DON’T Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide

Pastor Dave Monreal, Lead Pastor

 All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the LORD.

Proverbs 16:2

In the movie, Pinocchio, the blue fairy has Jiminy Cricket as the wisecracking partner who accompanies Pinocchio on his adventures. She tells Pinocchio to be a good boy and “always let your conscience be your guide.” It makes for a cute story but horrible advice. But why is it horrible advice?

First, we need to answer the question, what is the conscience? The conscience is the internal moral mechanism that God gives to each human regardless of their spiritual state. You do not have to be a Christian to have a conscience. In fact, unbelievers unwittingly prove the Bible true when they do the right things in keeping with their conscience. But how is a conscience informed? Well, the internal moral mechanism in everyone is informed by all the moral teaching that he or she accepts as true. This is important. People receive all kinds of moral training throughout their lives from parents, teachers, pastors, coaches, neighbors, and friends. But that doesn’t mean they accept everything they hear. Also, it does not mean that everything they hear is true! So, a conscience can be well-informed or misinformed. It can be consistent or inconsistent.

A conscience can be overly sensitive. Someone might be told that good people don’t wear the color blue. He hears that growing up all the time and comes to believe it is true. Now, I know that’s a silly example but bear with me. This boy really believes wearing blue is wrong. What happens when he puts on a blue shirt or a pair of blue jeans? He is going to feel guilty. Why? Not because wearing blue is wrong, but because he THINKS it is wrong. He has not violated God’s standard or broken the law, but he believes it is wrong. So, your conscience is only as good as the moral teaching you have had that you believe is true.

A conscience can be seared or calloused. If you touch a hot iron the nerves on the end of your finger may be burnt and no longer feel anything at all. Likewise, if you repeatedly lift a weight with your hand, over time skin will build up in that area and it will become increasingly hard to feel anything. These are ways our conscience can be seared or calloused. Our conscience might become deadened over time or even instantaneously by something we choose to do. The repetitive nature of an activity may cause our conscience to no longer respond. Something we thought was wrong we no longer think is wrong. An activity that we at one time felt guilty when we did it, we no longer feel guilty.

We don’t recognize it much today, but morality, what is right or wrong, needs to have an objective standard outside of our feelings and impressions. We have elevated our feelings to the supreme place in our lives. What we feel is who we are and who we are is good. The problem comes in when our feelings bump into someone else’s feelings that differ from ours. We say that truth is whatever we feel. But then my “truth” may not be your “truth.” In fact, our “truths” could be completely opposite of someone else’s.

Christianity answers this by reminding us that there is a God who created us and has clearly communicated to us through the Bible. The Bible is objective truth. It clearly teaches us the character and nature of God. Right and wrong are based on the character and nature of God as revealed in Scripture and truth is not based on what we feel. Our conscience is informed and instructed by Scripture but when the Bible and our conscience differ, the Bible is always right, and our conscience misinformed.

We often mistake our conscience for the leading of the Holy Spirit. God is a God of order, not disorder. And God is true and cannot lie. He never contradicts himself and he never speaks out of both sides of his mouth. God is unified in who he is and clear in what he says. As such, the Holy Spirit will always direct us in line with the word and the word of God will always be empowered by the Spirit. Our conscience may be strong and backed up by strong emotions but that does not mean it is the leading of the Holy Spirit unless it is in alignment with Scriptures. The leading of the Holy Spirit will always be in line with the word of God and never in contradiction to it. Passion, strong emotion, and a strong conviction alone does not mean it is the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is always word and Spirit together and that is what informs our conscience.