Naked Truth: Let Conscience Be Your Guide, Not Your God

Hello, my friends. I hope you started your week rested and ready to meet the world. I woke up with the perfect family hangover. You know, one that makes you smile at a weekend full of fresh, homemade memories.

I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for checking out #4 of my Naked Truth series. Today we continue our journey to uncover those lies that make God small.

Remember The Lord of the Rings and Frodo’s epic trek? He frees his mind and spirit from evil by destroying the Ring in the hell fires of Mordor. Are you ready to trash some mindsets that hinder your journey?

Okay, maybe you’re not a Tolkien groupie. But I bet you’re a Pinocchio fan.

Remember his friend, Jiminy Cricket? His advice to “let your conscience be your guide” was solid. But, we’re going to look at the danger in allowing our conscience to be our God. Author J.B. Phillips calls this false god, a Resident Policeman.

Our conscience is our sense of right and wrong. It prompts that feeling when we know the right thing to do or the wrong thing to avoid. It tells us “Oops. You shouldn’t have done that, said that, or thought that.” Valuable, indeed.

But it’s dangerous to believe that our conscience is God’s voice because consciences are corruptible.

Think of the Nazi and how his moral sense was perverted by propaganda. Kindness toward Jewish people made him feel guilty, as though empathy toward the despised race was sin. Hate became duty. Anything less unsettled his conscience.

For less extreme examples, let’s look at some subtle taboos we learn from family or culture.

Do you ever feel guilty for even thinking about an afternoon siesta? Perhaps you were taught that naps are for wimps. Do you feel guilty for staying home with your kids? Somewhere you learned it’s not a real job and it makes you feel less-than. Maybe your career is outside your home and you fight false guilt from stay-at-home moms.

I have a friend who wasn’t allowed to go to movie theaters. Even now, with her children in tow, she feels a twinge of guilt when buying tickets to The Minions. Really? Fifty Shades of Grey, perhaps, but not those adorable, yellow guys.

Do you see how a corrupted or misinformed conscience gives us a wrong idea of sin and a false sense of guilt?  It’s impacted—good and bad—by things like culture, family, and religion.

Many of our old taboos have nothing to do with our relationship with God. They are simply standards set in our minds giving us false guilt when we don’t obey their rules. They make our conscience, our God.

False guilt and a god contained in our conscience, a Resident Policeman, is too small to teach us our God-given identity and too tiny to lead us into abundant life.

Of course, we need honest guilt to tweak us when we’ve truly sinned—that deliberate doing or not doing what we know is right. Honest guilt coaxes us to freedom.

To really know God and what’s truly taboo, look at Jesus. What does He do? What does He say about rules taking God’s place? In John chapter 4, he crushes an ancient taboo by speaking to a Samaritan woman. He chooses relationship with the Father and people over manmade rules every time.

So, what makes you feel guilty? Is it rooted in a wrong mindset or in what’s true and right? These are the questions we ask to keep growing into our divine design.

As I close, here’s more advice from Jiminy Cricket:

“When you get in trouble and you don’t know right from wrong, give a little whistle.” 

May your conscience guide you to God, your Resident  Redeemer. Grace and peace, my friends.

 

 

© Robin Melvin 2015