Faith and Conscience

The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. (Romans 14:22)

I want to take a little time to explore this verse to see what facets may show up as I look at it from different perspectives. I always find that to be a very rewarding exercise with nearly any passage that I come across.

As far as I can tell, the way this word faith is being used here is to describe a system of beliefs held by a person about how they should properly live before God. The Greek word used here is the very same word for faith used much of the time throughout the New Testament which often has much stronger implications in other directions, I believe, along the line of a personal, interactive trust that grows from the heart level, not just an intellectual, factual trust. But in this context it seems to lean more toward describing a person's opinions or perspectives about what they think is right and wrong from their own experience with God arising out of their unique background.

Because every person necessarily comes from a background in some respects that differs from every other person, it is impossible that individual believers growing into a trusting relationship with God will hold the same ideas or beliefs about God or about what is right or wrong. Over time, as they become more and more transformed by closer association with Jesus and become more saturated with the Word of God, their differences will become less and less. But in the meantime we all must learn how to properly relate to the discrepancies and variations of opinions about how we should live out of our conscience, for these conflicts will inevitably arise sometimes when coming into contact with other minds from other perspectives.

Paul seems to be saying in this chapter that from God's perspective the choices and attitudes of our spirit in relationship to others is of more importance to Him than being correct and “right” in every opinion that we hold about religion. I am not trying to say that it makes no difference whatsoever what you believe – that is reading into my words something I am not saying at all. However, I have seen all too often a spirit of self-righteous superiority that tends to easily view others with contempt and criticism who are not willing to quickly conform their opinions to our own.

But this attitude betrays a spirit of false judgment, for not even God, the true Judge of all, treats people with the contempt and superiority that most religious people tend to have toward others who differ from them. God does not flaunt His perfection and wisdom and correctness of knowledge in our face in order to shame us or intimidate us into changing our minds. He works through humble ways, quiet, loving avenues as much as possible in order to draw our hearts out to Him and to connect us to His heart with cords of compassion and affection. This is the way that we too, believers who claim to be following His lead, are to relate to each other. That seems to be part of the main thrust of this whole passage.

So what does this mean to have my own conviction before God? I looked at a number of different translations of this verse which often helps to flush out more nuances that often are lost by reading only one version. I came across some that helped to open up another dimension that I had not noticed before.

So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves. (Romans 14:22 NIV)

I found two things here that jumped out at me. The first is that I can treat people with the highest level of respect for their opinions while internally holding quite different opinions myself in my own relationship with God. I do not have to feel compelled to adopt another person's or group's beliefs about certain things to relate to them and accept them as siblings with me in God's family.

Second, I noticed in the way this was worded that I not only need to avoid self-condemnation and the negative effects that that brings into my own experience, but the potential also exists that in treating others improperly with attitudes of contempt or superiority that I may induce condemnation from others as well. Condemnation from any source is not something that is part of God's ways and is not what He designed to be part of our motivation for living. If I are living my life based on motivations revolving around condemnation from any source I am not yet in sync with the will of God for living life as Jesus came to give me.

So there are at least two potential sources of condemnation that I need to avoid as I see in this verse. One is when I am not fully convinced in my own heart about something that others find no problem with and I violate my conscience by deciding to do it anyway simply because of peer pressure. Paul seems to be saying here that it is not only wrong to exert peer pressure on others to conform to our opinions but it is also harmful to violate our own conscience by conforming to peer pressure if we feel that God does not approve of our choices. The issue is not so much about whether my conscience is right or wrong but how I relate to it.

I am very familiar with this scenario in my own life. As I look back over the growth I have experienced throughout my life I easily see many times where my conscience was very condemning toward me in things that had nothing to do with real convictions from the Holy Spirit. It is very true that a misguided, misinformed conscience can be a real problem for us – I know that painfully well. It has been an unmerciful source of unnecessary torture for me at times. But it is not enough to just try to force my conscience by simply violating it because someone else believes that its O.K. to do something that I find deeply disturbing. God does not desire service from a confused, conflicted heart. That does not honor Him and does not produce attachments of love and affection with Him. It only tends to confuse my own emotions and produce painful false guilt within my soul.

We must have a great deal more respect for the role of conscience in our lives. While it is extremely important that our conscience needs to have its opinions and standards constantly under review and updated by fresh revelations of the truth about God to our hearts, we must be very careful about developing habits of ignoring our conscience in favor of following other motives for our actions and choices. We may find too late that our flesh is using this as an excuse to lead us into a counterfeit experience based on selfishness instead of leading us closer to God's heart.

There have been some times when I had to take the word of God to my heart and act on it in defiance of my conscience that was manipulating my emotions of fear. Those were usually turning points in my life where God was retraining my conscience by helping me to see that many of its assumptions about God were based on false premises. But conscience is a gift from God given to each one of us and though it is often confused and many times perverted in some ways, it is still a part of our soul that God wants us to respect, to train and to listen to, for it is the primary way that the Holy Spirit usually chooses to speak to our hearts.

And maybe that is the main point that Paul is trying to make here. We need to respect both our own conscience and the right for others to respect their conscience even though it may be telling them something very different than what ours believes. Respect and acceptance for others to follow their own conscience is at the very heart of true religious freedom, so when we try to impose our religious beliefs on others without respect for their conscience we violate their fundamental freedoms that even God will never violate. When we violate other's freedoms then we bring condemnation upon ourselves as a result.

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