At what point do you suddenly realize you have gone
too far, looked too long, reacted too harshly, listened to too much, pushed
past where you should have stopped? Is
it when you heard something telling you to stop, when you felt a tug to quit, when
your mind began to cloud over with guilt?
When is too much too much? We speak of the conscience as the perpetual
nerdy friend who doesn’t like to have a good time. Or else the conscience is the ultimate arbiter
of good and evil, the one sure scale on which to measure right from wrong. We hear this sort of statement often. “Well, it may not be right for you but it is
for me.” The implication is that
personal conscious is the guide for right living.
Every one of us has some sort of conscience; it is
along with language the mark of being human.
Shades of right and wrong do not slip into the thinking of the beasts;
it is we who sink into that abyss, or would it be better to say who climb those
heights. Because the conscience is
natural and organic, it is also arbitrary.
There is not a “uniform” conscience; one that defines us all. Your conscience will not be the same as your
friend’s or even your brother’s. Joseph Stalin had one conscience, your uncle
another. It is impossible to say
conclusively that Adolph Hitler did not follow his conscience in what he did
nor that Mother Teresa always followed hers.
My “too far” probably is not yours and will not be Mick Jagger’s.
Is there though a real “too far”, just as there is a
real mile or a real pound? How do we
measure right and wrong, good and bad in actual time and space? Does it exist…such a true measure? Jesus was
asked by the rich young ruler what good thing he had to do to inherit eternal
life. This was not a simpleton’s
question. It was asked by a true thinker
who recognized the human condition. At
some point we cannot just rely on our conscience; we need to look into what is
always right and what is always wrong because it does matter.
There is something most casual readers of the New
Testament fail to realize and that is how Jesus analyzed his own behavior and
approach to situations. He let the
scripture and the guidance of the Father determine each step He took. At the time of temptation in the wilderness,
Jesus used the Bible to arbitrate for Him how He should act. That was almost an unconscious guide because
He used His mind to know it so well.
Clearly Jesus studied the Bible enough to know at each space in life
what it might have to say about a matter.
But there was another hedge He had in deciding right
and wrong. He constantly communicated
with the Father on what He was doing and thinking and facing.
This statement of Jesus in John is most informative. “For I did not speak of my own accord, but
the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it.” (John 12:49 NIV) Somehow, and we are not told how, Jesus heard
from the Father even in the details of His behavior what He was to do. At the point of what specific things to say
at any given moment and in what tone of voice to use, Jesus had direction from
the Father on good and bad, right and wrong.
This is different from the prodding of conscience; this is a direct line
to what is really right and what is really wrong. If we could get past our individualistic and
arbitrary conscience to the actual measure of right and wrong, we would know
where to start in living.
How was Jesus so perfectly in tune with the guiding of the Father? He was, like the first Adam free of sin and
so had the same ability the first Adam had.
He could and did walk with the Father as He went about His
business. Like the two disciples who
went with Jesus on the road to Emmaus and heard the real accounting of how the crucifixion
and resurrection fit into the plan of God, we too can “walk with God” and hear
from Him as Jesus heard from the Father.
We have the promise of Jesus that the Holy Spirit, God too just as the
Father and Son are God, would by faith in Christ be with us. And Jesus also has promised to be with us
always. What do we make of this?
We have at our finger tips, or even closer always the right and wrong
there to know and understand. It is not
a matter of my right and wrong or your right and wrong; it is right and wrong
as it really is. We are within reach at
any moment when Christ is ours by faith the knowing of good and bad. Not just knowing by a swing and perhaps a
miss but a knowing that is certain.
How do we get to this point where we know exactly what to say and how to
say it, what to do and how to do it? The
caveat is simple. You must have decided
that is what you want to know. If you do
not really want to know, Jesus will let you walk away from it just as easily as
the rich young ruler did. But if you
want to know, you must be determined to know the scriptures. You must be able to tell the difference between
what is a really right or wrong and what is merely a tangle of your
conscience. There are miles of issues we
can discuss that have a level of right and wrong to them but if we do not know
the scripture…really know the scripture, we cannot be certain we are not just
sifting them through our conscience rather than the actual right and actual
wrong of a matter. That is why it is so
difficult discussing the big moral issues of our age: abortion, homosexuality,
integrity, war, globalization, pornography.
The scripture is either ignored or not known well enough to arbitrate
between consciences.
