The Aim of Our Charge A Good Conscience Part II

Transcript (edited for readability).

Before I begin the next section, are there any questions that arise from what I've done thus far? Okay, I've silenced you. That's quite an achievement, for a group of pastors.

Yes. [Question:] We were talking about the experience in Ecclesiastes—the verse that talks about the law of God being written on hearts. Yes, which would be this whole source of the conscience. Yes. Without that law of God, which to me, I think, is a tremendous testament and witness for the existence of God, and that creation is a person—you wouldn't have a conscience without that. I'll be talking about that, Tiffany. Good. Yes, indeed, I agree totally. Yes. But it's not necessarily a good conscience. No. [Question:] Worldly standards are, like, the conscience is… Yes. correct then? That's right, yes, spot on. Yeah.

If we had time—now, I don't want to go so much down the negative road of what's wrong; I want to put the positive; it's better to light a candle than curse the darkness. But if we had time, and maybe you've got to do it yourself, I'd look at what the context here is. And that's not just an evangelical understanding—it's fairly common in the whole of the Anglo-Saxon world, that understanding of conscience, which is that what matters is your right motivation and your sincerity. So a good conscience is to have the right motivation for something, or to have the right feeling about something. But there's a whole lot there that needs to be unpacked. Yes. Any other matters?

Okay, now, what I want to do is to pin down the New Testament and the Christian understanding of what conscience is. This next section is quite important, and so I wanted to leave it till after the break, so that the post-lunch tiredness will have departed, and you'll be ready to get your heads around it. It's really very simple. The Greek term for conscience is syneidesis. Now, don't get spooked by the fact that it's Greek. I can explain it quite simply. "Eidesis" comes in Greek from the verb "to see." It's seeing, experiencing, and knowing from seeing and experiencing. "Syn" is "together." So the idea of conscience is seeing together with another person, or to see things in the same way as another person. So it's not just knowledge, but it has to do with vision, seeing. So its literal sense means that you see the same as other people.

Now, who are the others? That's a question. And at its most basic level, it's the awareness—the human awareness, the way God has made us as human beings, the awareness of how others see us, as well as how that differs from the way we see ourselves. Okay? Other people see us and they pass judgments on us. That's the one thing, and that's the foundation. In practical terms, this is the way conscience is shaped. Other people see you, pass judgments on you, assess you. And then you also, as you grow up, see yourself. Initially, you see yourself exactly as your parents see you, and then the gap opens and you realize that there's a gap between the way mum and dad see me and the way I see myself. You're with me? So it's the way you see yourself. And out of that comes the moral sense of what is right or wrong—the ability for us to assess ourselves in moral terms. That is, in terms of "I'm a good person or a bad person, I'm naughty or I'm good." You know, at that simple, parental level: "I'm good, I'm bad," or "this is a good action, this is a bad action."

Initially, conscience is formed by what philosophers have called outer direction, that means that you are basically assessed from outside, and guided from outside, and the voices that come to you from outside are internalized and become your inner voice. So, for example, and quite rightly, the great psychologist Sigmund Freud spoke about the conscience, which he identified with the super-ego, as the inner voice of our parents and those in authority. So you get the outer direction, the outer voices that come to us, from earliest childhood. Now, since the voices already impinge on us in the womb in some way, those voices are there, and we internalize the voices of other people. You with me? It's not terribly complicated. And you can understand it from your own experience. And so our conscience has to do with the capacity to assess ourselves and to see ourselves the way others see us. So it has to do with the capacity to experience shame and guilt.

Now, this is decisive. It's not just guilt—which we're very familiar with—but conscience and shame go very closely together. Let me start with guilt. Now, guilt basically comes when we've done something wrong to somebody else, and they let us know that we've done something wrong. You're naughty, mum tells you off. Okay? She feels bad about you, says something, and you feel bad about yourself because you've made mum angry. Okay? At its most basic level, guilt has to do with actions—doing something wrong to somebody else. Actions. But shame is something deeper than that. It has to do with, not what I've done, but the kind of person I am. There's something wrong with me as a person, in the eyes of other people. I've lost my face. I'm unpresentable to other people. And at its deepest level, it has to do with the fact that I feel that I don't deserve to live anymore. I'm no good. I'm worthless, I'm rotten, I'm ugly, unpresentable. Does it sound familiar? Okay, all of us experience that. It has to do, not with the things we do, but the kind of person we are. That's shame. Now, that capacity to feel—so the working of the conscience, which has to do with seeing ourselves the way other people see us—is closely connected then with the experience of guilt and shame.

The term conscience doesn't come from the Old Testament, but comes from the Greco-Roman world. It's interesting that by the time the New Testament was written, the Greeks basically had mapped out the way conscience worked. And it was a common term in Greek literature and Greek thinking. And I want to summarize basically what the Greeks had to say about conscience, because it's far better than what our secular society has to say. The Greeks said that the working of the conscience was an aspect of conscious human life in an ordered universe. Now, let's start off first. Basically, the Greeks had noticed that the world was ordered, but there was also chaos. The sky gods, the Olympians—there were twelve of them, basically—battled for order in the world, and then chaos came from the underworld, and we lived between the overworld and the underworld. And the experience of conscience had to do with living in an ordered world, which was being threatened by chaos, disorder. And the fact that we were conscious of living in a world that was both ordered and chaotic. Quite obviously, what's good? Is chaos good? No. Order is good. So you live in a world in which there is cosmic order. And a bad conscience came from the violation of that cosmic order.

