Gospel Mom 05: On How Your Life Experiences Shape Your Motherhood + Other Things (GM - C8) Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Laura Wifler: We're talking about one of my favorite topics today. It is. It's one of my absolute favorite topics because I think it changed my entire paradigm on how—not just motherhood—how I look at motherhood—but also at my whole entire life. The topic is personal conscience.
Emily Jensen: Ooh, I know. We have talked about this on our show before, and we felt like it was so important to include in Gospel Mom and to include in this series as one of the foundational principles that we need to know if we're going to live our lives focused on Christ—in light of what Christ has done—and we're going to be walking with him. We have to know what things are clear cut in Scripture, what things are non-negotiable and black and white, and then what things are more gray areas. We might call it areas of Christian freedom or areas where, as Christians, we're going to do things differently. We're going to apply wisdom differently to each of our situations.
I think that those two things can be quite difficult to sort out because there's not only personal conscience; there's the Holy Spirit at work. There are all these different things that we have to unravel. Yes, let's dive in.
Laura: I think we're going to only have time to skim over what the conscience is and some of the interesting facets about it that apply to our conversation today. Before we do that, we want to encourage you to go back and listen to those old shows that Emily mentioned because there are a couple ones that we really dive in deep. Then also, of course, as we're following along with the outline of Gospel Mom, there is a really in-depth chapter where I feel like we spelled some stuff out in very clear ways that hopefully can be helpful if you're listening to this and then still feeling a little bit lost.
I think with the conscience, the first question is, what is the conscience? Is it a Magic 8 Ball? Is it Jiminy Cricket on your shoulder—different things like that? No, it's none of those things, but it is your personal sense—personal sense being the key word—your personal sense of right and wrong.
I often think of the conscience as that intangible or that strange feeling that you get when you feel like you maybe are doing something wrong. Usually, you'd have no feelings whenever you're doing something right. If you feel like, “Oh, I'm engaging in something that I shouldn't be,” and maybe you get a pain in your chest, or you get a butterfly in your tummy, or you just have a sense about yourself that's like, "This feels wrong." I think with that, the piece there to listen to is that this isn't the exact same as the Holy Spirit, or this isn't exact same as the Bible.
If this is your personal sense of right and wrong, you could be correct. Your conscience could be right when you get that feeling that you're doing something wrong or sinning. But also, it could be something where you actually need to be realigning that conscience and to be working through that feeling. The biggest thing to remember with the conscience is just to say, hey, this is the little yellow flag that raises up, and you want to look underneath it. You want to say, "Okay, why am I feeling these things? What does this mean?"
When it fires off, you can say, “Is this choice actually wrong biblically or is this something that I have an area of freedom in?” and start to work through those questions. That's what we're going to dig into. It's a lot.
Emily: It's interesting to think about how our conscience is formed because it explains a lot about our personal bias or our personal view of the world and what things are good and what things are bad. Conscience is really formed as we're raised. A lot of it is from our family of origin.
Laura: What we talked about last show—the unique circumstances stuff.
Emily: What were your house rules growing up? What did your parents teach you as right and wrong? Maybe you didn't even grow up in the Christian faith and that shaped you in some ways. Everything from teachers, people who influenced you, books that you've read—there's all kinds of things. You can also have influences from the socioeconomic class that you're in or the subculture of people that you're in. Every group of people that we hang around with has unwritten, unspoken rules of what's good and bad and what's right and wrong. We tend to adopt those as our own sense of right and wrong.
Even within church communities that happens, right? These rules are not written down anywhere, but there can be a sense of, “It's good if you live this type of way; it's bad if you live that type of way. It's good if you worship this type of way; it's bad if you worship this type of way.” We can adopt that, and it really starts to inform us. As we approach questions in motherhood, we bring all of that with us to the table. And I think oftentimes, we're not aware of it.
