Conscience: A Reflective Satellite of Divine and Earthly Laws

The talk I'm going to give tonight sure would work once for Decision magazine, and if I get a tape, I'll send it to my wife and she'll transcribe it, and I'll edit it. Who's recording this? We have a recording room up by the other coin. The coin's up there. Also, thanks to my manager. Hey! How's it going?

Now, navigators are men of the Bible, and their approach to theology is a biblical one. I wonder if you fellows could stand a little bit of systematic theology tonight. You might say, what do you mean by systematic theology? Well, to systematize our thoughts. Now, for instance, when you talk about theology, that includes the doctrine of God. It also includes the doctrine of man. It includes the doctrine of angels, the doctrine of salvation. In theology, that's called theology, anthropology, angelology, and soteriology, and so forth. I think this is going to be too tough for you. Well, the navigator wives took it, so I think you can take it.

In 1957, Max Bushby arranged meetings for me in Adelaide, in South Australia. The second Sputnik came over with a dog in it, and all the Australians were talking about the pudge in the Sputnik. One old lady sitting in the streetcar said, you wouldn't catch me riding in a Sputnik. She said, I'm just terrified of dogs. Do you know the meaning of the word Sputnik? It's Russian for satellite, that's all. It means a fellow traveler, not in the political sense, but in the sense that a satellite is a fellow traveler of the earth. Of course, the moon is a satellite. It accompanies the earth in its rounds.

Now since Russians put up their Sputniks in '57, we've done our best to catch up. For instance, they shot down U-2, so one of the first things the military did was to plan a spy in the sky, and now we have satellites, hush-hush satellites, that through infrared and other means of photography can tell us what the Russians are up to. We also have TIROS. At present, we're at TIROS 8. It takes pictures of the cloud formations and relays back warnings of hurricanes and the like. But we mustn't forget the original satellite, the moon. Have you ever seen a new moon when it's just a little sliver of a crescent, but the rest of the disk seems to be lighted up very faintly by earth light? But at a full moon, you can tell it's not earth light, that's the light of the sun. The satellite that we call the moon reflects the light of the sun.

Now has it ever occurred to you that every human personality, including yours, has a satellite? Something that's yours, yet not quite yours. Something that does reflect back something else to you. If you ever study Greek, the name in the Greek New Testament given to this personality satellite is sunaidesis. I'll spell it in English spelling rather than Greek for you, s-u-n-e-i-d-e-s-i-s. You say, please tell us, what is it? Sunaidesis is the Greek word for conscience. Conscience, of course, in English is derived from the Latin con-scientia, con-accompanying scientia, knowledge. It's a source of knowledge that accompanies us. It is a satellite.

Now when I moved to Los Angeles in the early days, a real estate broker foreclosed a mortgage on a widow in Los Angeles and cheated her out of her house. He was within the law and there was nothing anyone could do about it. There was a measure of indignation that was reported in the papers. A neighbor of mine became very indignant. He said that his conscience wouldn't let him stand aside and see a widow cheated out of her home like that. He phoned the police and said, what do you think of it? And the police said, well, we're just as mad about it as you are, but what do you intend to do? He gave them some idea. He sent down six of his colleagues who dragged the real estate broker out of his office and beat him up on the sidewalk. Oh by the way, I forgot to tell you, the name of my neighbor was Mickey Cohen. You've heard of him, no doubt. He doesn't live there anymore. He now lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Now Mickey Cohen had a conscience, but all sorts of people tried to lead Mickey Cohen to the Lord. Jim Voss, Billy Graham, Bill Bright. I gave him a New Testament once at a meeting. One of my friends finally led him to the Lord, quote and unquote, and he professed to accept Christ and my friend flew him to Manhattan to hear Billy Graham preach, put him up at the Waldorf Astoria, made the mistake of lending him his credit card, and Mickey ran up a bill of $5,000 in five days. It didn't take, it wasn't a genuine conversion. Now Mickey had a conscience all right, but when he was asked about robbing a Christian man of $5,000, he said, well, he was a sucker and I was obliging him by relieving him of the money.