Now, if you read the great Greek plays, particularly those of Aeschylus and Euripides, you can see very clearly what were the worst sins that you committed against cosmic order. The worst violation of cosmic order was sacrilege, the desecration of holy things. And the worst form of sacrilege was to break an oath. So the breaking of the oath was the worst crime that you could commit against the gods. But then also, at a second level, but almost as important, was murder and incest. Now, I don't know if you know the trilogy, the story of Oedipus Rex—Oedipus, who broke his oath, murdered his father, and married his mother. A violation of cosmic order. And his story embodies the Greek experience of conscience, if you want to follow it up.

So the experience of conscience originated from the gods who ordered the universe and human life in a chaotic world. And the Greeks were quite clear that the conscience didn't make law, but it was, they said, a nursemaid or guardian to protect people from physical and moral harm. It wasn't a moral or spiritual teacher. The Greek term, for those of you pastors, is that the conscience is the paidagogos. Does that ring any bells with any of you pastors? Galatians 3: the law is our schoolmaster, the slave-schoolmaster—not in the sense of the teacher, but the custodian, the slave who looks after us and takes us to school. That's the word there. That's the picture that the Greeks used for the human conscience. Notice, it's not a teacher, it's not a lawmaker; it's a guardian and a nursemaid. Positively it nourishes you, negatively it guards you from harm. Most importantly, the conscience, negatively, was linked with the Eumenides, the Furies, that tormented the minds of evildoers and exacted their downfall, their nemesis. So if you broke an oath, or if you were guilty of murder, or some other heinous crime against the cosmic order, against the order that had been created by the gods, the gods would unleash the Furies on you. The Furies came from the underworld, appropriately. They were women, and they nagged, day and night—mainly nighttime—they nagged, and they exacted revenge on evildoers. So even if human beings didn't exact revenge, the Furies would exact revenge. Eumenides means "kindly ones," euphemistically, you see. But they helped to maintain moral and social and cosmic order.

Now, there's a lot of wisdom here. I'm going to skip the next section, because if you're interested in what's there, you can look at the bibliography at the end of all the handouts, which puts it far better than me. There's a wonderful essay on "The Furies of the Conscience" by a theologian-philosopher, which you can Google very easily and it's readily available.

Now, I want to distinguish between conscience at two levels, and this is very important, that you get your head around this. On the one hand, conscience has to do with our standing before other people. It's part of the fact that God created us as social beings to live in society. We weren't created as individuals, but we were created to be part of family, marriage, community, church—whatever it is, community. Okay? So there's the moral experience of conscience, which has to do with that social dimension. But what's important—and it's important because there's a lot of confusion—most people who talk about conscience merely talk about it at this level, the ethical or social level. But for us, the important thing is the theological sense of the conscience, the way conscience determines or helps us to discern where we stand over against God, not just other people.

So, first of all, the moral experience of a good conscience. Notice I'm putting it positively, rather than negatively. And greetings, President. Basically, and most people would recognize this, you have a good conscience from right behavior in society. So I have a good conscience if I treat my wife well, if I treat my kids well, if I treat my fellow colleagues well. It has to do with right behavior towards others. So therefore they have nothing against me, and I feel good about myself. And good behavior is basically determined according to a given legal standard. It's not a good conscience from the way I feel about myself, but a good conscience as determined by the law. And the law at many different levels. At its most basic level, it has to do with family law, which is basically custom. So the rules in our household have never been codified, but it's basically customary law. This is the way you do things in our household. Okay, so it has to do with family law or custom, social law or custom, political law, natural law, your own moral standards. So a good conscience, if you like, from an ethical, social point of view, comes from right behavior—right behavior according to the law in all these ways. Notice, here it doesn't necessarily have anything to do explicitly with God's law. We touched on that just briefly. And that experience of a good conscience comes from self-evaluation, by the assessment of what I do. So I have a good conscience if I do the right thing, and I know that I do the right thing by others, and they acknowledge that I've done the right thing by them. It's quite obvious. If I do something wrong, I get to know that very quickly from my wife. Okay? And if I do something right, she's pleased with me, and it's quite obvious that she's pleased with me, and if she's pleased with me, well then I know I've done the right thing, and I can feel good about myself as a husband. Very simple. It's not all that complex. So when it comes to the human experience, the social experience of good conscience, we have—to use Paul's terms—justification by works. And that's right; that's the way we operate on the human level. I'm justified. I have a good standing with my wife, my children, my friends, on the basis of the way I treat them, my observance of the law.

Now, that's one aspect of the conscience. You see, there's the conscience before others, which is a very important part of it. But I want to distinguish that from my conscience before God, the theological sense of a good conscience, where things are turned around and are much more complex. You can't just project from the one to the other. What's the religious or theological sense of a good conscience in the New Testament? The New Testament uses the word syneidesis, or conscience, for our consciousness of God, and our consciousness of sin before God. So, our conscience, our consciousness of God, our consciousness of sin over against God. In the simplest terms, it's seeing ourselves as God sees us. So in human terms, social terms, I have a good conscience, and that comes from seeing myself as my wife sees me, or my children see me, my colleagues see me. But a good conscience before God has to do with the way God sees me and assesses me. So a good conscience, theologically or spiritually, depends on God's assessment of me, now, at this point of time in my life, as well as in the last judgment. So it has to do with the judgment of God, now, and then. That's important, that we see it in those two dimensions.

Now, the problem arises, for conscience before God, from the clash between my need for approval and God's approval of me. More than anything else, I want people to approve of me, don't you? "Yeah, he's a good guy. We like him." That's what I want. What I want from God is God's approval of me. That's the one reality. I need that. I require that to have a good conscience. On the other hand, I'm aware of God's disapproval of me. And so I try to justify myself. There's a clash between my desire to justify myself, as a would-be righteous person, a person who's okay, and God's judgment on me as a sinner. So I'd like to be righteous with God, and I need to be righteous with God, but on the other hand, I'm aware that I'm not, that I fall short of the glory of God. I'm not the way I'm meant to be. So you get this awful inner conflict.

