Conscience: Psalm 103:13-14

Photo by Earl Wilcox on Unsplash

Thank God for the conscience! It's like the moral pain center. Without the experience of pain, which no one likes, we'd get hurt worse and worse. The saying in the gym is, "If it hurts, stop." And without the conscience, we'd go deeper and deeper into sin until consequences became irrevocable.

So thank God for the conscience. But as with pain, conviction doesn't feel good. And because of factors like shame, embarrassment, guilt, pride, comparison, judgmentalism, and narcissism, we often don't know what to do with conscience conviction. If we break a leg, we go to the doctor, we get it casted or booted, and then we tell the story over and over to everyone who notices and asks. But if we sin, we might not get that dealt with and instead hide it, cover it, try to handle it all by ourselves in secret, and, as a friend of mine says, we just muscle through it.

And then, during conviction, we may not know what to do with God either. Maybe we avoid him until we put in a few good days of righteous living. We drop out of relationships and ministries because we aren't good enough. We pray: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry." We just become so awkward around God.

The funny thing is, none of our feelings surprise God, and certainly not the sin that instigated all this awkwardness. He gave us a conscience to help us, not punish us. He gave us the concept of repentance to restore relationship, not sever relationship with him. If you put all of your hope in Jesus Christ, that he has died for your sin and risen for your forgiveness, then you can approach God as a person that God views in terms of righteousness not in terms of sin.

In fact, you can give yourself permission to be a sinner. I.e. we must own up to the status. Psalm 103:13-14 says, "As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust."

That last part is called "managing expectations." We should not give ourselves permission to sin, but we must certainly give ourselves permission to be sinners. God does. He manages his expectations, and so should we. He knows our frame, our structure, our make-up. He knows we are dust, creation, simple, susceptible to temptation and failing.

So when you feel the pain of the conviction of your conscience, thank God for it. Don't try to keep up appearances. Admit it. Don't compound it with excuses or pride or shock. Be honest with God, with others, with any counselor or friend who cares for you. Be honest with yourself. Restore your relationship with God and with the other person you may have sinned against, and thank God for the speed check God put in the way of that temptation. Thank God for the conscience!