Christians and Conscience

These days, there is a lot of talk, controversy, and anger over questions of conscience. Since the beginning of the pandemic, and increasingly so since the widespread availability of the various Covid vaccines, many Christians have resisted the call to social distance, wear masks, or take vaccines. Many of these Christians have done so under the claim of conscientious objector.

This has resulted in a lot of attention being paid to this particular type of political objection and has caused many, both Christian and non-Christian, to question what it really means to be a religious objector. It has also drawn a great deal of criticism, especially from those who do not have strong religious convictions. For many, the entire concept is difficult to understand.

Recently, I read about a pastor in California’s Destiny Christian Church who is issuing vaccine exemption letters for anyone who wants to avoid getting vaccinated against Covid-19, even as businesses, schools, and local and federal governmental agencies are mandating their broad application. You can imagine the emotional responses stirred up on all sides of this debate over conscience in the public arena.

This is an important issue because, a we speak today about 100,000 Americans are in the hospital with Covid-19 and about 1,000 people die each day from the disease. With the rise of the Delta variant, and the return of kids to schools across the country, children under 12 are increasingly at risk because they cannot be vaccinated yet. This is something that concerns each of us (as individuals) and all of us (as a national community).

Today, I intend to share a biblical perspective on what our conscience is, how it is formed, and whether we can trust it. Then, I’ll take some time to define and explain the specific form of political protest, the religious conscientious objector.

What is a Conscience?

In popular culture, when our conscience is in view it either looks like a Jiminy Cricket-type character or as one of two miniature versions of ourselves resting on our shoulders - one wearing white and depicting an angel, the other wearing red and holding a pitchfork like the devil. Each version of ourselves whispers in our ear to encourage us to modify our behavior towards the good or the bad, depending on which mini-me is speaking. Those images have some helpful elements, in that our conscience is what speaks to us about the moral nature of our thoughts and actions.

The most common definitions of the word in English include the idea of an inner sense of right and wrong, an awareness of the moral aspect of one’s actions. It is a cognitive (or brain) function that brings to bear an emotional and rational response to anything which either aligns with or goes against our moral values.

The question is whether we should think of our conscience as either being a separate part of our brain, which holds court over our thoughts and actions, or as an external (maybe God-directed) voice that speaks truth to us regardless of what we think we want or ought to do.

In the Bible, the word translated as conscience is often used in the same way as our English word. But we can learn a lot about what it is by how it is used in Scripture.

First of all, Paul describes conscience as being shared among believers in God and non-believers. In Romans 2:15, Paul describes unbelievers who do not have God’s law, and yet their consciences bear witness to God’s law when it either accuses or defends their actions.

We know this, intuitively, and yet sometimes we see Christians trying to equate their conscience with the work and revelation of the Holy Spirit. While it is true that the Holy Spirit limits the sin of both believers and non-believers, there is more reason to beleive that they are distinct functions rather than the same one.

For example, in Titus 1:15 Paul describes those who are corrupt and do not believe God. Nothing is pure for them, because (as Paul says) their consciences are corrupted or defiled. Clearly the work of a defiled conscience is not in partnership with the Holy Spirit. We read in Romans 14, which we’ll return to, that Christians can have differing opinions on what actions they’re to take based on their distinct consciences. Is God leading them in opposite directions regarding faithful practice and holy living?

So we know that our conscience is not the same as the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is unique to each of us, and can lead one person in a different direction than another. So where does it come? It does seem to come from God - it is an innate part of who we are as human beings. But how it’s formed is another matter.

How is Our Conscience Formed?

When we look at the formation of our conscience from a purely logical and observational standpoint, it is immediately clear that our consciences are a result of multiple factors. Those factors include our culture (both the broad cultural trends and our unique family culture), what we're taught (including our religious training and our social training - what we might call discipleship), and our own personal development of thought and ideas. Remember, your conscience is a function of your brain judging your actions or thoughts based on your convictions, and as we have all experienced those convictions can and often should change over time.

Let’s consider a few examples to help shed light on this aspect of our conscience.

For thousands of years, no culture viewed slavery as a moral evil. While everyone mostly agreed that slavery was not a desirable state for any person, there was nothing in the culture, and so nothing in most people’s conscience, that demanded the release of slaves on the grounds that slavery was wrong. Almost every culture in history utilized the institution of slavery. Yet today, most westerners and many others would oppose, on its face, not only the practice but also the concept of slavery. It is not the case that humans are so uniformly morally superior to previous generations (it may be argued that our generation is morally inferior), but the culture has changed. Now most people would feel a pang of guilt over owning another human being.