The result of that is the conflicted conscience that Paul ascribes to the Gentiles. Now, not just to the Gentiles—but he says, in effect, that it's not just the Jews, who have God's law, who have conflicted consciences, but the Gentiles have it too. So everybody has this conflicted conscience. Now I'm coming to your point, Jeff. Let's just pick up the main verses from Romans chapter 2, verses 13 and 15 to 16. Paul says, "For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified." Notice that future tense—not who "are" justified, but who "will be" justified, in the last day. They—that's the Gentiles—"show that they have the work of the law," the operation of the law, "written in their hearts," in their conscience, "as their conscience also bears witness to the law. And the conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them, on that day, when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of human hearts by Jesus Christ."

Now, what Paul has compressed here, in very short terms, is a wealth of observation and experience. This is immensely profound and helpful. It's worth your while to look at it closely and unravel it. It's quite complex. Now, to put it in its simplest terms, you need to have a very simple picture in your mind. Don't try to work it out in terms of ideas. Get the picture. Now, the picture here is of a court of law. There's a court in session. There's a judge who presides in this court. There's a person on trial, and that person on trial is who? Me, and every human being. There's the counsel for the defense, and there's the counsel for the prosecution. So you have the prosecution, you have the defense. And you have witnesses that both the defense and the prosecution call to give evidence before the judge. And then, in this court, the court hears the evidence, gives the verdict, and then gives the sentence. It's not the same thing. Can I make that quite clear? A lot of people misunderstand Paul's and the Lutherans' teaching on justification, because they don't distinguish between verdict and sentence. So there's a verdict, and there's a sentence.

Now, this court, the location of this court, is one of the strangest imaginable. The location of this court is right here, and here. So this court sits in my heart, my mind, my own conscience, and here's the problem: I am both the witness for me and the witness against me. Get me? So there's a court that's in session. And that court is either guided by human law, or God's law, as the basis for the testimony that's given, the verdict that's given, and the sentence that's passed. You're with me in the picture? Okay, now, who is on trial? Who's the person on trial? It's me and every single human being, whether you're a Christian, a Jew, or whether you are a Gentile—all are in the same boat. They are all in the dock before God. There's no difference, Paul says. All have sinned, all fall short of the glory of God, all stand accused before God.

Now, here comes the problem for most of us, in our natural experience, apart from the gospel. There's no one in this court—I myself have to perform so many different, contradictory functions. I am both the counsel for the prosecution—my conscience accuses me of the rotten things that I've done, even if I suppress it, it comes back and haunts me at nighttime, or I just get the right trigger and it comes flooding back, so my own conscience prosecutes me—but then also my own conscience then kicks in and defends me. Can you see the problem? And so I oscillate between self-condemnation, self-accusation, and self-vindication, self-defense. Now, when it comes to our natural human experience, we are in a real fix, because there is no final verdict, or there's no final sentence, as there is no proper judge. We are locked in an awful dilemma, because in many ways—and this is the dilemma—I am judge; I'm passing judgment on myself. I am witness for and witness against. I'm counsel for the prosecution, counsel for the defense. I deliver the verdict, I deliver the sentence. That's the mess all human beings are in.

And then God steps in with his law and his gospel. And the law here is, in a sense, good news. Because it rescues me from being judge, and jury, and prosecution, and defense. I don't have to defend myself. I don't have to prosecute myself. I don't have to bear witness for myself. I don't have to bear witness against myself. I don't pass my own verdict, guilty or not guilty. I don't pass the sentence, and I then don't enact the sentence, which is to punish myself. God steps in as judge and cleans up the mess. And it's his word that helps to reveal the mystery of what's going on here in this conflicted conscience. But the conflicted conscience, you see, is a kind of secret, or is a secret session that is at work in unbelievers. It's, if you like, a preliminary hearing, which we conduct for ourselves, before the final trial before God as judge, and Jesus as my advocate.

So, what happens? God steps in. He operates, not according to human law, or my own personal law, but he operates according to his law. And that clears up things for me. God is judge—that's good. Then Jesus is my advocate. Satan is my prosecutor. And then Jesus doesn't call in human witnesses, the people who know me and the evil things that I've done, but Jesus is not only my advocate, but the Holy Spirit bears witness for me. He says, "Okay, yes, John has done these things. But he has faith in Jesus." Ah—the Holy Spirit bears witness to the fact that I have faith in Jesus. Satan accuses me of sin and condemns me of sin, once the death sentence of damnation is passed on me. The sentence, in God's court, now, and on the last day, is: "Yes, John, you are guilty as charged." You are guilty, and the verdict is what? Guilty, guilty as charged. And the mandatory sentence is death. But then Jesus steps in and pleads for grace. And so we're guilty as charged, we are sentenced to death, but the death sentence is waived. Grace. And that delivers a good conscience—now, and in the last day.

I don't know if you've got that picture. Is it relatively clear? I'd like to spend a whole session just on this teaching. Any questions just on that? Have you got it basically? So, can I say—okay, this trial, just think of it—this trial is going on in the heart, the conscience of every single human being who's ever lived. This trial has been going on. And it's going on in every single person who lives in the USA. And it's very, very difficult, because it's going on, and it's very, very murky; it's in mystery. It has to do with the secrets of the heart, not what you can see publicly. Publicly, people are quite righteous and they've got it together, but it has to do with the secrets of the heart, which are revealed in the witching hours of the night.

