What We're Still Talking About 07: Personal Conscience Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Laura Wifler: I'll never forget the day that we were talking on Voxer about—does God care how we potty train? Does it matter if we do the weekly boot camp, or we do it all summer, or we use pullups? Like, if God has a way that he wants us to do it—I remember you and I being like—we want to do it the way he wants.
Emily Jensen: We want to do it the right way, and that really spilled into all different areas of motherhood. We have invested so many hours over our friendship over the years talking about feeding and whether or not we were going to transition to bottle feeding from breastfeeding and when and working through all of those things. Or even talking through our work hours and how many hours you could justify getting a babysitter and then when was that too far or too much?
We've been working through a lot of these questions where there isn't a clear-cut Bible verse that says, ''Though shall only potty train in this way.'' We have to use the big principles that God gave us and apply them, and that's really where we started to learn the method of thinking through creation, fall, redemption, consummation—taking those big principles from Scripture. But it's tough. It can take years of practice to understand all of that.
Laura: Absolutely, and I think now we are applying that personal conscience stuff to things like phones, schools, activities, and media, and we're still working through a lot of these things. The topics have changed, yet the principles with the personal conscience have really remained the same. We often say things like, ''That's a gray area. That's something the Bible doesn’t prescribe. We have freedom in Christ. This is a matter of conscience'' and all of those things. Really, what we're talking about is the personal conscience, so we want to talk through that today and explain what the conscience is and how Emily and I think about it, which we're hopeful will help anyone listening as they work through their own unique circumstances.
Emily: Yes, and probably as we jump into this and even define personal conscience, one thing we want to point you to is a show that will be linked in our show notes that we did a couple years back. We really did a deep dive into this. We got more into the definition—more into the Scripture passages that support this. We just want to really encourage you, if you've never heard that episode and this phrase is new to you—like it was new to us at one period in time—that you go back and listen to that because I think that's going to help fill in a lot of the gaps as we age this content up and say, "Oh, this is how we're thinking about it today." We definitely want all that information to come.
Alright, let's just go back to the definition, Laura. What is a personal conscience?
Laura: Your conscience is your personal sense of right and wrong, and it's really that intangible feeling that you get perhaps when you're thinking about certain types of schooling education, when you're weighing the choices with homeschooling or private or public. It's really a moral compass—how you can think about it. God gives us the conscience, so it's a good thing—it's something that is to help us make decisions—but I think of it as like that little trigger, that little fire that goes off. Like a little yellow flag that pops up where, maybe if you're going to work every day—you're dropping your kids off at school, and you're like, "Is this guilt? Is this okay? What am I feeling here? I feel funny." Maybe it's something where you watch something on TV, or you've seen something on social media, and you feel a little bit funny.
That funny feeling is usually your personal conscience. Your conscience is shaped by your life experiences—things that have happened to you in the past, what you've gone through, your current abilities, your talents, even the people around you in your community that you're in and what they're saying and doing and thinking. Then finally, it's also shaped by your understanding of the Bible and Scripture and theology. So all of these things lead up together to shape your personal conscience, and one important differentiator to know is that your conscience is not the same as the Holy Spirit. I think that's a really key thing to know, but if you want to understand that completely, we would encourage you to go back and listen to the show that we did on this, because we really unpacked it and made it very clear about how to tell what is what.
Just for the purposes of our conversation today, I think it's a good thing to know that in general, your conscience and the Holy Spirit—those are both working in your life for God. God gives you both of those things, right? And so, they're both working in your life to help you do God's will—to obey him. You can always trust the Holy Spirit; you cannot always trust your personal conscience. And so it is important to start to learn what those are, and there's some things today that we're going to talk through too that perhaps may help.
Emily: Yes, because I think what we are still learning is that our conscience can be further and further calibrated to the Word of God over the course of our life, as we understand Scripture more—as we understand the gospel more. And God helps us in situations, over time, take that truth and then make wise decisions in our lives. I think that that's something Laura and I are still learning: that our consciences change. Here we are ten years into motherhood, and there are some things at the very beginning of motherhood that I would've said, ''I'll never do that; that feels so wrong to me,'' or "That seems like a bad way of doing motherhood." As I've gotten into Scripture more, I don't agree with that.
I think there's freedom in a certain area, or I think at that time, I would've violated my conscience if I did this or that thing, but now my conscience is not bound in that way, and I feel a little bit more freedom in doing things. We've experienced those changes, and I anticipate my conscience will continue to change as we go forward.
Laura: You were talking about your personal conscience, and you fully expect it to change as you get older, and I think that's the same thing that I'm thinking about. I know you and I both talk a lot about when we're giving our kids phones and what that's going to look like, and we're together in this, right? You are going to walk with me together—we have decided we will do the same thing so that our kids will always have a buddy. But with that, I think we both know that—hey, these are what we think now, but we're trying to be more cautious about not saying things like, ''I will never get my kid a phone until they're twenty-five,'' or whatever it is that we want to say.