So you see, what is conscience? How can one man's conscience let him do this and another man's conscience won't let him do that? Conscience is not fixed. The average person says conscience tells me right from wrong. It does not tell you right from wrong. It tells you what you believe to be right and what you believe to be wrong. What you've been taught to be right and what you've been taught to be wrong.

I have a wristwatch I bought in Brazil. It has a seconds hand, a minute hand, an hour hand, and an alarm. I've been setting it each morning for 6:30. Anyone living at the Glen knows why. We eat at 7:20, so I set it for 6:30. It goes off at 6:30. Now on Saturday morning at home, I like to sleep in, so I generally set my alarm for nine so I don't sleep in too long. But if I have to catch an early morning plane, I can set it for five, it will ring at five. I can advance it, I can retard it, and you can do the same with your conscience. If you tell a lie, your conscience will ring like a fire alarm. Tell the same lie again, it doesn't ring quite so loudly. Tell the same lie again, it scarcely rings at all. Keep on telling the lie, you get away with it. Keep on telling the lie, and you finally believe the lie yourself. Where's your conscience? Well, you've hurt your conscience. So conscience is not fixed. But conscience may be educated.

For instance, a friend of mine went overseas with me to New Zealand. We were starting in a new country, we were very short of funds at first, so he said to me, Edwin, what do you do about tithing? I said, a tithe, whatever the Lord sends me. But he said, we're getting so little. He said, it's an idea. He said, if you give me your tithe, I'll give you my tithe. I said, that's not tithing. You see, you have to educate your conscience up to a point.

Now for some questions, where do you keep your conscience? Is it part of your intellect, or your will, or your emotion? What would you say? It must be intellect. Would you say that intellect governs conscience? Do you mean that, for instance, a man with a high IQ has a better conscience than a man with a low IQ? Would you mean that a student with a straight A has a better conscience than a fellow who can only make Cs? No. So it's not really part of intellect. It's not part of your thinking process. I mean, if you're really smart, that doesn't mean you've got a better conscience. Am I right?

Now take the question, is it part of your will? Does a man with a strong will have a better conscience than a man with a weak will? I try to keep up with the news, and I noticed the other day in Peanuts, the little girl held up her fingers and said, these five fingers are very weak by themselves, but combined they make a little fist that's going to make you do what I want you to do, Charlie Brown. Now she had a strong will, but I don't think a good conscience. Charlie Brown had a weak will, but not a bad conscience. Hitler had a strong will, but a bad conscience.

What about emotion? I still remember when I was a chaplain, a girl would come to me and say, but chaplain, I can't help it. I love the guy. I said, you have no business loving the guy. The guy, as you call him, is another girl's husband. Keep away from him. But she seemed to think that her feelings justified her actions. She was stealing another woman's husband. So you see, emotion doesn't control conscience either.

Now, on the other hand, your intellect will affect your conscience. For instance, a Hindu will not eat meat. Why? If you, for instance, you know the way at Christmas time Americans are encouraged to ask overseas students for Christmas dinner, or to Thanksgiving dinner. And you give a Hindu meat, and out of politeness he eats it, he feels bad. He hopes that folks back home will never get to hear about it. Why? Because he has been taught a doctrine called the transmigration of souls. If he were to eat deer meat, he might be eating his great-grandfather. That's cannibalism to a Hindu. Therefore, his conscience is affected by what he thinks. So I could draw a line here from intellect to conscience.

Now what about the will? Now a man says, well, I'm going to make a million dollars no matter how I make it. He can make up his will so strongly that it affects his conscience.

And in the third place, a man who follows his feelings, like the girl I mentioned, can influence her conscience through her emotions. But the point I'm making is this: conscience is a satellite, and it's your satellite. For instance, not one of you will ever find that your conscience will tell you about what Jim Downing should do, except the conscience of Jim Downing. Not one of you will find your conscience telling you about what Lawrence Haney will do. Now you can give your judgment, you can give advice, you can tell how you feel, you can say how you'll back him up and so forth—that's intellect, will, and emotion again. But as far as conscience is concerned, it's your conscience, nobody else's conscience.

