It's out of fashion these days to talk about "conscience," at least in its traditional role as an authoritative inner moral voice. At one time, the voice of conscience was virtually equated with the voice of God. It was seen as a positive and almost unerring point of reference for moral decisions.
We pictured the conscience as located somewhere within us, occupying a strategic and penetrating perspective into our soul. Because it knew us better than anyone, conscience was viewed as more authoritative than any other human intelligence. It was something worth respecting, a guide to be, more or less, unquestioningly obeyed.
Today, however, we question the validity of its conclusions. This almost irrepressible and still highly active part of our inner being has been demoted to just another voice among the many. Under a kind of inner postmodern assault, conscience seems to have lost its nerve. Even among Christians, it is often viewed as an entity that has little to do with the voice of God in the human soul.
Yet such a strategically placed alter ego has the capacity to speak powerfully in us, even though in the contemporary world we're consistently being reminded of its capacity to impose upon us guilt-producing neuroses or maddening psychoses. Conscience, after all, is subject to unhealthy manipulation and exploitation.
The truth is that while the conscience is not perfect (because we are not) we nevertheless intuitively know its indispensable value. Conscience not only has the capacity, but the God-given assignment to tell us what we are and what we are not. It deals with our past rights and wrongs and with our present integrity quotient. Often the conscience is encouraging and sometimes it is confrontative.
Despite the profound discomfort it often produces, conscience is crucial to the life of everyone, especially those who have been called to the ministry. The conscience is the minister's consummate moral compass as long as it is possessed by the Holy Spirit Himself and properly informed by the living oracles of God. This partnership between the Bible and the Spirit is critical to the accuracy, authority, and healthiness with which the conscience speaks.
All of us know the intense guilt that sometimes takes over our soul as we stand up to preach, or how it feels to be repeatedly stormed by the reminder of something wrong that we have done or something right we have not done. We also know what it's like to be haunted by an inner sensation of duplicity, insincerity and double-heartedness, which cuts us off from others and from God. These feelings and thoughts are woven into consciousness through the voice of our conscience. Most importantly we know that these inner conscience storms strike because we are in need of finding wholeness and healing.
Just as physical discomfort, illness, or pain alerts us that something is wrong with our body, the pain of guilt engendered in the conscience tells us that something is wrong in our soul. And just as it would be foolish to deny or ignore pain in our body, it is as wrong to deny the spiritual and psychological pain to which our conscience draws our attention.
When we are confident that the Spirit of God does indeed speak through conscience, we can begin to relate to its voice more sensibly and maturely, and by the Holy Spirit it can then exercise the power it was meant to possess through "the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God [cleansing] our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!" (Heb. 9:14, NIV).
Painful as that voice sometimes is, it is so because it is honest and courageous and Spirit filled. This presence within is at least the partial fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy, the one quoted in Hebrews 8:8-12, which talks about a time, now here, when the Lord will make a new covenant with Israel which involves putting "my laws in their minds and [writing] them on their hearts" (Heb. 8:10-12, NIV).
We ministers must recognize and embrace anew this magnificent inner role of the Holy Spirit. It is His work to take His place in the conscience. When we recognize God in the voice of con science we are far more likely to follow the bidding or believe the encouragement than we are if we reduce such a voice to something merely human.
It's a privilege of magnificent proportions to fully identify and recognize the underlying source of such a voice, one that "is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart" (Rom. 10:8, NIV); one that is there to "guide into all truth" (John 16:13, NIV).