Now, that hidden trial is brought out into the open, and its nature is clarified, as soon as God's word is proclaimed as law, and then as gospel. The last judgment occurs already now, before the final judgment. You're with me? So people who become Christians understand and experience the inner trial that's going on as God's trial, and experience justification, in anticipation of the final absolution, the final justification. And that means that the possibility is, for me, not only to have a good conscience eventually in heaven—remember, I said a good conscience is a foretaste of heaven—but it means that I can have a good conscience when? Now. And the rest of my life. I can get the devil off my back. I can get the Furies off my back. I can face other people and face God every day with a good conscience.

I can't emphasize enough the importance of conscience for human life. One of the problems we have in our societies: on the one hand, people appeal to conscience; on the other hand, people want to abolish conscience and negate conscience. And if you go the psychological way, particularly—not Freudian psychology, but the American kind of psychology—it basically has to do with trying to eliminate conscience altogether. The understanding is that conscience is bad, and you get rid of a bad conscience by getting rid of what? Conscience. Now, conscience itself is good. Even a bad conscience, or guilt, is good. Shame is good. It's necessary for right relationships. There's no possibility that I could, as a human being, live together with my wife unless I had a good conscience. And there's no way that our marriage could work, except in human terms, that we could live together with each other—not as Christians, but as moral people with a good conscience. There's no way that I could live as a Christian before God, unless I had a conscience. What would happen if you eliminated conscience altogether? You would dehumanize every human being, and no personal relationships would be possible, from the most superficial to the most profound.

Yes, please. [Question:] First you said lack of love is the fruit of a bad conscience. Yes. And I can understand exactly your point for the Christian—but the Christian deals with one who has bad passions remaining. Even for me, as a Christian. That is—before you can get into it… Yes, that at that basic level is a very simple thing, and the only way you can do it is to be with them and love them. Yes, you deal with them in love, but that's not enough. What you've got to do is teach, preach, confess law—God's law—and the gospel. Basic catechism. You teach the Ten Commandments, which helps to clarify the difference between what we human beings call love and what God calls love. The Ten Commandments, which have to do with the basic realities of human relationships and relationship with God. You teach the Ten Commandments, you teach the creed. You confess and live by the Ten Commandments, you confess and live by the creed. All that—look, what I've been teaching you is basically Luther's Small Catechism, writ large a little bit.

One of the problems that we have in Australia is that, even in the church, people are no longer being taught the Ten Commandments. And they no longer understand the Ten Commandments. It fell off the agenda round about my generation, basically kicked it off the agenda. So you have confirmation instruction without the Ten Commandments. And if you ask most people in Australia, "Which are the Ten Commandments?"—oh, they know that there are Ten Commandments; I say, "Which are they?" "Oh, don't have sex." Or a few may get it right and say, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." But that's where it stops. And that's understanding the Ten Commandments at the most superficial level. Now, because of that—the Ten Commandments define what is guilt and what is not guilt. They define what is loving and not loving, if I can put it that way. So you have this immense blindness, or this confusion, which comes not just because people haven't heard the gospel, but they've never heard God's law—God's good law—which has to do with the delivery of a good conscience.

Yes? [Question:] It would seem that this connects with the elimination, or the attempt at eliminating, the conscience. Yes? That also then gives rise to the greater rise in… Oh, absolutely. And all the mess that we have—it leads to sexual chaos. It leads to broken marriages, broken families. It leads to the whole breakdown of society, the disorder in society, comes out of that. And which then increases bad conscience. Most people that I know who are not Christians feel bad, feel that they've been a failure as husband or wife. They feel a failure sexually. They feel failures as parents. They feel failures as human beings. And the problem is they don't know why. "Why should I feel a failure as a husband if I've never committed adultery? Why is my wife angry with me? I provide for her. I do all the right things by her, and yet she's angry with me. And I don't know why she's angry with me." You know the thing? Or, "We've done the right thing by our kids, and they've gone off the rails." Now, that's a common experience. I think it's common here, at least it's common in Australia. And in this kind of mess, God's law comes as good news—not as saving news, but it's good news, because it brings the light of God into human chaos. Not in terms of social order, but in terms of the conscience.

Yes, Jeff? [Question about the second and third use of the law.] When the law is working, that's almost gospel, in the sense that it says, "You're being convicted, but that's God working in you. He's reaching out to you. He's expressing his truth to you, you're standing in him." And therefore that's the whole basis of healing. But when people make that moral assessment of law—that it's a human understanding—they miss all of that. They miss the wisdom of the truth. They miss the truth of it, because they can't act on it. If God's at work accusing me—the second use of the law; you also have the first use of the law, by the way—but the second use of the law means that there's hope for me. Because if that wasn't the case, there's just no way out of the chaos that surrounds us.

Now, conscience is necessary for right relationships. Both guilt and shame sensitize us as persons to other people. If I had no capacity for guilt, I'd have no capacity for personal relationships with anybody. If I had no capacity for shame, I would not be able to live in community with other people. In fact, all of you know that there are people who have no conscience, no shame, no guilt, and no sense of guilt, no sense of shame. Shameless people—they're shameless people who never feel bad about themselves, or bad about other people. This is what is the condition of somebody who's a sociopath or psychopath. Sociopath, psychopath—a person who has no shame, who has no sense of guilt. And there's a particular class of people that is sort of going in that direction, which I think—Bev, am I right?—there seems to be an increase in narcissistic people, for whom basically the important thing is, as long as they feel good about themselves, nothing else matters. They are completely turned in on themselves. It's not the same—they're not psychopaths or sociopaths—but there's a problem there with the operation of the conscience, the operation of guilt and shame.