Just recognize that you don't know what you're going to do until you're there, and there are a lot of reasons why people choose to do things that we can't even predict or foresee. I know when I look back on my early years of motherhood, I had a lot of assumptions of how things should go, and then all of those things go out the window. We all know that, and I fully expect that to happen in the teen years as well.
Emily: Along with that, I think as we're moving forward, we're trying to stay aware that a conscience can be seared or dulled over time, and that's really just what happens when we ignore our personal conscience. So whenever you get that feeling of, ''Oh, I think this is wrong here; I think this is something that doesn't align with my values or our family values or the Bible, and I've got that pit in my stomach and I'm not really sure what to do about that''—whenever we just leave that alone, and we keep doing that same thing over and over again—I think of it as like a little voice that you're drowning out. Eventually it just gets quieter and quieter and quieter, and so one of the things we've really tried to encourage over the years is to not let those types of feelings go unaddressed.
Whenever you're struggling with the pit in your stomach or the guilt or that lingering strange feeling that you're just really doing something in motherhood that you don't feel like you should be doing—that you say, "Okay, I want to sit down and pray and journal and get wisdom and read the Word and see: is this sin? Is this the Holy Spirit convicting me?” like Laura was saying. ''If it is, I can repent and walk in freedom."
Maybe it's not sin, but it's something that I grew up thinking a mom shouldn't do, or it's something that not very many of my friends do, and so I feel strange when I do it, or it's something I wasn't planning to do in motherhood, but it's what God has given me in these circumstances, and so I know that I'm unified with my husband in this and that this is okay, but I feel uncomfortable with it.
Then if you dissect that and you understand, ''Oh, that's what's under there,'' you can walk more free over time in those feelings. Or perhaps you look into it, and you say, ''Yes, my personal conscience—I just really feel like this choice is wrong for our family. I know that it's not clear in Scripture, but this is the way I feel God has convicted me, and I want to change this habit or this decision that I'm making to more fully align with the conscience that God has given me and the way that I think he's leading me in motherhood.'' There's a lot of different outcomes from that, but the encouraging thing is that the outcome is always more freedom and being more fully obedient to the Lord and walking in more confidence.
Laura: That was a really good overview. I think what Emily's talking about there is our conscience becoming freed rather than being dulled. I think if you don't go through the process that Em is talking about right there, then what she was saying at the beginning where your conscience becomes seared or dulled—then it stops prompting you. Soon you might be walking down the path of just either something that's foolish or unwise or even sin if you're not listening to that.
I think of an example—it's not a direct motherhood example, but oftentimes media is just a really good example. I know I might watch a movie that feels a little too violent or maybe has some content that isn't explicitly bad—like many people can watch—but my heart is firing, and I'm like, ''This feels like a little too much.'' I've learned over the years I need to listen to that. I want to guard my gates—block what comes into my mouth, my eyes, my ears. I tell my kids that all the time.
As a mom I want to do the same thing. I want to guard my gates. If my conscience is saying, "Hey, this is just a little bit too creepy or a little bit too scary," then I don't need to spend time watching that. I want to listen to that. I do believe that is the Spirit prompting me to pursue holier things, and the Lord is using my conscience to get there. And because it's not wrong, if maybe somebody else who has a higher threshold for that stuff—they could watch it.
You guys, I get scared of a commercial. I just have a very low threshold is what I'm trying to say here. I love what, Emily, you're saying there—the importance of walking through that feeling. That is the biggest thing that we would encourage all moms—to never let a funny feeling or a guilty feeling go unturned over.
Don't leave it covered up, but instead pursue that, and the Lord will offer freedom every time when you look in that. And you can either continue to walk in the way that you're going and feel like ''This is what God's called us to,'' or you say, ''I can turn from this, and I don't have to carry that baggage or that other thing. Instead, I can do this other thing and feel freedom as well.''
Emily: We're also learning that now conscience is something we're having to disciple our kids in as they've gotten older because, when they're really young, they're often not asking, "Mommy, why are we doing this instead of that?" They maybe don't even notice. That's just your family ways. When kids get a little older and they start participating in sports or they start hanging out with friends or you're even getting together with extended family or other people in your church, they start to notice, ''How come that maybe at our house when I'm done eating, I just get up from the table? It's not a big deal, but I went over to so-and-so's house, and I got up from the table and their parents’ eyes widened. They felt really disrespected and I didn't know that, Mom.''
And we can talk about, ''Well, everybody has house rules.'' There are house rules and there's God's rules. House rules are another way of talking about personal conscience. These are things that vary from family to family. They're not explicitly clear in Scripture, but every family has different ways of doing things, different ways of communicating respect to one another, different norms, different decisions that they make.