At the session with the married girls, they said, well, what about husbands and wives? Well, conscience will work for both in joint projects. Sometimes a wife may say, dear, I feel we ought to do such and such. And that's where conscience will operate, where you're engaged in a joint project. Like now, for instance, supposing the Navigators, if you imagine a case like this, decided somehow or other to cheat the Internal Revenue Service, you know what I mean, jointly, your conscience would bother you because you're part of it. You see the point. But not for someone outside of you. Conscience is your satellite.

Now I'm going to ask another question. Is your conscience your friend or your enemy? I don't know much about law. I've been in a courtroom only once. The other fellow was drunk, so that didn't bother me much. In fact, I think I could say that my knowledge of the law is confined to occasionally watching a program on Saturday night called The Defenders. You have seen a courtroom, maybe you've been in one. Now, where would you place conscience? First of all, is conscience the defendant? Is it you? Well, if conscience was the defendant, then you'd let yourself off, wouldn't you? Well, you'd get out of there so fast. So conscience is not you. Because sometimes conscience sides against you, doesn't it? For instance, sometimes your wife or your roommate says you were way off base there, and your conscience sides with the person that's criticizing you. So it's not you.

Now, you also see the sheriff. Now, you know the function of the sheriff or the police. For instance, supposing you were short of money and you went up to town on Saturday night and waited till midnight, and the police noticed you walking up and down outside a jeweler's store with a brick under your arm. I imagine they'd slow the patrol car and stop. Finally, a copper would come out and tip you on the shoulder and say, what do you think you're up to? You say, well, it's quite all right, officer. I'm exercising, and I like to keep, you know, balanced one side or the other, so I carry a brick under my arm. Well, really? Now, let me give you a warning. One move towards that jeweler's window and you're under arrest. And if you make one untoward move, they apprehend you. Does your conscience do that? Will your conscience actually prevent you doing wrong? It will not. It will not. You have noticed in a courtroom when the person's finally sentenced, the sheriff takes him away to serve his sentence. Will your conscience punish you? It will not. So, you see, it's not the defendant and it's not the sheriff.

Well, now, is the conscience the judge? No, no, conscience appeals to a judge. Conscience brings you before a judge. Conscience isn't the law, but conscience appeals to the law. Then you're getting down now to conscience being a kind of attorney, a prosecuting attorney, sometimes a defending attorney. Do you want scripture for that? In Romans, chapter 2, verse 15, it says, their consciences will either accuse or defend them. That's a modern translation, but that's the gist of it, all right? Their consciences will either accuse or defend them. Sometimes conscience accuses and sometimes it defends.

I was in Tempe, Arizona, not so long ago, and a young lady in a restaurant gave me too much change, half a dollar too much. Out on the sidewalk, I discovered the mistake, so I went back in again. I said, you gave me the wrong change. She bridled right away. I said, I mean, you gave me too much. Here's a half dollar back. Oh, she was quite taken aback. She said, well, thank you, sir. Thank you very much, sir. That's very nice of you, and so forth. I went out with a little glow of commendation from my conscience. My conscience said, good for you.

Second Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 12, the apostle Paul says, our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience. Note, our rejoicing is this. That doesn't sound like an enemy. That sounds like a friend. Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience that we have behaved all right in this world. That's in modern words. Let me give you the King James, if you wanted. For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience that in simplicity and godly sincerity, we have had our conversation in the world. Conscience can be your friend. Conscience can be your enemy.

In John, chapter 8, verse 9, the story of the woman taken in sin. These men dragged her before Christ to accuse her, to have her stoned to death. He stooped on the ground and wrote in the dust. Then he said, whoever is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone. It was almost as if the Lord had summoned to his help a hundred hornets and said to them, sting these men. And each of the men was so busy beating off the stings of his own conscience, he hadn't any time to accuse the woman. They just moved away. Being convicted by their own conscience, they went out one by one. So you see, sometimes conscience is friend and sometimes conscience is enemy.