Laura: Oh, no. No, definitely not. I think this is something that is practiced and learned as you begin to understand what the conscience is. I think for me, that was where I was saying at the beginning of the show, it really changed my perspective on things because I remember whenever we ended up having to bottle feed one of my kiddos, and I just felt like that's so wrong—like I don't want to do that. Of course, I was reading things and hearing about "Breast Is Best" and things like that. That was informing my conscience, but then other things were playing in. But ultimately, it was like, okay—I had to sort that out between what is my personal bias versus what does the Word of God say of how to feed a child?
Those were different in that situation. I think for moms, this is really helpful as we seek unity with others—as we work through differences, like we talked about on our last show. This is also where all of these foundational pieces that we've been talking about with the gospel—the CFRC that we've talked on the first show or the second show in the disciplines, the habits, things like that. That's where they all come in, and we're able to start to say, "Okay, how do I separate my conscience versus what God's good design is—what his commands are for me?"
I think that this is an area where we have to learn that Christians can make a variety of different decisions and still honor God. This is where people often say, "That's the gray area," or "There's a lot of ways to have Christian freedom on this." For example, Emily, you were talking about this, but with church, the New Testament makes it really clear that Christians need to meet together to pray. Yet there's not necessarily this specific “you have to meet on this date” and “you need to meet for this amount of time” and “you have to wear these kinds of clothes.”
Those kinds of things of—how it plays out is an area of freedom for every local body, but the idea of attending church regularly, of meeting with people to worship and pray and to hear the preaching of the Word—that part's not optional. But we have to sort those things out.
Emily: Yes, definitely. I think too, as we were working through this topic, we're realizing, “Okay, the concept of biblical wisdom really comes into play here.” And knowledge is having the facts about something—it's knowing something—but wisdom is being able to apply what you know in a variety of different situations, in a way that makes the most sense for that situation. Biblical wisdom is not a cookie cutter thing.
It's not a super clear, “Hey, here's the formula; here's a handbook; everybody's going to do the same thing.” It's taking the principles that we talked about in creation, fall, redemption, consummation and then coming to a situation in your unique circumstances, right? This is how all the pieces of the puzzle are coming together in your unique circumstance. And then making the best decision that makes the most sense for you and your family at that time, according to God's Word.
I think it's so important that, as we're doing this, we remember that faith is a huge thing that God wants us to have and grow in, right? He wants us to walk by faith. If we had all the answers, and we had everything laid out for us, we wouldn't have to walk by faith. We wouldn't have to keep consulting him over and over again. We wouldn't have to keep going to him in prayer. We wouldn't have to keep relying on him because we're dependent and needy, and we don't have all the answers and he does.
A good part of the journey is the shaping our conscience—the calibrating our conscience, the coming to him over and over again for the things that we need. I think sometimes we view that as a frustrating part of the process, but actually, it's a good part of keeping us coming back to him over and over again and not just like, "Well, I found out the right answer to that. Now I never have to talk to God about that again." [Laughter]
Laura: I think what else is interesting about the conscience is—you were talking a little bit about calibrating it. By that, we just mean, as you grow in your knowledge and understanding and you apply biblical wisdom, your conscience becomes more and more aligned with what the Word of God actually preaches and teaches. While on some areas when your conscience is a little bit off or misfiring, you might think, "Oh, that's wrong" and want to hold other people to it. You may want to correct people, to judge them, to bring them into the light, but then as you're self-evaluating, you're actually realizing, "Oh no, there's freedom on this issue."
I think some of the most secure Christians that you see are the people that have really calibrated those consciences closer to the Word of God. We'll never be perfect on this side of heaven—we won't get them perfect—but you can get closer and closer. And oftentimes when you see a Christian who seems just very secure in their faith and is still walking in a way that's upright and holy—
Emily: —They don't seem angsty about what everyone else is doing. They don't seem like they have to correct everybody in their path. They're just able to be humble and at peace about their lives.
Laura: A lot of times, those are the people that you can look to and be like, “Okay, they have gotten what Christian freedom is about, and they're also not abusing it.” The other danger is that suddenly, everything is free, and suddenly, everything is a gray area, and we're off doing whatever we want.