Some families are going to say, ''Our kids do sleepovers, and we're going to invite you over,'' and there's going to be another family that says, ''We don't do sleepovers. Unfortunately, that would violate our conscience.'' I can't imagine two parents having that conversation—that "That would violate my conscience."
Laura: They wouldn't say it in that way, that's for sure.
Emily: They might say, "Hey, that's just not something—''
Laura: ''—not something our family does.''
Emily: ''That's not just something our family does.'' So, we've noticed that it's helpful to start explaining this to our kids but also noting for them that our house rules are not the same as God's rules and God's commands. That's why believers can be unified around—we can all say, ''It's a sin to a lie. It's a sin to boast. It is a sin to steal.'' We can all say there are these universal things that God clearly says not to do, but then at the same time, the way that those play out in our specific families can be different.
Laura: Another thing with conscience is that, especially as moms, when we are going through the process of uncovering what those feelings are and trying to align our conscience as much as possible with God's heart, this is where we want to be really cautious to not put someone else in a position where they end up violating their conscience. We may feel freedom in an area, but we don't want to input that onto another mom and make her feel like ''I'd better do that,'' but it's actually violating her conscience.
This is where Romans 14 comes into play. This is the personal conscience chapter, if you want to go read a chapter in the Bible about basically the personal conscience. Paul ends up talking with believers, and he is encouraging them and saying, ''Don't have somebody else do something that they feel is wrong, especially if they're trying to honor God in what they're doing.'' For example, I know every mom has a different age when they feel like ''I can start leaving my kids home alone.'' I'm like, ''When is that?'' I'm still asking that question of ''When will I get to stop paying for a babysitter?'' I've seen different moms in my group do it in different ways and at different ages or for different amounts of time.
I think what can sometimes happen in these conversations is—this might play out in a way where a bunch of moms are chatting or you're talking with one mom friend and you're talking about this topic. Everyone's gleaning wisdom from each other, but there might be one mom in the group that's like, ''This is the way to do it, and you're fine. Just leave them at home alone. They're going to be just totally fine'' and putting that pressure on.
It might not even be necessarily intentional, but that's where I think we can love other moms well, when we say, "This is what I did, but you've got to trust what you and your husband decide, and you've got to feel at peace with it." We can talk in a different way that helps a mom not feel like, "Oh, gosh, to be a good mom, I need to do this right away," or "I need to do it later. I can't leave them home alone until they're eighteen," or whatever.
Whatever we feel, we can really be kind to our friends when we may have freedom in one area—when we speak in a way that is loving and kind and compassionate towards people being in different spots. Another good example, especially with kids, is media. That's a huge one that we're seeing moms have majorly different decisions on. I can't believe the range that I feel like is out there for what people do let them watch and what people don't let them watch.
I think that's something where—we can honor another parent, where, if a kiddo's at our house, we don't show them stuff that parent doesn't want them to see, and we don't have to pressure other people into it. Or maybe an iPad or it’s like—they don't do iPads at their house. That's one of their house rules. The Bible doesn't talk about iPads directly, but we can honor that and not pressure another family into feeling like "Oh, no. That's not what I really want to do." Even if you feel like iPads are harmless—or maybe you don't feel like that. Hopefully no. [Laughter]
Emily: Tune into our tech time show.
Laura: Listen to my pressure on your personal conscience right now. [Laughter]
Emily: I know. I think what you're really talking about is this idea that we never use our freedom to harm someone else. We lay down our rights. We are free in Christ. The gospel means that we are fully righteous before the throne of God. It's never 'rule keeping' that makes us righteous. It's always the blood of Christ that makes us righteous. We don't use that to do anything that's going to cause another believer to stumble or cause another believer to do something that they feel deeply is wrong.
There's a verse that I don't have the address for very clearly right now, but it's ''Whoever knows the right thing to do and does not do it, for him it is sin.''
Laura: Somebody look that up!
Emily: Emily's paraphrase from memory. I just go back to that over and over again whenever I may have a friend who feels very sensitive to something that I don't feel sensitive to at all, and I just think: for her to do something that she feels would be dishonoring to God—for her it is sin if she does that.
I want to be encouraging towards her to do what she believes is going to be most obedient, even if we have ongoing conversations about that. I may ask questions about where that's coming from. I think one challenge Laura and I are having now— and we want to challenge moms that are maybe more in the middle stages—is that, as we're interacting with moms who are on the very early side of motherhood—they maybe have had their very first baby—to not ''poo poo'' or eye roll some of those convictions that are held very, very strongly in that season.
We remember what that was like. We remember that, early on in motherhood, we had lots of really specific ideas about the way feeding should go and the way sleeping should go. We couldn't imagine another mom would ever do it differently and ''She doesn't love her baby as much as I do if she's doing that.'' We know those are really difficult years, and it can take a lot of years to work through some of those things and understand the different freedoms that are available.