So, according to the prophet Jeremiah, shamelessness is, in fact, the most terrible condition of all within human beings. What's God's worst judgment on a society that's gone off its rails? It's not just that people have sinned and feel guilty, that they don't repent. But when God's law comes to them, they reject the law, and instead of feeling bad about the things they've done, they take pride in the fact that they commit adultery, or whatever they do. They take pride in the fact that they've had an abortion, or that they've cheated somebody. So shamelessness is the most terrible of all human conditions. Just listen to what Jeremiah has to say. He asks the question—that's about the people of Judah just before the end—"Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all. They do not even know how to blush." Now, the most elementary form of shame is blushing. They've lost the capacity to feel any sense of shame. Now, a shameless person is, from a human point of view, in a hopeless condition—not just a hopeless condition theologically before God, but also morally before other human beings. Just imagine if your spouse was shameless. Can you imagine that, and how terrible that would be? Just in one area—just imagine if your spouse was sexually shameless, had no sense of shame. It would mean that any sexual relationship, any union, would be impossible. It would completely pervert and corrupt your marriage. What we have in our societies is an increasing number of shameless people, who take pride in the things that they should be ashamed of. So Paul then talks about the darkened and desensitized minds of pagan people. That's the worst judgment of God on people who reject God—pagan people—that they eventually lose any moral sensitivity. They lose a sense of conscience; they become shameless.

Yes? Just a bit louder, Kathy. Hello, by the way, nice to have you. Yes? [Question:] Can they… The gospel can reach anybody. There is no… One of the problems that we have is that we think—oh, sorry: is there any hope for a person who is a psychopath or sociopath? Now, and Bev can weigh in—I'm not a psychologist, but I think from a psychological point of view, you'd say there's very little hope. You know, it might be five percent. Is there any hope for a sociopath? And this is where you can see the dilemma we're in. Okay? Apart from the gospel, the power of the Holy Spirit, the word of God, it's hopeless. But the word of God is the hammer. And the Spirit of God can break the hardest heart. Now, one of the problems that we have is that we think there must be some method, some approach that we can take in order to deal with these people. There is no method at all that I know of. I don't know if you know of any method. At least theologically, there's no method. All you can do is pray, speak God's word, as law and gospel, and pray for the Holy Spirit to enlighten their darkness, and to use the wonderful term in the prophet Ezekiel, to take out their hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh instead. Remember that? Ezekiel—chapters 33 and 36, there are two places. So a heart transplant needs to occur. And even though I'm a cardiologist, I can't perform that heart transplant; only the Holy Spirit can. Now, I've had some work with people who were diagnosed as maybe not psychopaths, but sociopaths, who—you know, they'll have problems all their life. There's no healing this side of eternity. But they've been able to be reached with the gospel, by the Holy Spirit. So humanly speaking, impossible. But with God, nothing is impossible.

Bev, did you—now, who did you—oh, no, or you're just hovering there. Bev, can I just get your thing—is it true that, from the data that's available, the number of narcissistic people seems to be increasing, and at least sociopaths—I don't know about psychopaths? [Bev:] It is indeed increasing. The good news about sociopaths and psychopaths, because the research tells us, is that if we can interact with these individuals prior to age sixteen, there's more hope than if we're trying to work with an individual who's older. It is physiological, brain-based. It's like—some people have attention deficit. They're now calling it emotional understanding deficits. They don't—but they can't. Meanwhile, narcissists continue to blow everywhere, including here. Including this. [Kleinig:] Now, notice that "before sixteen." And that's a very important argument for our Christian education and good catechesis before that time. It mightn't have an effect immediately. But if you can seed God's Word, as law and gospel, and the Holy Spirit, through law and gospel, in the hearts of such people, it can bring about the change in the impossible situation.

Yes. Excuse me. Just—hold us all. Just in the same way that, now, when you're talking about a sociopath, a psychopath, the law would mean nothing. No. And so that was really the point of my question when I was talking about love. Yes. Okay? Because really, the law would be absolutely—when I asked you the question, and I said, "Well, how do you reach them by God?", then you said, "Well, the Ten Commandments," and whatnot. But I can see where there's a real dilemma with that sort of person, because the law would mean nothing. And obviously, prayer, praying for the Holy Spirit, and that. But then, in the same way that the law means nothing to them, would our loving them mean anything to them? The problem is, no, probably not. Now, I'm very pleased that you raised that question, because behind that lies one common misjudgment that we make. We think that the word of God can't have an effect on people unless it is understood cognitively, intellectually. Now, the word of God is living and active. It's sharper than any two-edged sword; it can penetrate to the division of heart and spirit, joints and marrow. It discerns the secrets and intentions of the heart.

Now, of course, a psychopath or sociopath is not going to accept or even understand the law of God, let alone the gospel of God. Love means nothing to them, because they are self-enclosed, in the sense that they are incapable of loving in any meaningful way. But because God's word is inspired by the Holy Spirit and brings the Holy Spirit to people, it can work even where it's not understood. And sometimes it works best when people don't understand it. Because when we understand it, we manipulate it and tailor it and domesticate it within our own frame of reference. So can I say that again? God's word has an effect on people quite apart from their understanding. It doesn't discount the importance of understanding, the cognitive domain. But God's word can have an effect on a person who's unconscious. The word still can do its work. Have you got the point, basically? So, yeah, you love, whether people receive the love or not. You speak the word of God, law and gospel, whether people understand it or are capable of understanding it or not. The results are not in my hands or your hands; they are in the hands of the Holy Spirit. Yeah, these are all very important parts of what I'm dealing with. Any other questions before I move? Ooh, gosh. I'll never get through what I want to.

