Matters of conscience

One of the things I find people object to about the Christian faith is that there are a lot of rules that need to be followed. The perception is if you live the right way then you get to go to heaven. "Good" people get saved and "bad" people get to burn in hell. It's no wonder that so many people don't want anything to do with organized religion; they don't want the stench of self-righteousness to cling to them, let alone produce it themselves. I understand this and completely agree with those who say that religion is bad for the world. Actually I would say more specifically that bad religion is bad for the world, and any religion that tells you that your deity's acceptance of you is based upon your behavior is bad religion. I say this because this level of moral requirement is ultimately relative. Who's idea of goodness are you living up to? And how "good" is good enough? If the first question doesn't stump you the second one I think will. But thankfully the Bible has Good News, and that is we can have a relationship with God based solely on having put our faith alone in Him.

But how should a Christian live? Is God concerned about good behavior? Should we be concerned with good behavior? I believe that most people are moral; that they have a sense of right and wrong. This sense of morality can be found in virtually all cultures (well, unless you come from a cannibalistic society). But generally speaking people know that taking something that doesn't belong to you is stealing; lying destroys trust, violence destroys lives, adults shouldn't sexually engage with children and so on. So it shouldn't be too much of a leap to think that God is a moral God and has moral standards He wants people to live up to. And if you think about it, the reason why we live moral lives is so that we can all live together in peace and safety. God wants this for us too. His commands are there not to spoil your fun but to keep you from harm. As a speaker I once heard put it, "We avoid sin not so that God would love us more. We avoid sin for the same reason we avoid putting our lips on a meat grinder. It hurts and it's messy."

But what about the rules that some Christians follow that just seem over the top? You probably know what I'm talking about here: "good" Christians must wear nice clothes to church. They don't touch alcohol, don't watch TV or movies and they certainly don't listen to rock music. They don't send their kids out at Halloween and they even refrain from putting up a tree at Christmas because it was once considered a pagan symbol. Now I have a confession to make - during the first few years of my faith journey I subscribed to some of these notions. But as I grew in my faith I began to see, with the help of the Holy Spirit, two things. The first thing was that I couldn't consistently apply these impossible standards in all situations. Because we live in a fallen world everything has been tainted by sin, and if I was to abstain from everything that well meaning people said was dishonoring to God, I would have to lock myself in my room and never come out. The second thing was that deep down I believed that God's love was conditional to my good behavior. But instead of having to live right in order to be loved by God, I eventually came to see that God's love was what helped me to live a life that was right (Titus 2:11-14).

Over time I also came to see that there is room for matters of conscience in the Christian faith. Yes there are absolutes, but there are also shades of gray. Paul the Apostle wrote to the first Christians about issues of conscience in 1 Corinthians 10:23-33 regarding eating food offered to idols. In ancient Greek culture it was customary to offer food to the gods and then sell it in the market. This caused some concern with the Corinthian believers who wondered if their diet would somehow dishonor God. But Paul's take was that idols were nothing but wood and metal and that you should only refrain from eating if you know that it was offered to an idol. This was for the sake of the person who served you the meal and not your own. Paul expands on this idea of conscience in Romans 14 and Titus 1:15, and how people should be (in certain matters) be allowed to decide for themselves if something was right or not. Paul's basic rule of thumb was this: anything that has nothing to do with faith is sin (Romans 14:22-23).

What that means is that when you believe anything in the Bible that is clearly forbidden or permissible, you are living by faith. If you believe that things which are not so clearly forbidden to be sin, you also live by faith. Ultimately, as Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 1:5, "The goal of our instruction is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith." For the person who doesn't follow Jesus I hope that this will ease your doubts about taking the plunge and living a life of faith in Jesus. And for those of us who already do, it's my hope that we will live with a clean conscience before God, and not judge those who live differently than we do in the gray areas.