Now let me ask this question. In what realm does conscience operate? For instance, supposing someone tries to sell you some lots in the San Fernando Valley in California and says it's a good buy. Will your conscience tell you whether he's right or wrong? No. Supposing you're working a jigsaw puzzle. Are you not sure which piece to fit? Will your conscience help you? No. Will your conscience help you when you're playing chess? No. Will your conscience help you when you're working on a mathematical problem? No. Will your conscience help you when you're looking for a street address? No. Will your conscience help you to learn Greek? No. Well, what does your conscience do? What does it operate in? It's in the realm of the moral law that it works.

Now, conscience is a kind of moral intuition. An intuition of the moral law and all human beings have it. I've had people contradict me. They say, well, what about little children? They have no sense of property values. Don't they? Well, you might say, well, I know little kids that steal things and they don't seem to mind. There's a little girl living not far from where we live who goes across the street and steals things, who goes across the street and steals the other child's toys, but she doesn't like the other child to steal her toys. So there is a sort of moral law there, isn't there? We're all aware of it.

I find on campus today that students will not argue about thou shalt not steal or thou shalt not bear false witness or thou shalt not commit murder, but they want to argue about thou shalt not commit adultery. They say morality is changing in this respect. Now, I think the test of morality, as Immanuel Kant, the philosopher, said, is its universal application. Take, for instance, the question of thou shalt not commit murder. In Southern California, we keep our television set in the fireplace. You might say, why? Well, one reason is we never light a fire except maybe a Christmas party, so it saves space. Second, so many people get shot on our television that figuratively we have to have a place to cremate the bodies, so we keep the television set there.

An Englishman said to me, I say, he said, what's it like in Tombstone, Arizona? I said, why do you ask? He said, do people get shot there? I said, oh, that was a long time ago. Tombstone, Arizona is a nice little town. But there are parts of the world where life still is cheap. I preached in a city of Brazil where there was a murder a day, not a large city. In the Congo, life is cheap. But there's still a universal application. People may murder, but they hate being murdered. There's the application, people will steal, but they hate being robbed. People may tell lies, but they hate being deceived.

When it comes to the question of adultery, so many people today say, well, with modern knowledge of contraception and so forth, what's wrong with extramarital and premarital sex? It's wrong. Apply it universally and you see where it's wrong. Incidentally, in the United States, the rate of unwanted pregnancy, illegitimacy, abortion, and venereal disease is going up, in spite of all knowledge of contraception. And it's going up thanks to the activities of people who disregard the moral law in this respect. For instance, there's nothing wrong with sex in marriage. When a husband and wife behave towards each other, they should. It doesn't cause any increase in unwanted pregnancy or, shall we say, in venereal disease or the like, does it? No. It has its place.

One fellow said to me at the last university meeting I had, "But, sir, you talk about morality, but what is morality but what we arrange for ourselves? You go to some tribes in Africa," he said, "part of their hospitality is he lets you have his wife." I said, "The same thing is true of the Eskimos, but it doesn't make it right. Put the universal test: supposing you lived on Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona, and practiced this, your home life would be shot to pieces."

I was telling the girls at this last university at which I was speaking, a girl raised her hand and said, "Sir, with all the girls there are, wouldn't it be better to have another system rather than monogamy?" I said, "What do you mean another system rather than monogamy? One man for one woman." I said, "Don't you know there are 101 babies born for every 99 girls?" She said, "Well, where are they all?" I said, "Well, in the first year there's a higher death rate among boys, but in the second year they're equal. But all over the world, that's the rate of birth."

