Conscience

Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions (Baker, 2000)

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A term traditionally understood to refer to the part of a person which distinguishes right and wrong. Paul wrote about the reality of all humans having a conscience "now accusing, now even defending them" (Rom. 2:15). Though Old Testament has no specific references to conscience, the foundation of God's knowing judgment of our right and wrong actions and the follower of God's consequent responsibility to be able to evaluate his or her actions and attitudes (e.g., 1 Sam. 24:5; 2 Sam. 24:10; Job 27:6; even though our hearts are desperately wicked; Jer. 17:9-10) lays the foundation for the development of the concept. While in the Old Testament, conscience is more seen in collective context of a covenant community, a more individualized and autonomous construct appears in the New Testament, where conscience is considered a foundational part of every human being. Paul sought to keep his conscience clear (Acts 24:16; 2 Cor. 1:12) and commended this as an example to others (1 Tim. 1:5, 3:9; likewise Peter, 1 Pet. 3;16, 21) even though ultimately it was God who is Paul's judge and not just Paul's conscience (1 Cor. 4:4). Some people have weak consciences and this must be recognized (1 Cor. 8 and 10:23-11:1), others, however, have seared (1 Tim. 4:2) or corrupted (Tit. 1:15) their consciences through willful participation in sin (see also Eph. 4:19).

The well known idea that Gentiles have the law of God written on their hearts (Rom. 2:14-15) does not refer as much to content as to function. Paul argues that the Gentiles's pagan laws functioned better (by both accusing and excusing) than God's own law did in the hearts of the Jews (who only used it to excuse themselves). Here we see that conscience is not focused on content (what the rules are) as much as it is application of value judgments on actions and attitudes (how the rules are applied); conscience "merely monitors the worldview that exists in our internal conversation" (see Meadors, p. 114). Conscience, in this sense, acts as a moral restraint among all peoples, hindering a movement towards pure antinomianism as a preventative so that cultures, peopled by sinful and selfish humans, do not self-destruct. While the form and means of functioning of conscience will vary with the worldview of the people, the fact of the presence of a conscience is a universal human quality.

What is the source of conscience in humanity? Sharing the image of God, we are all born with the need and capacity to develop a sense of right and wrong. Every human, through the process of enculturation, is given the rules the conscience requires to distinguish right and wrong, albeit within the framework of his or her own cultural constructs. Conscience is thus a natural gift from God in all people and does not require a special work of the Spirit to be operative. Being part of the human make-up, it can be studied in its personal, familial and cultural context.

The conscience has the function of producing guilt or shame when we have violated cultural norms. Though an oversimplification, it is not inappropriate to say that in an individualistic setting, guilt tends to be more operative (the conscience is internal, and produces guilt when one violates a norm whether or not others know what has been done), while in a collective setting, shame is more operative (one shames the group and self through transgressions of group norms).

While no culture corresponds uniformly to God's kingdom values, every culture has vestiges of those values embedded within the rules, morés, and laws it maintains (see also Ethics). Human beings are not born with the values of God already in their hearts; they are born with a need for such values and the capacity to grow in appreciating them. As they grow, they are taught elements of God's values, together with cultural rules and regulations (see also Moral Development). These become the values which are applied by our consciences in evaluating our actions.

The concept of conscience appears in many of the major religions of the world, but conscience as an internal, universal human component appears to be unique to Christianity (see Despland, p. 50). Through the early stages of the modern missionary period, in Christian observations of other peoples and religions, the "other" was disparaged because of the perceived lack of conformity to the Western concept of an internal, individual conscience. This was built on the assumptions that the development of such a conscience conformed to the biblical picture and was the hallmark of civilization. Western missionaries tended to assume that their consciences were advanced beyond that of local peoples, who they felt had little if any sense of right and wrong. They took on themselves the task of teaching moral scruples, all too often imposing new cultural (rather than biblical) values and belittling or trampling on local values in the process.

This is of critical importance in the missionary work. It carries implications for elenctics (the conviction of sin) as well as cross-cultural ethics. When we feel that another does not have a proper conscience, we are tempted to develop one that matches ours. This is elenctics on the human scale, not necessarily prompted by God's Spirit. When we develop ethical systems, they tend to blend our cultural values together with biblical values, and may not make sense to our target population. In fact, in promulgating our ethical and moral systems rather than enabling the development of contextualized ones based on the local culture's reading of the Word of God, we develop a dependence mentality and prohibit their spiritual growth, as Robert Priest aptly points out.

An approach to conscience which is biblical and culturally sensitive is one that recognizes 1) the universality of conscience, 2) that the indigenous conscience operates well 3) within its own context and in light of indigenous values; and 4) part of the missionary task is not attacking local value systems but introducing people to the Word of God in such a way that they can see for themselves God's view of their culture through the eyes of Scripture. It is built on the trust that God is at work in any people who call on his name, and that as they enter into a covenant relationship with him he is committed to enabling their growth as a body of believers into the likeness of Jesus (Eph. 4:7-16).

Bibliography: B. Adeney, Strange Virtues: Ethics in a Multi-Cultural World; M. Despland, ER, 4:45-52; G. T. Meadors, EDT, p. 113-15; R. J. Priest, Missiology 22:3 (July 1994), pp. 291-315.