Growing up, I used to watch the Dukes of Hazzard, a show about two cousins who regularly escaped the capture of the police by using a car that had been built to smuggle moonshine across the county in defiance of regulations against alcohol during and after Prohibition. They were moonshiners, like their uncle who taught them everything he knew. They were on probation for this crime, and so every episode they evaded Roscoe P. Coltrane, the most useless Sheriff in Georgia, to avoid being caught in the act of breaking their probation requirements. At no point did they show any remorse for their actions. Their family culture was such that moonshine and running from the police were perfectly natural and right. Come to think of it, I never felt any remorse or had any conflicting feelings about it, myself. It only seemed natural for them to run from the police in every single episode. The family culture of the Dukes allowed them to break the law without feeling guilty.

I imagine that each one of us can think of something we used to do, which we no longer do. Whether it is smoking or drinking, using certain words, or particular types of joking, we just don't do it anymore. We may have stopped that act because of the Bible or a sermon. We may have stopped because of a personal experience of hurting a loved one. It may have been because our culture is rapidly shifting in what constitutes acceptable behavior. Whatever the reason, your conscience has changed.

I imagine we could also all think of something we used to not do, but now we do. Many Christians used to refrain from alcohol, for example. But many of those same Christians no longer refrain. I remember that Christians used to look down on certain types of TV shows and movies that now are watched regularly by Christians. Using foul language as a sign of freedom in Christ comes to mind. Some of these changes might be from intentional choices based on a new understanding of God’s will, while others may be the result of changing cultural norms or a lax moral framework.

The bottom line is that our consciences are a product of many factors and are our own - individual. While the Holy Spirit definitely works with our conscience at times, he must also work in opposition to it at other times. And a conscience, though innate to all humans, must be developed. It can be developed well, or it can be developed poorly. Everyone will have moral blind spots, and so everyone’s conscience is deficient.

Not only can there be blinds spots, but Paul, in 1 Timothy 4:2, describes people who’s consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. These people are hypocrites and liars. And we can surely see some of these types of people in the Church today - which is exactly what Paul was warning Timothy about. People who we once thought were faithful followers of Jesus who, over time and through the use of constant self-deception, had their moral center mutilated and burned. They ended up unable to see the lies they were telling as an affront tot he Gospel of Jesus Christ. This can happen in such subtle and seemingly innocuous ways, and sometimes it looks like godliness.

For example, Paul warns about those in the church who forbid people to marry and avoid certain types of foods, all in the name of holiness. While we may try to avoid seeing this false piety in our midst today (no one I know is telling people not to get married) the same problem can arise in the exact opposite fashion. In the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, for example, we can hear how Mark Driscoll, the pastor of that church, used shame and guilt to pressure young people into marrying at very young ages for the sake of the Gospel. While there is nothing wrong with abstaining from marriage or marrying at a young age, using spiritual pressure to force everyone in the church to meet your personal standard for holiness is always abusive and contrary to God’s heart for us. And yet this, and many worse, examples of spiritual abuse happen in churches all across the country without violating the abuser’s conscience. And sometimes with the full support of many in the church!

Conscience is a tricky thing. It’s malleable and impressionable, which means it can be both corrected or corrupted - and both can happen simultaneously in various aspects of morality; we are not morally uniform. My conscience can grow in positive ways around obedience to governing authorities and in negative ways around how I treat people who work for me or that I have some authority over. Furthermore, our consciences can be “defiled” and “seared,” which both indicate some kind of (permanent?) damage done to them by our repeated choices and actions.

Can We Trust Our Conscience?

If your conscience is so susceptible to error, if it can even lead you into sin, is it wise for you to trust it at all? This is a great question. The answer is no…and yes.

To begin, we must admit that we cannot trust our own conscience - at least not alone. It can lead us astray. But its untrustworthy in the same sense that your reasoning is not trustworthy. In the same sense that your intuition is not trustworthy. In the same sense that hearing from the Holy Spirit is not trustworthy. Any and all of these methods for discerning truth will fail you at some point. Your logic will be faulty, and is tempted to serve your desired outcome. Your intuition will lead you astray, either because it is also in service to your ungodly desires or because you will miss something, at some point. Regarding the Holy Spirit, I just read the account of a man who thought the Holy Spirit was telling him, in 1984, to blow up abortion clinics in multiple cities. So yes, you can get that wrong, too.

But if you try to discern what’s right or wrong without reason, without intuition, without the Holy Spirit, and without your conscience, you’ll end up much worse off than those who use them. So while none of these methods of discernment are fool-proof, we must face the ambiguity and difficulty with courage because these are the tools God has given us, and so they;re the best tools we have. And when we use them in concert with one another, they become powerful tools for making moral choices.

And regarding the tool we’re considering today, our conscience, Paul is very clear. We can not always trust it be right (meaning God may condemn our actions even when we do not) but we must never ignore it when it tells us we’re wrong.