Now, in Germany, after the war, there was a shortage of men because of the slaughter of Germans. Supposing the German government had announced that now we'll have polygamy. The trouble is that in the next generation you'd have to get back to monogamy again because births are readjusted again. Some of them wanted to argue about this. One fellow said, "Well, what about Mohammedan countries where a man can have four wives?" Now, just look at it reasonably. Supposing 100 students took 100 girls to the Galapagos to start a colony. They're going to pair off, of course, start families. Supposing the campus bully goes along and he's going to have a harem. He decides to have three blondes, three brunettes, and three redheads and one with freckles. That leaves 90 girls for 99 fellows. That won't make him very popular. Supposing the next 10 fellows decide to have the Mohammedan quarter. That leaves 50 girls for 89 fellows. What do you think will happen? There'll be unpleasantness.

You know what happened at Pitcairn Island? The mutineers of the Bounty knew that if the British government caught them, they'd be hanged, so they decided to lose themselves in the Pacific. But they decided they ought to take some Tahitian women with them, so they picked some. Then they thought it might be good to have some Tahitian men who would know something about life in the South Pacific, so they took some Tahitian men, too. But there weren't enough women to go around. And sure enough, trouble broke out between the Tahitians and the Englishmen. And then trouble broke out among the Englishmen, too, until they all were murdered except one. They actually murdered each other, you know, like the Kilkenny Cats in Ireland, where they all killed each other until there was nothing but the tails left. In Pitcairn, there was one man left called James Adams. When he found himself the only surviving man with a flock of Tahitian women and Anglo-Polynesian children, he got out the Bible and began to read the Ten Commandments to them, and built a society on the morality of the Bible.

So you see, common sense says that there is a moral law. Now, conscience works on the moral law. It's a moral intuition. It's as if God has given us each one a satellite that tells us of the moral law. That's part of the argument for God that we call anthropology, the nature of man. Here's another strange thing. Conscience also works in the accepted law. Now, if ever I want a verse of Scripture, I can always appeal to navigators. So let me ask you, can you think of any verse of Scripture that tells you God's law regarding where you should stand in a post office? Anyone? You say, "I don't know of any verse like that." Yet, my conscience will work in a post office.

For instance, I was standing in line during the Christmas rush. There was a lady behind me. She suddenly dropped a half dollar. Before I could pick it up, she had twisted up. But somehow, rather than shuffle, by the time she'd recovered her money, she was in front of me where it was before she'd been behind me. A little later, she dropped her letters. And by the time she picked them up, she was in front of the man who was in front of me. Now, my conscience wouldn't let me do that. Yet, you couldn't say it has anything to do with the moral law, could you? It's the accepted law, and conscience does work on the accepted law.

For instance, can you think of any verse of Scripture that forbids you jaywalking? No. Now, suppose you want to jaywalk on this estate. Will your conscience bother you? Not a bit. But if you're downtown in New York or Los Angeles or Denver, and you step off the sidewalk in the middle of the street in the metropolitan downtown area, your conscience will bother you. If you step off the sidewalk, some guy jams on his brakes and shouts at you, the fellow behind may not have noticed his brake lights go on, and there's a crash, and it's your fault. And in civilization, we have accepted laws. It's not a moral question, but it's accepted.

For instance, those of you who have served in military service, if you do something against Navy custom, your conscience will tell you. If you do something against Army custom, Air Force custom, if you do something against the tradition of the school, your conscience will tell you. If you do something that's against the accepted law of a Christian organization, your conscience will bother you. So you see, conscience is set to two things. Like the moon, it reflects the light of the sun, God's law. But just as you see the earth light reflected from the moon when it's at a crescent, so also conscience reflects the light of earthly law. Any question on this?

All right then. When I say that conscience is not fixed, I mean that's literally the case. And you can soon get a good Bible support for it. The Bible speaks of a pure conscience, a good conscience, an inoffensive conscience, an obedient conscience, a mistaken conscience, an overscrupulous conscience, a weak conscience, a seared conscience, a contaminated conscience, a defiled conscience. There are ten points. The first two, pure and good. The second two suggest you must maintain them, inoffensive and obedient. The third pair show you where you can go wrong. You can have a mistaken conscience, you can have an overscrupulous conscience. The next pair show that you can suffer the results of this. You can have a weak conscience and you can have a seared conscience, one without feeling. And the last pair tell you how bad you can be off. You can have a contaminated conscience and a defiled conscience.

