sport, fun, etc. The churches were all into temperance: anti-smoking, anti-swearing, anti-blasphemy. So they were saying, “We only want social evils remedied.” But of course, his view was that this kind of Puritanism was destroying the culture of our society.
In some ways, ‘wowserism’ was terrible. Of course, you can’t really achieve morality like this. But worse, it gave people a false sense of assurance and righteousness. It encouraged this attitude of “I’ve done the right thing. I’ve stood by the right issues.” But it was very selective in its choices of issues to care about, which were very achievable. You could say, “I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, therefore I’m righteous.” So the term ‘wowserism’ was created to send up Christians. Sadly, to some extent, it was right in that Christians were wowsers. But worse still, Christians prided themselves in being wowsers.
Peter: Yes. Generally, the causes were not too bad. It’s interesting in today’s world to hear what targets there are, but the abuse of alcohol and gambling are not so often mentioned these days, even though they retain their power to inflict pain and suffering on people a lot more than some of the other things people talk about. But you’re right; while some of the causes were genuine, the church was too often known as the home of wowsers.
Phillip: Yes, it’s a sad thing really, undermining the gospel with what is supposed to be a good cause. It’s funny, though, that we stood against smoking tobacco—then once we gave up that wowserish attitude, society discovered that smoking tobacco is bad, and so now it’s now been banned by the non-Christians rather than by the Christians. You mentioned alcohol and gambling as well. Academics at New South Wales University recently spoke about the high correlation between alcohol, gambling, and domestic violence. But of course, that was the argument in the 19th century for giving women the vote; women needed protection from drunken, gambling husbands, and so they needed to be able to change the law.
Peter: So this was the gospel, and if you were involved in standing for these issues, it made your conscience feel good.
Phillip: Yes, and it gave you a self-righteous, finger-wagging kind of attitude to life and to other people, but it really undermined the gospel of Jesus. But does that mean conscience itself is a bad thing, that we should just preach the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ without conscience coming into it? Is Jiminy Cricket totally wrong?
Peter: He’s not totally wrong, but reality tells us a different story, and that reality is reflected and spoken of in scripture. The idea of conscience doesn’t feature that often in the Bible, but it turns up, for example, in Romans 2:14–16
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.
So conscience is a universal phenomenon. We may not know the law explicitly, yet in our hearts or in our conscience, we have the law. Or in other words, in our hearts we know the law, but in our conscience we can be accused or even excused for breaking the law. In a sense then, it’s not so much an ethical guide to life as a judgemental attitude within us about ourselves, in which we assess our past behaviours for good and bad. And so our conscience does have the capacity to guide us ethically in the future if our judgement was correct.
There are a couple of other references to conscience in the New Testament. 1 Timothy 4:2 speaks of some of Paul’s opponents: “through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared.” In other words, even though they lie, their consciences don’t ever tell them that they’ve lied. They have made their consciences not work even in the way that they ought. They’ve turned their consciences to rock so that they cannot do the job that they might otherwise have done.
In 1 Corinthians 8:7 and also Romans 14:23, he speaks of those who are weak, because they perhaps grew up in a society where some foods were banned but have now been, by the gospel, liberated. But despite that liberation, they can’t bring themselves to break the law which they grew up with. Paul says that this is a weak conscience, which ought to be respected. You don’t make a person go against their conscience at that point. In Romans 14:23, he says, “But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” So even if a person’s faith is yet to be further educated, you don’t ask a person to go against that, because it can’t do them any good to just go against it without any change in the way they think.
Phillip: Indeed. One person believes he may eat anything while the weak person eats only vegetables. The rules and regulations are sometimes a sign of weakness in their faith, because the rules and regulations are in excess of what the Bible is saying. So Paul keeps trying to help people by saying, “I want you to understand so that the conscience is better educated, in order that faith is better educated.”
Peter: So how do we lovingly treat such people? We don’t ask them to go against their conscience.
Phillip: No, we must never do that, unless the conscience is perverted beyond belief. You should stick with your conscience until you’re clear in your education. When I was a conscientious objector, I went and saw our rector, who did not for a moment tell me to go against my conscience, even though he disagreed with me. But he gave me Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s book on the Sermon on the Mount,2 because I thought the Sermon on the Mount was what led me to be a conscientious objector. He said, “Read the chapter on turning the other cheek, then come back and we’ll talk more.” And when I read that, I realised I’d misunderstood the Bible. So my conscience was educated. I’ve always been thankful to him for this.
Peter: The conscience can be healed by the blood of the cross, and it can be an aid if it has grown in conformity to the will of God. If our conscience is shaped by the Bible, it is a reminder to us of what’s right and wrong. But while the Word of God is not fallible, the conscience is, and we need to have some biblical grounding. We cannot just live by our conscience. I once heard a story about a man in the Second World War who was in charge of concentration camps, and he once went to the German leader Himmler and confessed a “sin” which he had committed, in that he had allowed a Jewish prisoner to escape. There’s his conscience telling him that to allow a Jewish prisoner to escape is the wrong thing. Always let your conscience be your guide? Garbage.
But given this biblical teaching, what went wrong with church wowserism?
Phillip: It forgot the gospel of grace and forgiveness; our relationship with God, which we hear in the word of the gospel.