Okay, now, I'm going to make what is a very important contention. I would contend that the more people's consciences are desensitized—and there are degrees of desensitization of conscience—the more people are dehumanized. Can I repeat that? The more people's consciences are desensitized, the more they are dehumanized; they become less than human. Paul uses four pictures for the distortion or desensitization, not of the conscience of unbelievers, but of the conscience of Christians. So one of the biggest problems that you face, that I face, is not the desensitization of consciences outside the church—in fact, I think this occurs less than inside the church—but that the conscience of people in the church is desensitized, in many different ways. There are four different pictures that Paul uses that are quite profound.

First of all, he speaks about a desensitization that occurs from the deviation of people from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith, by teachers of a different doctrine from the gospel. So people who teach false doctrine desensitize consciences, and lead people so that they deviate, they depart from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. So the picture of deviation. The picture there is going the right way. Okay? False teaching, heresy, leads people from the right way, and leads to a deviant conscience—a conscience that deviates from the right way that God prescribes for human beings.

The second kind of desensitization comes from the repudiation, the rejection, of faith and the good conscience. Now, faith here is not believing, but the rejection of what is believed. So the first comes from false teaching. The second comes from the rejection, if you like, of the articles of faith, the creed, the confessions of the church. So you reject the faith as it's been delivered to us.

Now, the next two, I think, have a deep resonance with many modern people. By turning away from the truth, in following human commands, and denying God, rejecting God, being practical atheists by the way you live, the mind and the conscience of human beings, of Christians, is polluted. Okay, many Christians have a polluted conscience—a contaminated conscience, a mind, a way of thinking, a conscience, and a way of judging—because they've turned away from the truth of God's word, followed human commandments, human teachings, and denied God in their lives by the way they act. Theoretically, they believe there's a God, but the way they live denies God. And the result of that is a polluted conscience, a contaminated conscience, that needs to be cleared.

But worst of all, you have Paul's picture of a seared conscience. The picture here is of what happens when you get a red-hot iron, and put it on a sensitive human part of the body. Let's say—one of the most sensitive parts of our body is the fingertips. You've all experienced it. If you cauterize that, if you burn it, then it might heal, but that area is desensitized. You no longer feel. There are certain parts of my body where I have no sensation, because of burns that I've had. So you have skin that's burnt, and the result of the burning, even though there's healing, is that the nerves have been destroyed, so they are cauterized. Now, false teachers stand in danger of searing consciences. Just listen to what Paul says in 1 Timothy: "Now, the Spirit expressly says that in the latter times some will depart from the faith"—by doing what?—"by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits, or deceiving spirits, and the teaching of demons. Through the insincerity of liars"—the Greek is "false speakers," people who speak falsely—"whose consciences have been seared." So what does Paul say? False teachers have seared consciences. And as a result of that, they become instruments of Satan; they follow deceitful spirits, and the teaching not of God, but the teaching of demons. Now, they are not aware of the fact that they are following false spirits. They're not aware of the fact that their teaching is the teaching of demons. They think they're following God and the teachings of God. So the result of a seared conscience is that kind of false teacher. Now, probably many of you have experienced—and you can just move around the church, ecumenically, and there are many cases in point—of those kinds of teachers within the church, sadly. And there's a danger that I, as a teacher in the church, go down that path, and instead of being an instrument of the Holy Spirit, I become the instrument of an evil spirit. So these are people whose desensitized consciences come as the result of rejecting the Christian faith, and following the teaching of demons; they are devoted to deceitful spirits. Now, that doesn't mean that they're demon-possessed, but they follow the spirits of the age—the spirits of the age, you know, which is "what's the right thing," the teaching of our society. It leads to seared consciences.

Now, let's see how I'm going, and what I need to do. Yeah, I think I can probably do this. Now, next, I want to do two simple things to draw things together. On the one hand, I want to map out what I see as the dominant view of conscience in North America and Australia, and the view of conscience in the New Testament and the church. The dominant view of conscience here in North America is to understand it psychologically, and people think in terms of what has been called the sovereign conscience. That's a term that has been in common usage now for hundreds of years. In North America, the political system came from rejecting a sovereign, a king, and in the place of the king as sovereign, you have some people in the USA who therefore say, what we follow is conscience. Our conscience is sovereign. We bow to no one except our own conscience. So that's the notion of the sovereign conscience. Now, the idea behind this is that my conscience is not accountable to anybody else except myself, and I'm governed by my own standards. So I follow what I think is right. I'm governed by my own standards. It doesn't matter whether they agree with other people or God; I follow my own standards. I'm accountable to no one except myself.

The motto of our age could be the words of Polonius in Hamlet. People don't realize how ironical it is, because he's a real rogue. He's giving advice to Hamlet—I don't know if you remember, I think I've got it right—"To thine own self be true." So, be true to yourself. And then he goes on to say, "And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." What nonsense. What stupidity, what folly. "To thine own self be true." Now, that's the motto of most people. And it also entails the fact that the sovereign conscience then not only insists that it has the right to live by its own standards, but it demands that other people respect me. And worse than that, approve of my beliefs. So I have my own standards. Other people must tolerate them. But the next step is, they must not just tolerate them, but actually approve of them and recognize them. You can see this happening in the whole issue of abortion and debates about homosexuality. This is written large. You don't have to read very much in these areas, and you can see how this works.