First of all, 1 Timothy 3:9: Holding the mystery of faith in a pure conscience. Now, is it possible for you or me, with an imperfect character, to have a pure conscience? The answer is yes. For instance, we might have a revolution in the United States, yet that little tiros will keep on sending back pictures of the weather perfectly. I have a wristwatch. If I keep it wound up and clean, it keeps good time, no matter how I feel. I might have the flu, but it's still keeping good time. Do you get my point? Your conscience may be pure. It says in, let me give you the verse, 1 Peter 3:16 and 21: Having a good conscience, that they may be ashamed who accuse you falsely. That speaks of the answer of a good conscience towards God. You can have a good conscience. Now, that answer of a good conscience towards God refers to the confession of Christ in baptism. Does that mean that the person being baptized is wholly good? No, no, but he can have a good conscience. I hope you get this point.

Now, take the next two. Inoffensive and obedient. The Apostle Paul, this Acts chapter 24, verse 16, says, "Brethren, I have always striven to maintain a conscience void of offense towards God and men." Some people maintain a good conscience towards God, but not towards men. You know the sort of Christians that their pastor thinks of the support of the church, but the neighbors don't like them? There are people like that.

I have a friend in Pasadena who's a patent attorney. I didn't ever meet a patent attorney before, so I said, "How does it work?" Well, he said, "A man invents something, he wants to patent it. So, I put through the legal procedure. It takes me some of my time and skill. I've studied for a number of years to qualify for this. But," he said, "the trouble is that people who invent things don't always make money on them right away. And they wish I would wait until they made money on it to pay me, but I can't afford that." So he said, "I make an agreement with them that you will pay me within 31 days. If they don't pay me, I remind them." Then he said a strange thing. Really, it wasn't strange. He's a new Christian, comparatively speaking. He said, "A strange thing is this. I find among my worst clients are professing Christians. You see, if they owe money to 12 people, and one of them is a Christian, I think that one is the one they ought to pay last." I said, "They maintain a good conscience towards God, but not a good conscience towards men." So you see, we must maintain an inoffensive conscience. We must obtain, maintain an obedient conscience. For instance, in Romans chapter 13, verse 5: Not for the sake of escaping punishment, but also for conscience sake.

Let me give you a simple illustration. I was riding with a friend up the Hollywood Freeway. I noticed he was quite distracted between watching the traffic ahead and watching his rearview mirror. So I said to him, what's biting you? He said, I'm watching for cops. Well, I said, now let me tell you a little secret as far as California is concerned. If you maintain a speed of 65 miles an hour, you'll average a mile a minute wherever you're going on the freeway. And if you maintain that speed, it doesn't matter if there were 500 motorcycle policemen in a solid phalanx behind you with a mayor riding at their head. You could still go ahead and be absolutely indifferent. You see, some people do these things not for the sake of conscience, but for the sake of avoiding a ticket. You get the point?

Now, apply that to something more serious. We move on to mistaken conscience, to an over-scrupulous conscience. Can you make a mistake about conscience? Let me quote a verse, Acts chapter 23, verse 1. The apostle Paul said, brethren, I have lived in all good conscience until this day. That means while he watched Stephen being stoned to death, he claimed to have had a good conscience, and he had. He thought he was doing right. He was mistaken, though. And you can be mistaken. For instance, there are some professedly evangelical people in the United States that bitterly attack evangelist Billy Graham. They have convinced themselves that they're doing right, but they're quite mistaken. I can't see how the Holy Spirit would lead Billy to work in a certain way and other people to oppose that way. I'm not trying to claim infallibility for Billy Graham, of course. You see the point? You can have a mistaken conscience.

For instance, don't you think that the Hindu is mistaken about eating meat? If the good Lord gave us incisor teeth, it must be for the purpose of eating meat. And if you take the universality of it, if, for instance, the Eskimos adopted Hinduism, they'd all die. You see the point? Their conscience is mistaken.