Emily: We're going to talk about that in a future show. We're going to go through another chapter in the book. We talk about what do you do when your conscience or your choices look different from other moms because there are passages in Scripture that show us we don't use our freedom as a way to—I don't know—trip up other Christians or lord over other Christians. We use it to serve and to further the purposes of the kingdom. This is a really big, complex topic and one that we really spent this third part of Gospel Mom taking all these pieces and putting them together because they all build on each other.
Laura: Yes, correct. To just wrap it up here, I think the important thing to take home is that the way that you feel about a topic or a situation or a problem in front of you isn't necessarily all the right answer. I think a lot of times, we go on feeling: that feels right; that feels wrong. What we want to encourage you to do today is to slow down and say, “Okay, do I feel like that is wrong because of X, Y, Z reasons in my life or because I'm shaped—
Emily and I—you and I talk a lot like, “Well, I feel this way because . . .”—and I think this is trendy right now, right? That we work through our feelings and think through, “What has happened in my life to make me feel this way?” That is a really good practice. Yet, we want to get to the next level of, "Okay, but what does God's Word say?" It's not just, “Why do I feel this way?” Then comparing that to the Word of God and saying, "Is that what he says or is this an area where there's freedom and I can relax—both in feeling pressure to do something or perform or to feel like I have to get others to that same spot?"
Emily: Okay, Laura, what was your favorite part of this chapter?
Laura: I loved that we actually tackled Halloween.
Emily: You love talking about those things. [Laughter] Divisive things.
Laura: I love divisive topics. Emily keeps me off of those—no, just kidding.
Emily: Oh, that's funny.
Laura: I loved that we tackled something that is truly divisive. If you look on the internet anywhere, moms are up in arms about Halloween, and there are good arguments and bad arguments, but it's something where I like how we walked through it really methodically—about why one mom might feel like she can engage in Halloween and one mom might feel like she can't. Then we also talked about how the mom who maybe felt like she couldn't—what does it look like for her conscience to change on that?
I think it's just a really great picture of how we can grow in motherhood and how we're never stuck, and I think there's no shame in saying, "Okay, I want to honor my conscience with where I'm at today, and yet, I can see there are other good ways of doing life and raising children and engaging in things." I think that that was just a great example that we tackled, and I feel proud of what we did.
Emily: Yes. Yes. Spoiler—we do not take a side or solve any problems in there. You still get to make whatever decision you feel is right to make, but it was good to go through something that feels like, "Ooh, I don't really know," and illustrate how moms can be thinking about a topic differently and be aiming to honor God in the way that they're thinking about it.
I think something I liked was when we brought together just all the different ways our conscience is formed. I'm just so fascinated by that because, again, I think a lot of times when we get that feeling inside of, “Ooh, this is wrong, or this is right,” it is so, so deeply informed by the things that we have experienced and the things that we have seen. It's really hard to get outside of your mind and be like, "What would a mom in Australia think?" "What would a mom in—?"
Laura: And those are key questions. Right. Those are questions we don't ask ourselves enough because a lot of times whenever we're coming down super hard on somebody—whether that's in real life, and you're judging her behind her back or whatever, or it's on the internet and you are leaving that comment—most of the time, it feels like those people have not thought through, “What does this mean for the mom in China? What does this mean for the mom on a rural farm?” Ask that question and oftentimes, your bias will be revealed.
Emily: Yes. You don't realize that. We went through like—hey, it's your family origins, rules, personalities, values, tendency; your own relationship with your siblings; your friends; your spouse; your personality; your disposition; your trauma. I think socioeconomic status.
There are norms that you feel like “Everyone should do this.” Then, you get outside of whatever that tax bracket is, and it's like, actually, people have very different lives and have very different ideas of what's okay and what's not okay. Even in things like social manners and how you greet people. It goes on and on and on—education and what schooling you had; your denomination; your sect of Christianity; your values, hobbies, talents, fears. You're bringing all of that to the table.
I just felt like I was so glad that we dug into that, and I hope that it at least helped moms. I feel like that's the first step—to just recognize I'm not a blank slate coming to this. I actually have a lot of preformed worldviews and opinions, some of which might be right—some of which might be aligning with God—but some of which might not be. We don't have to be threatened by digging deeper and going to the Word of God and aligning them and going, “Wait a second, I feel like—”
This is such a silly example, but my husband always is driving whenever we're in the car together, and it can feel like, if I were to get in the driver's seat—
Laura: It would be weird.