The picture here is of the self-sufficient, autonomous, independent self. I am my own God. I am my own ruler. I'm the lawgiver, I'm the lawmaker, I'm the judge, I'm the jury. I am everything to myself. So it's what moral philosophers call moral solipsism—it's a kind of narcissism, a moral narcissism, turned in on yourself. Within this frame of reference, conscience is a good thing—okay, conscience means that I follow my own standards, and I am true to myself, I live authentically, sincerely, thank you. But what's bad within this frame of reference is a bad conscience. So a bad conscience is an inauthentic conscience. It has to do with neurotic self-consciousness. So if you have a bad conscience, you're not being true to yourself. You're guilty of neurosis.

However, people who live within this framework are in a real dilemma, because if I am my own lawmaker, judge, jury, passing sentence on myself—who gives me an absolution? The only person who can give me an absolution is not other people, or God, but myself. So I absolve myself, not by forgiving sins, but by discounting sins. So I reject the fact that I've committed any sins, and if I've committed sins, they don't really matter. So there's no case against me. So I negate my guilt. And I give myself, if you like, an absolution by redefining terms. Now, I might feel bad about committing adultery, but then you get the excuses, which redefine my adultery as a good thing. And since it's a good thing, therefore I am excused, I am absolved.

What's very common is that people regard conscience in our society as the lawmaker and as judge. Notice that Paul rejects the notion that his conscience is his judge. The way God's constructed our conscience is that it's not meant to judge us. Note what Paul says: "But with me it's a very small thing that I should be judged by you," the congregation, "or by any human court"—that's a Roman court, so a church, congregational forum, or a human court. In fact, he says, "I do not even judge myself. I have nothing on my conscience." Notice—a proud boast: "I have nothing on my conscience." Could you say that? You should be able to say that. "I have nothing on my conscience, but I am not thereby acquitted or absolved. It is the Lord who judges me." God judges me. And there's no way that you can have a good conscience, except if you submit to the judgment of God.

Now, if anybody has written brilliantly about the conscience, it's Luther. I was half tempted, in all my presentations, just to give Luther's teaching on the conscience, but that would deal with medieval problems, not with modern problems. But just follow what Luther has to say in his analysis of the religion of the conscience. Now, what I'd say here in Australia and in North America is that most people have what Luther would call the religion of conscience. Okay, they follow their conscience. They follow their consciences, and they follow God's word provided that it agrees with their point of view, their standards. So that's the religion of conscience, where you follow conscience—but your own conscience and your own law, rather than God's word. Luther claims that this is idolatry. And he has a nose for this, because there were many people in the Reformation who said that conscience was the inner voice of God. These were the enthusiasts, the Schwärmer—now, the people who are into prophecy: "Now, God told me to do this." The funny thing is, God always tells me to do not what's against my will, but what agrees with me. He always agrees with me. So conscience as the inner voice of God. And the self then is the lawmaker, and the judge, from God, apart from God and his word. So you have the enthusiasts, who reject both the law and the word of God—what Luther calls the outer word—for the inner direction of the Holy Spirit. The original form of Pentecostalism. Now, I'm not saying that Pentecostals necessarily go down this road, but there are certain branches of this. These people who absolutize their conscience reject God's law that judges us, and by doing that, they also reject the gospel that saves us. You follow the inner voice of your conscience, whatever that is—it's a wrong conscience; you reject both law, and if you reject the law, then you've got to reject the gospel as well. That happens inevitably. You reject his word, by which he tells us who he is, and how we have access to him in worship, in the divine service. And so true religion, right worship, is replaced by our notions of God, and our self-devised spirituality, for our own self-justification and salvation. So I replace the word of God, as law and gospel, and the worship of God according to God's word—law and gospel, the Holy Spirit—with my own self-constructed spirituality, my own religion, in which my conscience is supreme, as lawmaker, judge, and jury, as everything. As time's running out, you can read that quote by Luther for yourselves.

Now, to summarize two final sections. Okay, we're getting close to the end for this afternoon. Number one. In sum, the biblical view of conscience is that it is an inner umpire, rather than a lawmaker. Now, an umpire doesn't make the rules. Say, if you play baseball, the umpire doesn't invent the rules. What does an umpire do? He applies the rules, and then calls to account people who've broken the rules, so that the game can go on. So that's the best picture that I can have of conscience. It's the umpire. It's the inner umpire. Now, it can only work properly if it has a clear set of rules to operate by. I'd hate to be a soccer referee unless there was a very clear code of rules. You wouldn't survive any match. Not only would the players lynch you, but the spectators would do that at the end of the match. So, conscience is the inner umpire, not the lawmaker, not the lawgiver. It applies the law, but it doesn't make the law. It's not the sun that enlightens us, but it is lit by the sun, if I can use another picture. It doesn't make the rules, it applies the rules. It doesn't instruct us, but it receives instruction from the word of God. It doesn't pass judgment—and this is important—it doesn't pass judgment on me or others, but it receives God's judgment, God's verdict, and God's sentence.

And it is governed, it is bound, by God's word, but it is not just bound by the gospel. That's the new Lutheran heresy, to say, "My conscience is bound by the gospel." No. My conscience, if we're true to Luther, is bound by the word of God, as both law and gospel. My conscience is bound by the law of God, it's bound by the gospel. So it's not just bound by God's promises and true to God's promises, but it's true to God's commandments. It is free and unbound, it has freedom, where it has no divine prohibition or no divine commandment. So there are some things that God has commanded. There are some things that God has forbidden. But most things, God neither commands nor forbids us; in that area the conscience is free. So God's law condemns adultery. It condemns homosexual intercourse. Bound. But it has nothing to say about contraception. Now, that doesn't mean that it's right or wrong, but it means consciences are not bound in that area, because we have no clear commandment, no clear prohibition. It is free. It's a matter of adiaphora—it means it's neither commanded nor forbidden. And we operate then according to other principles.

