I'm just beginning to read Your God is Too Small by J. B. Phillips, and I'm intrigued by his descriptions of viewing God as a resident policeman.
Here are a few quotes...
"To many people conscience is almost all that they have by way of knowledge of God. It is this which impels them to shoulder the irksome duty and choose the harder path."
"Yet to make conscience into God is a highly dangerous thing to do. For one thing, conscience is by no means an infallible guide; and for another it is extremely unlikely that we shall ever be moved to worship, love, and serve a nagging inner voice that at worst spoils our pleasure and at best keeps us rather negatively on the path of virtue."
"Conscience can be so easily perverted or morbidly developed in the sensitive person, and so easily ignored and silenced by the insensitive, that it makes a very unsatisfactory god."
"Unless there is a God by whom 'right' and 'wrong' can be reliably assessed, moral judgments can be no more than opinion, influenced by upbringing, training, and propaganda."
"Surely neither the hectically over-developed nor the falsely-trained, nor the moribund conscience can ever be regarded as God, or even part of Him. For if it is, God can be made to appear to the sensitive an over-exacting tyrant, and to the insensitive a comfortable accommodating 'Voice Within' which would never interfere with a man's pleasure."
:beret:
excellent thoughts.
I need to get that book.
I believe it is better to love and support your conscience, just remember your conscience might not be right about everything. Paul said his conscience had been right towards God since his youth, and in another place he spoke of eating meat that was sold in the markets to describe two different but equally valid consciences.
I am learning that committing a trespass against God is to, in some way which I don't fully comprehend, also offend our conscience.
God went to great lengths to do everything possible to cleanse us from the defilement of sin and purge our conscience from dead works.
This, as we know, was accomplished through the Lord Jesus Christ, His death, burial, and resurrection, and how it is applied to our lives.
When we obey the Gospel, like a filter on a vacuum, God cleanses our conscience with the blood of Jesus, purifying our souls. This is a process that continues to occur so long as we offer ourselves a living sacrifice so that, by not conforming to the world, we may receive continued renewing in our minds.
So, then, when we trespass, say, like doing something that does not proceed from faith, which is sin, we also stain our conscience.
It's like, if you have child and you spent all day washing their best clothes for Sunday service, and then, minutes after you've dressed them, you find them playing in the sandbox with muddy knees and dirty sleeves.
As the parent, you are upset, because you spent all the energy cleaning their clothes and you know they should have known better. At the same time, their clothes are now soiled and need cleaning once again.
In this analogy, God is the parent, we are the child, the clothes are our conscience, and the dirt and mud is sin.
God may be upset at our actions, because of the great length He went to cleanse our conscience, and He knows we should have known better. Furthermore, we should have known better as well. Having trespassed into sin, we stain our conscience, which then needs to be recleaned, as it were, by the blood of Jesus. 1 John 1:7-9 comes into play then.
So we repent to ask forgiveness of God, because we have offended Him, but we must also seek a cleansing for our conscience. They work together. Sometimes I wonder if the trespass committed really only offends God insomuch as it stains our conscience, i.e. that God is hurt, if you will, more by the fact that we stained something He worked so hard to un-stain, and not that He takes personal injury against Himself at our sinful behavior.
PS. Please don't take any of this too far; it's just some things I'm wondering about. Nothing set in stone.
Your conscience is like your mate. You've got to live in the same "house", i.e. body, so you've got to get along. Don't fight your conscience, but don't use your conscience, i.e. convictions to condemn others.