What about over-scrupulous? Can you have an over-scrupulous conscience? Yes, our Mormon friends won't drink coffee. Now, drinking too much coffee is bad for you. But if you were to persuade a Mormon to drink coffee, his conscience afflicts him about it. I can give another illustration. I was speaking in Ireland to a group of Christian workers. Ireland, North and South, Protestant and Catholic, is rather puritanical. Very strict people. I told about the revival in Brazil. I told about the California movement, about the Graham Crusades, about Navigators and the Hollywood Christian group, and other signs of revival in our time. And I said, any questions? I thought, now the first question will reveal the deep hunger of these people's hearts. I thought maybe they'd say, well, how are we going to get revival in Ireland? First question was, is it true that Mrs. Billy Graham uses lipstick? I said, yes, it's true. Are you sure? I said, yes, I've seen her with lipstick on. Then they said, is she a Christian? I said, a very good Christian. But you just said she uses lipstick. I said, yes. Then how can you say she's a Christian? Do you want me to tell you how she became a Christian? He said, what's your attitude to cosmetics? I said, I never use them. He kept badgering me until another fellow hit him with his elbow and he said, would you leave Billy Graham alone? He said, don't you remember reading in history that John Wesley had a bad wife too? May I give that as an example of an over-scrupulous conscience?

Yet I must confess that I was brought up in Ireland and was rather shocked when I went to one of Miss Mears' prayer meetings in Hollywood and saw Coleen Townsend there, highly decorated. It took me some time getting used to it. But that's over-scrupulous conscience.

The next pair are a weakened conscience and a seared conscience. It says in 1 Corinthians 8:12, you sin against your brothers and wound their weak consciences. If I were driving back to California late at night and I'm still traversing Arizona, I want to call my wife before midnight to let her know when I'm due in the next day. But I can't see anywhere to telephone. I'm watching the horizon for the lights of a service station. I figure if I don't get there by midnight they'll be closed and I won't be able to make a phone call. Suddenly I see lights, five miles away I estimate it, five minutes I'll be there before midnight. But it's not a service station, it's a liquor store. My conscience would not bother me going to a liquor store in the middle of Arizona and dropping my dime into the phone box and making a collect call to my home. But you wouldn't catch me doing that in West Los Angeles. I might wound someone's weak conscience.

For example, my conscience doesn't bother me taking my wife or son to see Walt Disney's film called The Incredible Journey. Very wholesome film. But at the same time I wouldn't like young people to think that I went to any trash that Hollywood put out. You can wound a weak conscience by a bad example. Or a careless example.

But what about a seared conscience? Here's the verse, 1 Timothy 4:2. False teachers, men with seared consciences. Now, when you sear a finger with a hot iron, you lose feeling in it. And people do lose feeling through seared consciences. They do something, it doesn't bother them after a while, they get away with it.

But the last two perhaps are the most serious. A contaminated conscience? How can conscience be contaminated? What does that mean? Well, let me give you the verse in 1 Corinthians 8:7. Because of past habits, their consciences are contaminated. When we have an earthquake, we're always warned, be careful about drinking water. You see, the water supply may be shaken up and may be contaminated from the searage. That's how a plague breaks out after an earthquake.

I could illustrate. I once took a man with me overseas in teamwork. My wife was dead set against my doing it. She didn't trust the man, but she couldn't give me any valid reason, really. She had all the intuition in the world against it, I had all the logic for it. I argued with her. She didn't convince me, I didn't convince her. But she didn't want me to take this man with me. When she finally said, if you take him with you, that shows that you don't love me. I thought that was the height of nonsense, so I took him with me, of course. And I took her too, of course. But how I wish I'd listened to her. It was one of the regrets of my life.

