Have you ever heard people talk about something as ‘an issue of conscience’? Very often what they mean is that you might think one thing, I might think another, you may have your conscience on it and I may have mine. In other words, let’s agree to disagree.
In truth, matters being relegated to a ‘conscience issue’ is often code for ‘you’re making a bit of a meal out of this, don’t you think?’ In other words, I’ll call this a ‘conscience issue’ to cover over the fact that I think you are insisting something is sinful when I don’t think it is. ‘I respect your conscience’ is best translated as ‘you are wrong, you are making a mountain out of a molehill, but because I don’t think the things is wrong I don’t need to break fellowship with you’. In the best of cases, ‘having a conscience’ about something is essentially little more than just how you happen to feel about the thing; it is cast as bearing almost no relationship to reality or biblical data.
I think we tend to talk about conscience badly. We can end up speaking in the ways above because we think of conscience like Jiminy Cricket. But conscience is not about what we feel. Conscience is about what we know. Our conscience is our mind telling us, based on what we know, that this is wrong. It is not some airy-fairy feeling of discomfort that a thing might not be quite right but I can’t put my finger on why. It is that sense of this being wrong because of what I know.
That is why every issue is a conscience issue. Every issue is a matter of what we believe – based on what we know from scripture – to be true. Every issue is a matter of what we understand the Word to say and, therefore, what we believe is right or wrong. And if we are convinced the Word says it, how can that leave us with an ‘agree to disagree’ view? Is that how the Word tends to present matters of sin?
The issue of conscience is taken from Paul’s discussion about the acceptability of eating meat offered to idols in 1 Corinthians. It is frequently assumed that Paul’s approach here is to suggest everyone is entitled to their own conscience on the matter. But that is simply not true. The strength of Paul’s argument rests on the fact that the thing under discussion i.e. eating meat offered to idols is not sinful. It is not a matter of you think one thing, I think another, let each be convinced in his own mind. Rather, it is that this is – in point of fact – not sinful (Paul explicitly says so) but if you believe it is, I will not judge you. Elsewhere, where Paul insists certain behaviours are sinful, he simply tells the church to either stop doing it or to separate from those who are. It is only because Paul says the matter is not one of sin that he can then tell the different parties to welcome one another and stop judging each other.
As soon as we start insisting somebody else has a matter of conscience, we inevitably end up patronising them by insisting this isn’t a sin issue and they are making a mountain out of a molehill. But of course, they’re arguing it is a problem because they really do believe it is a sin issue. The answer is not to patronise them; it is to sit with them and look at the scriptures together. Does the bible tell us this is sin or not? If it does, then all of our consciences should be on the same page and, likewise, if it doesn’t.
That is why Martin Luther said so vociferously, ‘my conscience is captive to the Word of God’. He wasn’t saying, my conscience says this and if you think something different, well you do you. He was saying, God’s Word says this and my conscience – what I know to be right and wrong – is rooted in the scripture and I don’t have the right to say anything else. This isn’t a matter of ‘let’s agree to disagree’, it is a matter of biblical fidelity. Whenever somebody insists ‘this is a conscience issue’, they don’t seem to realise that means ‘I believe the bible says this and I don’t have the right to set it aside just because you feel differently!’
When we say something is a conscience issue, what we often mean is that we’re all welcome to believe whatever we want on this issue. But I don’t think scripture ever quite gives us that right. In reality, whenever we deem something a conscience issue all we’re really doing is that we don’t think it is sinful but another person does. That may well be a true statement of fact, but it doesn’t particularly help us because what we’re dealing with is one person who thinks we’re free to do the thing and another who does not. But how do we resolve that issue? I don’t think it’s by going, ‘you do you’. Rather it’s by asking: what does the scripture say? Does the bible say this is sinful or that we are free to do it?
Getting our head around this may help us with some of our discussions that are typically cast as ‘matters of conscience’. That is to say, matters you (or I) might consider to be sinful. Those discussions will certainly need to involve a lot of looking into the scripture, they may even lead to us having different churches to accommodate our respective understandings of what is and is not sin whilst still being able to shake hands over our boundary fences, but unless you are of the view ‘this is not sinful’, it is difficult to just shrug your shoulders and go, ‘you think your thing and I think mine’. But if it isn’t sin, you will only convince me and my conscience of that if you can show us it is so from scripture. That is what it means for our conscience to be held captive to the Word of God.