Is Your Conscience a Reliable Guide?

"The Objective of this instruction is love out of a clean heart and out of a good conscience." -1 TIMOTHY 1:5.

JEHOVAH GOD created humans with free will, that is, the liberty to choose between one option and another.   God provided a valuable guide for the first man and woman and their future offspring-the conscience, an inner sense of right and wrong. Used properly, the conscience can help us do good and to avoid wrongdoing. Our conscience thus is an evidence of God's love for us and of his desire that humans be united in doing good.

Today, humans still have the faculty of conscience.  (Read Romans 2:14, 15.) Though many have strayed far from the Bible's standards of conduct, we find that some individuals often do what is good and abhor what is bad .  The conscience holds many individuals back from committing deeds of extreme wickedness. Imagine how much worse world conditions would be if no one had a conscience!  We  would likely hear of even more evil than we do now.  How grateful we can be that God has provided humans with a conscience! 

Unlike people in general, servant of Jehovah want to train their conscience. They want the proddings of their conscience to agree with the standards of right and wrong, good and bad, as reflected in God's Word.  A properly trained conscience exercises a powerful influence for good in the Christian congregation.  However, training and using out Christian conscience is not just a mental activity.  The Bible links a good conscience to faith and love.   Paul wrote:  "The objective of this instruction is love out of a clean heart and out of a good conscience and out of faith without hypocrisy." (1 Timothy 1:5)   As we train our conscience and respond to it, our love for Jehovah will deepen and our faith will be strengthened. In fact, the way we use our conscience reveals the depth of our spirituality, the quality of our heart, and the intensity of our desire to please Jehovah.  Indeed, this inner voice reflects what sort of person we truly are. 

But how can our conscience?  Key ways are by regularly and prayerfully studying the Bible, meditating  on what we read, that then putting into practice what we have learned.  Obviously, this involves more than accumulating facts and learning rules. Our study of the Bible should gradually give us an even more  precise picture of Jehovah, his personality, his qualities, and what he likes or dislikes. Our conscience becomes attuned to he ways of Jehovah God.   This should stir our heart, moving us to want o become more and more like him.  

However, we might ask:  How can a well-trained conscience help us when we need to make decisions?  How can we respect the conscientious decision of a fellow believer/  And how can our conscience move us  to greater works of zeal? With those questions in mind, let us consider three areas in which our conscience can be a positive factor: (1) health care, (2) recreation, and (3) the ministry. 

Next time:  Is Your Conscience a Reliable Guide? 

From the Watchtower magazine