Let’s look at each of those situations in turn.

In 1 Corinthians 4:4, Paul says,

My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.

In other words, my conscience can tell me I’m acting in line with God and his righteousness. But that does not mean that I’m not sinning. Sometimes, our conscience fails us and justifies our sin instead of correcting it. We must always be open to correction from God’s Word, other believers, the Holy Spirit, and wisdom gained from our experiences. But even if our conscience can fail us, that doesn’t mean we can ignore it.

In Romans 14 we read about the frailties BUT ALSO the importance of our conscience! Consider it a case study of conscience.

Here’s the setup. In the ancient world, most meat sold in the market was part of a ritual sacrifice to a false god, or idol. Some Christians felt that they could not eat such meat, as it would mean they were not worshipping Jesus as the only true God. Others felt that since the false gods were no gods at all, it was okay to eat the meat, since they knew Jesus was the one true God. Both believed the truth about Jesus, but that belief led them to opposite conclusions.

In addition to this dispute, the Roman Christians could not decide how to handle holy days, such as the sabbath. Some believers felt that, since God created the sabbath days and other holy days, they should be treated as special and should be honored by the whole community. Others, believing that God created every single day, and that each day was equally holy, wanted to find ways to make every day holy and, as a result, not honor certain “special” days too much.

Let’s read it.

14 Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. 2 One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3 The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. 4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

5 One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. 6 Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7 For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. 8 If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. 9 For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.

10 You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. 11 It is written:

“‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.’”

12 So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.

13 Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. 14 I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean. 15 If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died. 16 Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil. 17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, 18 because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.

19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. 20 Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. 21 It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.

22 So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. 23 But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.

Paul told these Roman believers not to judge one another, not matter which side of the disagreement they fell on. But interestingly, he called the ones who could not eat meat and the one who needed the holy days to be treated as special the believers who were weak in their faith. In other words, it was the weak in faith who could not accept that the idols are nothing and who needed holy days to feel close to God. It was the strong in faith who could trust Jesus apart from special days and avoiding “spiritually tainted” meat.

Paul warned the strong not to destroy their brother or sister by either flaunting their freedom or causing their weaker brother or sister to sin by acting against their conscience. Paul says that he is convinced that the things that the weak in faith avoid are actually okay. He makes clear here that the conscience of the weaker brother or sister is wrong. However, he says it is the loving thing to do to keep some of those things “between yourself and God.” Don’t put your freedom on display. That is treating the ones who abstain with contempt. It is more loving to help the weaker in faith by limiting your freedom!

In the same way, those weak in faith - the ones who place stricter limits on themselves - should not judge those who have more freedom. They have no right to judge those who are doing their best to honor Christ. Christ is the lost and master of us all, so he is the one who will judge us.

This is not to say that we cannot judge the actions of other believers when the Scripture is clear about what we should do. This is only talking about disputable matters, where our conscience - not Scripture - is our guide. What Paul says at the end of this is incredibly helpful.

Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves.  But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.

In other words, if your conscience allows you to have freedom, be blessed. But even your conscience is wrong in limiting your freedom, it would be a sin to go against it. Because to do so would be to act in defiance of your faith. Your faith tells you it is wrong, so even if it is incorrect, you are acting as if it doesn’t matter what God wants. This is why we must always follow our conscience when it tells us not to do something that the Bible is not clear on.

So this our rule:

Our conscience is never proof that we are doing things right. It can lead us into false confidence.

Our conscience cannot be violated without sinning. To do what we think God doesn’t want us to do is a sin, even if God wouldn’t have minded our doing it otherwise.

We should never attempt to encourage others to violate their conscience, even if we know their conscience is leading them astray. This is particularly true when their conscience it requiring more of them than God is, not when it is requiring less of them.

We should not judge others who conscience requires less of them than we require of ourselves. We can hold Christians to biblical standards, but we cannot hold them to our own standards. Wisdom is required to know the difference.

What Is the Appropriate Role of a Religious Exemption or Conscientious Objection?

We still haven’t really addressed the topic we started with, which is all the Christians who are using their faith as an exemption from wearing masks or, more importantly, getting vaccinated. How should we think about this?

To begin, the phrase “religious exemption” is a legal and political phrase, not a biblical one.

A religious exemption is a legal waiver given by the state or federal government that allows organizations or individuals who have a crisis of conscience to avoid certain penalties when they refuse to comply with specific laws or mandates.

While there are examples of people in the Bible who refuse to follow certain laws or refuse to follow the directives of those in authority over them, they never do so with an expectation that they will avoid the penalties and consequences of those actions.