Emily: It feels weird. Not morally wrong, but just “Why am I driving?” There is literally no biblical—
Laura: It's like we start to question, "Is he spiritually leading our family?" It suddenly goes there.
Emily: Yes. That's a tiny example of a time when your internal conscience might be like, "This feels weird. This feels uncomfortable. Is it okay for me to drive?" There is literally no biblical, nothing about—that is totally fine—and yet, you're coming to the table with that sense of right and wrong about something that is very cultural.
Laura: Yes, and it might even play out in the sense that maybe you see another couple where the wife drives all the time, and you're like, "That's weird." That is a great example of something that is not wrong, but suddenly—maybe if there's a casting judgment, or you're thinking, "Does she wear the pants in the family?" There are just weird thoughts that start crossing. Then that's a good example of an area where your conscience is not aligned to the Word of God.
Emily: Yes. And it’s so easy to go, “Okay, it's biblical because a Christian influencer that I like does it. It's biblical because the older mom at church does it."
Laura: “My dad did that.”
Emily: Yes. “It's biblical because that's what my mom did.” It's like—maybe not. You have to go check.
Laura: Yes, you got to go check. Okay. Emily, what is something you've learned since writing or thinking about right now related to the topic?
Emily: I think in counseling, something I've learned is to put my thoughts on trial, which is something I've never heard before. Essentially, it's when I feel that feeling—like I deem something good or bad or right or wrong—I take a step back and take that thought and then say, "Okay, what biblical evidence do I have for this?" Then really try to argue it from both sides. Even play devil's advocate in my own mind.
It's amazing how sometimes I don't actually have truth or biblical evidence for something. I just feel it very strongly. For me, a lot of this goes back to it being hard for me to feel like I'm doing something different from other moms, or I'm not going to fit in with other moms, or I'm going to break the mold of something. Yet, when I put that on trial, and I go, "Okay, let's actually take this to Scripture now and see what supports this—what doesn't," it becomes clear that it's really just about my own personal sense of right and wrong—whatever feelings my brain is telling me to have. It's not actually about the Word of God. I think that's been so clarifying for me. I don't know. It's just a random thing I've learned.
Laura: Yes, that's good. Put your thoughts on trial. I think for me—I don't know. The conscience always reminds me that I don't corner the market on good motherhood. I think that I have a lot of ideas of what a good mom does, and I can very quickly fall into a trap of either judging other people or self-judging in particular and feeling like, "Hey, I could be doing more here. I really messed up there. I didn't meet the mark there." I think if I were to put my thoughts on trial or if I were to really dig into that—and when I do, I see, okay, those aren't biblically commanded things. God isn't asking that from me, and I'm the one putting the pressure on.
I think the conscience has given me so much freedom in this area to go back, reevaluate the things that I said I want to do or I think I should do, and feel like I have freedom to turn around or I have freedom to change. There are actually very few things in this life that I'm not allowed to change and that I need to stay committed to. God's rules and commands—they're wide. They allow for so much life to be lived within them. I'm the one putting the straight jacket on. I think that that's what I love most about the conscience for sure.
Where do you think moms are most likely to fall in error here or struggle?
Emily: Something we put in one of our appendices on discerning resources—I think that's what it was called—was this little piece that our editor actually reminded us to add in about being cautious about being in a silo with what you consume. I think what happens is, we get into echo chambers, especially online, because we tend to consume and be drawn towards content that reinforces the things that we already believe, right?
That algorithm on Instagram finds the things that we like or whatever platform you're on, and then it literally feeds you more stuff like that. I forget what book I was reading that talked about this—that it's actually trying to feed you more and more extreme and inflammatory versions of that because any type of content that inflames you or makes you feel strong emotions or is extreme at all causes you to stay on the platform longer because you are anxious about it.
