Dear Friends,
When I was very young and my cousin was seven years older, I well remember her saying that she hoped that when she grew up, she would not have a conscience! At the time I did not know what she was talking about. But as I grew older, I learned what she meant, for my conscience would not let me misbehave at the bus stop outside my primary school when everyone else was having fun. And as I learned what having a conscience really meant, I still sometimes wished I didn’t have one too! But our fathers were brothers, and we were both only children of a Manse, so both nature and nurture had a great deal to do with our concept of conscience.
The dictionary defines conscience as a person’s moral sense of right and wrong, a guide to one’s behaviour. In the Bible, conscience is a God-given inner sense of right and wrong, an internal faculty of the mind that guides moral judgment and behaviour. It functions as a witness to the Law of God written on our hearts and, when functioning correctly, prompts us to align our will with God’s will. While present in the Old Testament through the “heart”, the term “conscience” appears more explicitly in the New Testament, particularly in Paul’s writings, where it can be defiled or blackened by sin, indicating a loss of sensitivity to moral truth.
It was Marin Luther, the great Reformer who said this. ‘There comes a time when one must take a position neither safe, nor political, nor popular, but one must take it because the conscience says it is right’. He then went on to say, before the ‘Diet of Worms’ and the publication of the 95 theses that were a trigger for the Reformation ‘My conscience is captive to the will of God. I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither honest, nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen’.
With love and blessings,
Marion
This Sunday is also our All Age Harvest Festival – come and join us at 3pm.
Categories: Minister's Blog