Think about Daniel who went to the lion’s den for refusing to pray to king Darius. God protected him from the lions, but Daniel was not counting on that when we insisting on praying to God, alone.

Or consider Peter and John when the Sadducees told them to stop preaching about Jesus. Peter and John said that they must follow God, not their human leaders. But they fully expected to be jailed or beaten as a result. And they were.

What this means is that our modern idea of a religious exemption from state or federal laws and mandates is just that, a modern idea that is not found in the Bible. From God’s perspective, he expects us to do the right thing even if it means we will face a penalty of some kind, up to and including losing our lives. God feels that he is worthy us dying for, and we modern Christians need to remember that.

But when the state does grant religious exemptions, it means we must receive them on the state’s terms, since it is not our God-given right to avoid punishment for following Jesus or the Bible. What are those terms. The government requires that people who want an exemption must have a sincerely held religious belief and conviction that prevents them from complying with the law.

Another case study will be helpful. The IRS allows pastors to exempt themselves from paying FICA taxes , the taxes that pay for social security benefits. If a member of the clergy exempts him or herself, there is form that must be signed, under penalty of perjury, that the clergy member has a religious conviction that prevents them from taking part in any social insurance program. In other words, the minister must believe that it is morally wrong to accept any public money in the case of death, disability, medical needs, poverty, or retirement. Pastors cannot opt out because they think Social Security is a bad investment. They cannot opt out because they think they people should take care of themselves and believe they can do a better job on their own. It has to be a religious belief, sincerely held, that any public insurance program violates their conscience because of their faith.

In the same manner, to request a religious exemption from the Covid vaccine, a Christian must believe, on religious grounds, that it violates their conscience to take any vaccine. It cannot be because they don’t trust the vaccines that are available. It cannot be because they don’t believe in Covid-19 or don’t believe it is as bad as the media or government says it it. It cannot be because they think there is a global conspiracy to control people through injections of computer chips or tracking devices or any such idea. It has to be that you believe God does not want you to get vaccines.

I know that some Christians don’t want to take any vaccine that has any connection to stem cells because of their abortion stance. Keep in mind that none of the vaccines we have available are manufactured using stem cells, none of them were developed using stem cells, and only the Johnson and Johnson vaccine was created using cells derived from an abortion in 1985. While this may not bring comfort to everyone, it is at this point not a recognized reason for an exemption under most religious exemption orders.

What this means is that most of the people who are getting exemptions from workplaces, schools, or the government are doing so by lying. Not only is it morally problematic to lie to avoid the vaccine, it is more problematic to lie about your religious beliefs to avoid the vaccine. By problematic, I mean morally wrong. But the secondary effect is that more and more schools, workplaces, and governments are discussing removing the exemption altogether because of how blatantly and publically many Christians are lying about their religious convictions.

What this means is that our conscience ought to challenge us in our use of a religious exemption. But that doesn’t mean that you must, therefore, take the vaccine if you are opposed to it on other grounds. What it means is that you might pay a price for it without the protection of the religious exemption.

Another aspect of this comes to the fore when we hear Christians use the language of conscientious objector, which I also used previously. Traditionally, a conscientious objector is someone who refuses to fight in war on the grounds that their conscience prevents them from harming directly others. There were many conscientious objectors during the American wars that included the draft, such as the World Wars and Vietnam. While they were often ridiculed and treated with contempt (in the way Paul used contempt in Romans 14) some of these men were brave heroes who served as medics, supply runners, and in other ways to help the war effort - often with extreme bravery and self-sacrificing valor.

This is a huge point. Traditionally, believers in God who, on principles of conscience refused to obey the law of the land, did so to worship God or serve others. Many who opposed killing worked mightily to save lives on the battlefield. So today, any objector to the vaccine can play their part by continuing to wear masks indoors to protect the vulnerable. And they should be able to do so without scorn or judgment.

On the one hand, woe are those who try to force or coerce a person to act in violation of their conscience. This is wrong. But woe are those who risk the health and lives of others when a small self-sacrifice can protect the vulnerable.

Takeaway

Our conscience is a tricky thing. It is a powerful tool for discerning moral truth, but it needs to be used alongside our reason (including our reasoning about Scripture), our intuition, and the leading of the Holy Spirit. That’s because it isn’t perfect and can lead us astray at time. In fact, our conscience needs to be intentionally formed by who we spend time with, what we read, what we watch on television - including the news. What we take in will form our conscience for better or for worse. We must treat our conscience with care so that it is not defiled or seared, and so become a tool for sin. And we need to be in communities that do not treat our conscience with contempt or judgment, but rather lovingly sacrifices, according to Paul, our freedoms to accommodate one another. It is in these conditions that our conscience can most fully serve to align our thoughts and actions to the righteousness of God.