So, again, just really thinking about being encouraging and not saying, "Oh, they're going to be fine; you just do whatever" but to honor where God has her and encourage her to be obedient in the way that God is leading her in that season.
Laura: I often think back to my first-time motherhood years, and I just remember that a lot of people gave me a lot of really good advice and a lot of true advice, but I just wasn't in a spot to receive it. I think there is something about motherhood—and I know that I even have this still today and I can't see it—where you have to go through some years of motherhood to get to a point where I think your conscience is a little less bound. I know you want to do it right; you want to love your baby well, and you want to honor God. If that's your heart posture—I assume all of our listeners’ is that they just—we all want to be good moms to our children. We want to love them well. It automatically starts triggering our conscience.
Like you're saying, I just want to reinforce that—of really being compassionate, especially to those first-time moms, because I think there's a process to go through. I think, even for myself, I know I have blind spots still.
Emily: Oh, yes.
Laura: I want the grandmas and the moms of college kids to be compassionate to me, to still love me well as I walk through and have to learn through trial by fire sometimes. Where it's like—they can tell me all the truthful things they want, but sometimes you just got to try it, and then you're like, "Okay, oh yes. We're not going to do it that way."
Emily: Your grandma's listening. "Oh, you're so cute, Laura and Emily." [Laughter]
Laura: Totally. That's exactly right.
In closing here, one encouragement we want to leave you with is to remember that your conscience can, and it should, become more and more in line with God's will and his Word. This is where, as mothers, our peace and our freedoms lie. As we are walking this Christian life, if we think about, "Hey, what is our goal?"—well, a lot of it is to really bring your beliefs—which is your conscience—more and more into alignment with God's. Christ has redeemed our conscience. He has given us freedom in that. He has made us a new creation so that our conscience can continue to be calibrated or informed and conformed to the Spirit and the Word of God.
I think that that's just a huge encouragement—that you're never stuck where you are. Like we've been saying—you don't have to live with a constant feeling of mom guilt. I often think of Paul, again, writing that famous Romans 14 chapter. Probably when he was converted—he came from this Pharisaic, very violent life that he led—and how he just converted and changed. I'm sure there were a lot of messy rules in his heart that he had to sort through. It wasn't this immediate like, "Oh, I know exactly what God's Word says; I know exactly what was the old Jewish law that I don't have to follow." He was probably really mixed up for a time. Yet we see in Romans 14, he's talking about, "I am so free. I am free to be whatever is needed for whomever I'm with.''
He talks about how ''I'm not going to be all these things because I like it so much, but the reason I want to be like this is that by all possible means I might save some.'' Paul says, "I do this all for the sake of the gospel that I may share in its blessings." For him, the goal of conforming his conscience to Christ and of continuing to enjoy his freedoms and sometimes say, "Okay, I'm not going to enjoy my freedoms" was not because he wanted to hang out with certain people, but it was because he wanted to bring more people to Christ.
Emily: One of the blessings that we get to enjoy in the gospel is unity with moms who do things differently. The blessing of maybe being a stay-at-home mom and having a mom friend who works outside the home and seeing how she is faithfully loving her children, honoring her husband, living wisely in the life that God gave her and learning from her in that. And she's learning from you. It's having mom friends who school differently or make different media or tech choices gently challenge you or make you think a little bit harder about why you chose what you chose.
Realizing that, in the end, we are all going to be responsible for the choices that we made. I'm not responsible for her kids. She's not responsible for my kids. I answer to the Lord, she answers to the Lord—and just walking in a peace and a freedom there. I think, as motherhood has gone on and we've thought more about personal conscience, we've also come to appreciate the many different consciences of moms that God has put in our lives—to see how, as a Christian body, as a church at large, we strengthen and sharpen one another in that.
Laura: I have one friend who is an all-natural doctor. She's a chiropractor. I have another friend who's a pediatrician, classically trained through med school. It is such a joy because I can text them both the same issue—here's my kids' rash or whatever it is. They'll both give me a little bit different advice. Sometimes it's even the same, but they'll give me different advice from their different perspectives. They know each other; they are friends. It's like we can all learn from each other.
I love that beauty of—each one has different consciences that land in different spots for how to deal with medical stuff, yet we can all see the beauty and benefit of how God is working in different ways in different people. I benefit from that, like you were saying, Em—it's a true blessing. I think that this is an incredible way to live—when we lay down our swords, our judgment, our assumptions of other moms, and instead say, ''I want to appreciate where God has led you and the skills and talents you have.''
We can be charitable to one another. It's truly what I think the church was designed for, what community is designed for, and how God's people should really be functioning. Keep living according to your conscience. Just remember that it's a road—it's a path—and it's going to take time as you calibrate that conscience according to God's Word, but he will always be there to help you.