The algorithm is literally saying, “Okay, whatever your belief is, whatever thing that you're interested in”—It's going to take that, and then it's going to give you more of the same, and then it's going to give you more extreme versions of the same until you go further and further down that path. I think that it explains why online, things feel so polarized and so separated, yet you can go to a park with another mom that you have differences with, and you can have a very nice, normal conversation, and it doesn't feel so crazy even though you're making different decisions.
I think while, yes, there are risks and potential dangers of exposing yourself to views that are potentially unbiblical or are outside Christian worldview; on the other hand, I do think we have a danger in just hearing too much of the same thing all of the time and never stepping back to go, "Wait a second. Have I examined other possibilities?" Not even in a sense of outside of Christianity, but just even within Christianity. Within whatever the gray areas are, have I heard other arguments?
We just don't even realize we're literally, especially on social media, only consuming one perspective oftentimes, and another perspective is immediately demonized or it's immediately just deemed as, "This is awful, I can't believe people think that." If you were to actually read what that person thought—I don't know. I'm talking in circles.
Laura: No, you're not. I feel like that's all very true. It's something to be really cautionary towards because I think the reason why we look for views that are same as ours is because we can often get them confused with what's biblical. I think that's the big danger—that our conscience becomes the same as the Holy Spirit and what we feel is right is right, and we're holding others to that standard when that's not what the Lord asked for. I totally agree that I think that it's a massive danger online and even in the books that we read, the TV that we consume—just to be very aware that what goes in is what comes out. But also, you need a balanced diet at some level.
Even as you expose yourself to different viewpoints and ideas, I think that's one way that the Lord works to recalibrate your conscience, and to slowly come over to see—like in our Halloween example. One of the moms is seeing all of her friends do it and feeling like, "Why do I feel this way?" The other way too—they're learning from one another why one mom might not participate in Halloween and why a mom might say, "Hey, this is okay for our family" and seeing that it's an area of freedom. I don't know.
Emily: Yes, it's definitely a lot. Sometimes I'll even make myself read a post or read something that I'm like, "I don't think I agree with this, but I want to read it because I don't want to be someone who puts on blinders so strong that maybe I'm missing something." I don't know.
Okay, Laura, if a mom wanted to do one or two things right now to help her grow in and apply these things, here are some ideas.
Laura: Yes. I think the first thing is just starting with prayer. It's slowing down enough in your life to say, "Lord, reveal to me areas where my conscience is not aligned with your Word." God will reveal that, like we talked about, through things that you consume, conversation with friends—through just studying the Bible and getting a more clear understanding of what God's commands really are. You can do that through just a variety of ways. Even just you feeling the Holy Spirit prick your heart and saying, "Oh, wait, should I question this?" That's where, with our conscience, we want to always look at it as a little yellow flag to question and look underneath.
I would start with prayer and then also thinking through just—this is vulnerable, but think through areas of sin that you have tendencies toward in your life and start to ask yourself, "Hey, why do I tend to go that way? Why do I feel more comfortable in these sins and not in those sins?" Consider: "What does repentance look like for me in those areas? How do I turn and do a full 180 away from those things?"
I think that oftentimes too, our conscience—or we know that the conscience can become dulled. That means whenever you ignore it repeatedly over and over, while it might have fired off the first time that you got drunk, maybe three or four times in, suddenly it's a little bit more quiet, and you're not hearing it so much. Yet I think logically, you'll know, "Okay, that's a sin, but I'm just ignoring it. I don't feel that angst anymore." It's just good to reevaluate those things. I think those happen in a lot of areas of life.
Emily: Okay. We've got some good action items, and I know we keep mentioning this, but seriously, in the Becoming a Gospel Mom workbook, we have so many questions that work you through this in a very methodical and detailed way. I remember one of my favorite things we did—and I think it was this section—was we took an idea—something that you hold really strongly and you feel like, "No, this fires me up inside. I have really strong motherhood feelings about this"—and we put it through a sieve and made you prove it. Prove that it's biblical.
Anyways, we have a lot of good stuff in there that just makes you think. We're so excited to keep hearing about what God is teaching you as you go through the book and you follow along in this series.
