The Conscience Challenge We Face

Romans 13-14

Should you take the cash or not?

Imagine for a moment that you’re walking around your neighborhood to get some fresh air. You’re deep in thought, minding your own business, when all of a sudden you notice a $100 bill stuck in the branches of a bush. What should you do?

• Some of us would snap it up, put it into our pockets, and thank God quickly as possible!
• Others of us would leave it dangling, hoping that whoever lost it would come back and find it later on.
• Still others of us would wait around for a few minutes to see if anyone came back to claim it before eventually taking it for ourselves.
• Some of us would ring the doorbells of the nearest houses to see if anyone had lost it before claiming it for ourselves.
• And perhaps some of us would contact the local police to report the money as lost.

Which of these five responses would you prefer and why, or do you suggest as the sixth option instead?

What makes this situation challenging is that the right or best response isn’t obvious. Some may feel that taking the money is stealing, while others may feel that it’s God’s provision. After all, the money may have blown there from somewhere else, making it impossible for the original owner to retrieve it anyway.

Stealing is a clear violation of both God’s moral will and established civil law, but is taking this loose money from the bush stealing? When we encounter situations like this in our lives, we know there are a variety of options and we also know that of all the options available, one is the best option (or at least some options are better than others). Yet since the best response isn’t obvious, we will have to rely on something called our “conscience” to help us make this decision.

Let’s talk about our consciences!

Our conscience is that inner part of how we think and feel (our inner “awareness”) about what is right and wrong, and it’s something that we’re going to be aware of quite strongly in the weeks ahead.

So, in upcoming Wednesday night Bible studies, we’ll transition away from our studies in the Psalms and our examination of the Lord’s chesed, which I hope has been a help to us as we manage our thoughts and emotions during this pandemic. Now I sense the need to talk more about a different and often overlooked subject – which is our conscience.

Our consciences will be tested in various ways in the weeks ahead as we navigate our transition back to regular life – as individuals, families, a church, and a city. Like a $100 bill stuck in the bush by the sidewalk, we’ll be faced with challenging scenarios that require us to make decisions knowing that there may be a variety of views about what is “best.”

Let’s consider some challenging scenarios.

• Wearing masks: Should we do this at home? In public at all times? Or only when we’re close to people outside our immediate family?
• Shopping: Should we shop at physical stores? Or should we only order online?
• Visiting friends: Should we visit our friends (church or otherwise) at home or in public though we haven’t seen them in over two months?
• Online pictures: Should we post pictures of ourselves in public without a mask on or not?
• Church participation: Should we resume gathering together as a church? And when we do, what safety precautions should we take?
• Church and government: To what degree does the government have the authority to dictate when we can worship and how we can worship as a church? When does it become necessary or appropriate to “obey God rather than men?”
• Public safety and spiritual health: Recognizing that we are both physical and spiritual beings, to what degree should we exercise caution for the good of public health and safety, and when does it become necessary to do things (like gathering back together as a church) that meet the very real spiritual needs that we also have as people and believers, despite some potential health risks?

In each of these scenarios and more there will likely be a variety of opinions in our church and even in our families, between husbands and wives, etc. To make matters even more difficult, not even our local, state, and federal governments agree on what to do.

It’s not as simple as finding a verse.

The scenarios I’ve mentioned cannot be resolved by the simple approach of “finding a Bible verse about it” and doing what it says. For instance, there isn’t a quick and handy verse in the book of Proverbs about social distancing or wearing masks. So we’ll need to rely on broader principles to make our decisions, principles like “love your neighbor as yourself” (Rom 13:9).

To make matters even more challenging, we may also face scenarios in which biblical principles or commands appear to be at odds. Consider, for instance, God’s command to submit to government authorities (Rom 13:1-7), which Paul explains quite clearly just before he reminds us to love our neighbors as ourselves (Rom 13:8-10).

Yet how can we reconcile this the clear command to not forsake assembling together as a church (Heb 10:23-25)? This is important to ask because the believers who were given this command faced social and governmental pressure not to do so, so this was a command that includes the possibility of risking your life. The answer to this conundrum isn’t as simple as figuring out which command is more important – assembling as a church or obeying government guidelines. I wish it were!

Let’s not quarrel over opinions.

That’s what Paul warns against in Romans 14:1. As a pastor, I am not aware of any such problems in our church. However, I am keenly aware of the possibility that such difficulties can easily pop up during times like these. By God’s grace, I pray that our church will emerge from this pandemic and time of social isolation more unified and united together than ever before, but this will not happen by accident.

The word quarrel means something like “disputing and arguing.” It implies something like seeing a tricky situation as a two-sided issue (a “black and white” issue as it used to be called) in which one side is clearly and obviously right while the other side is clearly and obviously wrong.

This also implies that we then take it upon ourselves to decide which of us is on the right side of the issue and which of us is on the wrong side. Then we pass a judgment on those with whom we disagree and develop a wrong, critical spirit towards them. That’s what Satan desires to happen in our church through this time of transitioning back to meeting together as a church, but may we carefully avoid that.

Here in Romans 14, Paul mentions at least two challenges like this that the believers in Rome were thinking through when he wrote them this letter. They were struggling with “picking sides” on which was right (or best). The first issue was whether to eat meat or go vegetarian. The second issue was whether to celebrate common holidays or not.

This was not the only church facing challenges like this, nor were these the only issues to work through at that time. For instance, in the church at Corinth, believers were struggling with deciding who was right, the members who thought it was okay to eat meat that was first dedicated at an idol temple or those who claimed that a believer should never eat such meat at all (1 Cor 10).

In this study, I won’t describe these difficulties further. (I’ll probably do so in a subsequent study on an upcoming Wednesday night, so stay tuned!) Instead, I only want to point out that difficulties like this aren’t a new challenge for churches today. Churches have been working through things like this for many centuries.

What’s important now is that we recognize the potential for challenges to our unity as a church as we navigate our transition back to regular church gatherings. Along the way, there will be a variety of opinions about the best steps forward, the best safety measures, and so on. We should not let these differences divide us.

Instead, we should not “pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Rom 14:19). We should also be careful that the way we handle this as individual members does not “destroy the work of God” (Rom 14:20). And finally, whatever we do, we should do it in faith – which means with a conscience that’s finely tuned to the Word of God, believing that what you yourself are doing is best, for good and godly reasons not driven by fear on one hand or carelessness on the other (Rom 14:23).