DO YOU HAVE A CONSCIENCE?

“Do You Have a Conscience?”

Reading: 1 John 1:9

It must have been a blistering sermon. In fact, to this day I don’t remember the topic or the text. I do remember Jody coming by me in the receiving line and saying, “Do they teach you guys in seminary how to make people feel guilty?”

“Yup,” I quipped. “Guilt 101!”

As she headed past she responded over her shoulder, “You must have gotten an A.”

To this day I don’t know whether that was a complaint or a compliment. Whatever it meant, it told me, “The woman has a conscience.”

People do not like being made to feel guilty. Heck, I understand that. I don’t like feeling guilty. It is one of life’s more unpleasant experiences. But it also may be one of life’s more important experiences.

Rebecca Manley Pippert says “Human beings have an infinite capacity to rationalize or to deny.” It is perhaps because we believe the lie that human beings are basically good. More likely it is because we know we’re not. We just don’t want anyone else to know it.

Yet living daily in the presence of sin, we come subtly under its influence. Undealt with over the long haul, it begins to change us. Like a virus that makes a subtle connection with your computer, it alters things and changes it so that it does not function properly. It corrupts the original design. It may even introduce new and even more unwelcome elements into our lives.

Our conscience is a gift from God. It is that spark of God’s image that the Holy Spirit breathes on to ignite a fire of holiness within us. It is God’s tool to help us remember that originally we were created in His image and intended to reflect His goodness and unconditional love.

I love this quote from one of this nation’s Founders and Framers.

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."
--George Washington

That’s where guilt comes in. It pricks our conscience when we step across the line. Sometimes it hits us between the eyes to remind us that there is a line. Christians believe that acknowledgement of our guilt is the first step towards transformation into new people, better people, God’s people.

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins,
and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” – I John 1.9

A pastor once asked his flock, “What must we do to receive the forgiveness of sin?” After a bit of silence a little boy responded, “First, you gotta sin.”

Frankly, we have no problem meeting that requirement. Our conscience remembers that by allowing us to feel guilty. People of no or little conscience steal pension funds, abuse children, pollute the environment wantonly, manipulate elections, ignore the poor and needy.

Thank God we have a conscience and thank God it reminds us to feel guilty. For more often than we’d like to think – we are guilty.

(c) 2010 by Stephen L Dunn