It is as weak or strong as the faith of the person who has it. But it's not the degree of their faith, but the object of their faith. So some people have a strong conscience because they have faith in Christ and his word. Some people have a weak conscience, which means that they have an uncertain conscience, a vacillating conscience, a confused conscience, because they are not clearly and certainly fixed on Christ and his word. The more we trust in Christ and his word, the stronger our conscience. Now, this is where the confusion lies, because whether I have a strong conscience doesn't mean how much I believe, as in much evangelical theology, but what I believe, in what I put my trust, and whether I put my trust partially or fully in Christ's word for me. The analogy that you can have—you know, most of you have got cell phones—you can get a weak signal or a strong signal. Okay? Now, a weak or strong signal is not about whether your cell phone's operating, but your location determines whether you get a weak signal or a strong signal. So a strong conscience or weak conscience is a bit like the reception on a cell phone; it has to do with the transmission, and the reception of the transmission, rather than the character of the cell phone. I don't know if that analogy is helpful.

Right, to summarize, and then we'll have a few minutes for discussion. What is my aim—as a Christian, as a pastor, as a teacher in the church, as an old man facing the last judgment? My basic aim is that I want to live my life and conduct my ministry with a good conscience. That's the sum of it. Living with a good conscience, acting with a good conscience. So, in positive terms, that means that I don't judge myself, other people don't judge me, my church doesn't judge me, the leaders of my church don't judge me, society doesn't judge me. Who is my judge? Christ alone is my judge. And he's a merciful, gracious judge. And remember that Christ preaches not just gospel, but he preaches both law and gospel. And his law is good news for me. The standard for my conscience is God's word as law and gospel.

Now, at this point, I want to just introduce a notion that I'm going to pick up again. If a good conscience depends on me hearing, receiving, and believing God's law and gospel, what's Satan going to do? He's going to confuse them. He won't try to eliminate them. No—he's the best theologian of all. And most of his work with us is done by the misapplication of God's word. And this confuses spiritually naive Christians. So Satan misapplies law and gospel. He uses the law, first of all, in the right way. He uses the law to accuse me of sin. Is he right in doing that? Is it right for Satan to use God's law? He says, "Kleinig, you've committed adultery. You're damned." But you are guilty—no—you are guilty before God. Is he right? Luther says yes, and we want to clap him and say, "Thank you, Satan. You're doing the work of the Holy Spirit." Okay. But he never stops there, because—see, I even made the slip—"Kleinig, you've sinned." And what he wants me to do is to start justifying myself, to say, "No, I haven't sinned." Okay, so that I try to justify myself, and then he gets me. But then once I accept the fact that I've sinned, accept the accusation, then what does he say? "You are damned, you are condemned. How can you be a pastor? How can you be a Christian? There's no hope for you. You're damned."

Now, God's law—and he uses the law to do so—God's law was never meant to damn people. What is God's law? Three uses of the law: order in the world, accusing of sin, and showing godly living. Nothing to do with damnation. The law was never meant to damn. So as soon as that inner voice starts damning you, and using God's law to damn you—and he does it all the time—you know it's the voice of Satan, and he is misapplying God's word to you. Now, that was the basic problem in Luther's day. Luther writes about this again and again in many places. But in our day, I think far more common than that is his misapplication of the gospel. He uses the gospel to excuse sin, rather than to pardon sinners. Christ died for all—is that true? He atoned for all—is that true? Justification is available to all. "You are forgiven"—is that true? Yes and no. It's not as simple as that. If it means that your sin is excused, whether you have faith or not, it's false. But if you have faith in Jesus and are penitent, if you have faith in Jesus, trust in Jesus, then you are pardoned. But he uses the gospel to excuse sin, to condone sin, and that's happening everywhere—in the church, and particularly in our beloved Lutheran church. Dogmatically, in North America they call it gospel reductionism.

So on the one hand, he uses the law to condemn sinners; on the other hand, he uses the gospel to excuse sin. Now, it doesn't matter what kind of sin it is, from the trivial—from me losing my temper with my wife—to committing adultery, to homosexuality, to abortion, you name it, whatever you like. His purpose is to dull and to confuse the conscience. So his attack is always on the conscience, to drive the conscience away from the word of God and Christ. So how do you get a good conscience? You get a good conscience from the right application of law and gospel. You receive a good conscience through the gospel. The whole teaching of justification, by grace, through faith, has to do with the issue of conscience. And you will misunderstand it, mispreach it, misapply it, unless you address it to the conscience. And that's what's happening. We have a misteaching of justification right throughout the whole of the church, from Roman Catholics through to Pentecostals, and Lutherans sometimes are the worst.

Now, the result of justification, quite simply, is the assurance of salvation and God's approval of me as a person. When I have faith in Jesus—no, since I have faith in Jesus—I know not only that I am forgiven, that's very often where Lutherans end, but I know that God is pleased with me. Since I have faith in Jesus, I know that Jesus is here, and he looks at me, and he says, "John, you're my beloved son, I'm well pleased with you." He's here now, and when he sees you, he says, "You're my beloved son, I'm well pleased with you. You're my beloved daughter, I'm well pleased with you." God's approval. That's the issue. And where you have that approval, you can live life with a good conscience. What could be better than that? What could be better than that, when God the Father looks at you, and he doesn't see the old you, the rotten you, the sinful you, but he sees Christ, the face of Christ—you're covered with his blood, his righteousness. He sees Christ in you. And he not only sees it and holds it himself, but he actually says, "I'm pleased with you. I approve of you. You're precious, you're lovely, you're honored in my eyes." Thank you.