When we uphold certain social, moral, and political viewpoints, we do run the very great risk of not basing it on a gospel of grace and forgiveness.
There’s a strange coherence between the secularist and the Bible concerning conscience. The Bible’s teaching on sin in the Garden of Eden is that we replaced God as the arbiter of good and evil with our own ability to determine good and evil. We replaced God’s word with our conscience, our autonomy—our own self-law. So you say the conscience is universal, but it’s universally misguided because all people sin. So the world still has conscience, and it imposes conscience on others. But the gospel of the Lord Jesus is that our conscience is washed clean. Hebrews 10:22 speaks to us clearly about how our hearts are washed clean from our evil conscience. That conscience needs to be shaped and cleansed by God so that we live by it and preach by the cleansing work of the blood of the Lord Jesus.
Peter: That doesn’t mean, does it, that we shouldn’t stand for any social issues?
Phillip: No.
Peter: Indeed. It is often the people who have been through this cleansing experience who are responsible for so many wonderful things that have been done in our society.
Phillip: Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me! It was John Newton’s past involvement in the slave trade that made him such a clear preacher of the amazing grace of forgiveness, and led him to be a leader in the anti-slavery fight.
Peter: Yes—and so it’s not that the cause espoused by the wowsers is necessarily wrong. Rather, the reasons for being involved may have lost touch with the Bible and the gospel, turning into a new legalism.
Phillip: I think that this is happening with the non-Christians, who have become the wowsers.
Peter: Yes, it’s funny. We’ve now put Christianity to bed in the lives of many, but strangely enough, the legalistic wowserism which was so despised by the elite has now passed on to the elite. It’s passed onto the shoulders of those who are secular. Strangely, we live in a highly moralistic society. This does not apply to everybody by any means, but so much of our society’s leadership is moralistic. Yes, we’ve forgotten the old issues of temperance and gambling—though I’m glad to see that gambling is being addressed again—but now, for example, abortion is something that we must allow for moral reasons. Euthanasia likewise. There has been radical change in the marriage laws, equality, the green gospel, multiculturalism, et cetera. Some of these causes are right; others I don’t agree with. I don’t think it’s right that we should have free abortion or euthanasia. But the interesting thing is that if you don’t agree with these causes, you are pushed out in the cold with considerable finger-wagging, which makes the person who’s saying these things feel better, and the person who’s not fitting in, bow their head and creep to the edges.
Phillip: De-platforming and cancelling come as a result. But this is a very moralistic attitude. The whole movement of ‘rights’ which is so important to the moralists of today is interesting, by the way, because it begs the question: where do rights come from? Because within a secularist society, there’s no basis for rights other than the imagination, and yet the rights movement is so powerful. There are the rights over my own body, and the rights to determine issues like abortion and euthanasia, which are treated as inalienable. We may disagree with those, but I think we disagree more fundamentally with the basis of those discussions in terms of rights. But the power of shaming inside the world of social media is particularly powerful. It’s also extremely damaging to free discussion and open conversation.
Peter: Yes, and worse than that, it can be extremely damaging to vulnerable people.
Phillip: Indeed. Although we’ve experienced it in mainline media, too. I’m always amused when mainline media attacks social media because I don’t think they’re all that much better. But because they see their work is being undermined, they’re attacking it.
But let’s get back to the topic of the church. The church’s loss of moral authority has become very great, especially through the whole paedophilia issue, which is so dreadful. But how do we respond? What did our ancestors get right, and what did they get wrong? Any proper response is that we are fallible, and we need the message of forgiveness and grace above all else. We need that because we’re not self-righteous in our relationship with God.
We’re righteous by grace through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we mustn’t so push the issues of social amelioration that we confuse people with our message of forgiveness. To drive people out of our church society is a great problem. But having said that, as an Australian citizen, I should play my role. As a Christian who is an Australian citizen, I have the privilege and freedom to vote, to speak, to write, and I should be concerned for the welfare of others. And if by voting on an issue like gambling, I can alleviate the pain and suffering of people in this world, that is a good thing. I still have to do it under the gospel, though.
Peter: Yes, it’s a difficult course to map, but it needs to be done. I was for some time in the chair of Anglicare, which does a huge amount of good around Sydney. The mayor of one particular area said to me once, “We have some money at our disposal given by the government to look after people who are living on the streets, and they can come to us and get some money, some help to buy food, and so forth. But we asked them, ‘Would you like to come to the Town Hall to receive this help, or do you want to go to Anglicare?’ And without exception, they said, ‘We want to go to Anglicare because the people there actually care for us.’” It’s not that there’s something wrong with the Town Hall; it’s that the help received there was a transaction, whereas there was a love for people at Anglicare which people valued and treasured.
That speaks to us about the grace of God in the gospel, which is about one sinner helping another sinner, not a bureaucrat or a self-righteous person. I thought that was great.
Harline, L and Washington, N. (1940) Give A Little Whistle [Song]. In Pinocchio (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon On The Mount, 1984 (Eerdmans Academic)
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Links & Recommendations
For more on this topic, check out this podcast episode by Phillip Jensen and Tony Payne called Why Are Moralists Hypocrites?
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