Now he told me once, this fellow, that when he was traveling in the United States, quote, with the gospel, unquote, and wanted to let his wife know when he was coming home, he would put in a collect call to himself at his home, although he wasn't there. His wife would answer the phone, the operator would ask for him and she would say, he's not here. The operator would say, do you know where he may be reached? She'd say, he's up in Idaho somewhere. Well, do you know when he may be back at this telephone? She'd say, I wish I knew that. Then he says, I cut in and say, operator, I think you'd better cancel the call. I'm going to be down there myself tomorrow evening at 6:30. Thanks a lot. Well, he said, when I arrive at the airport, there's my wife with the car. And I say, surprise, surprise, how did you get here? Boy, he was so pleased about that. I told my wife about it. She said, now listen, if he cheats the Bell Telephone Company, he'll cheat you. He cheated me, he cheated the churches, he cheated his teammates, and he cheated his wife with an extramarital love affair. That's what I mean by a contaminated conscience. You watch out. If you fool with your conscience in one department, you're going to let down another department.

Well, does behavior contaminate? Oh, yes. When I was a chaplain overseas in the Pacific, I found that our adjunct had a rather perverted sense of humor. The chaplain's tent held four army cots, so I would have three tent mates. He always picked the three biggest rascals in the organization to put in with the chaplain. He figured we sort of neutralized each other, you know. But sometimes you go to the chaplain's tent and find a lot of booze bottles and find some of the officers shooting craps. It didn't look so good, but... However, I took it as a mission field. Sometimes the air got smutty. I didn't hesitate to ball them out. We got on well enough. But one of them said, ah, chaplain, give us a break. Look, you can leave your camera on the table and nobody will steal it. We're officers and gentlemen. You can confide in us and we'll keep our word. So what does it matter if we do chase dames a bit? I said, fellas, I wouldn't trust a fornicator seven yards.

John Profumo, British cabinet minister, lied in Parliament, on oath, because to speak in Parliament is speaking on oath. It's like speaking on a stack of Bibles. He assured Parliament that the rumors of his liaison with a party girl were untrue. The whole thing blew up in his face three months later. Why did he lie and almost ruin the government to cover up his immorality?

Some men will steal to cover up their immorality. In Minnesota recently, there was a man who had his wife beaten to death. Why? He wanted to cover up an immoral affair, but he wasn't willing to divorce his wife and marry the woman of his choice. He wanted a lot of money too, so he decided to steal and to murder. Why did he do that? You see, he had punctured his morality.

I find there are people, for instance, who think that the secret lapse in sexual morality won't affect the rest of their character, are just fooling themselves. Surely the most serious thing of all is the last verse I'm quoting here, Titus 1:15: "Unto the pure all things are pure, but to the impure and unbelieving nothing is pure, but their very minds and consciences are defiled." Notice, unto the pure all things are pure. You can begin with a pure conscience and with a rotten conscience. In Christian company, we're protected; we don't hear profanity, we don't hear smut, but when you're out in the world, you hear it all right.

Surely you'll agree with me, one of the hardest things to take is when you meet that dirty-minded type of rascal who not only has a dirty mind but tries to prove that you've got one too, who tries to take double meanings out of everything you say. You know the type? Unto the pure all things are pure, but to the impure and unbelieving nothing is pure, but their very minds, that's their intellects, and consciences, that's the reflection, are defiled.

Now we've got to the bottom of the pit. Should we leave it there? That wouldn't be a message. What can we do with people whose conscience is troubling? First of all, the ungodly, the unconverted, what can we do? But what about the Christian man who's not living up to his profession and his conscience bothers him? Let me give you a word from Hebrews. It's Hebrews chapter 9, verses 9 to 14. It speaks of the cure of conscience. Gifts and sacrifices repeatedly offered do not make the conscience of the worshipper perfect.

Should we put that into 20th-century language? It means, fellows, that you can join the Boy Scouts and do your daily good turn or join the Kiwanis and serve the community, but it won't give you a clean conscience. Why? You can't get your conscience clean that way. Giving money to a good cause won't give you a clean conscience. Well then, is there any hope for us? The same passage says the blood of Christ can purify your conscience from dead works.

How may we be cleansed by the blood of Christ? It's a twofold answer. In Christ, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins. What do we do to get it? Repent and be converted that your sins might be blotted out. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. It's a wonderful thing, really.

Do any of you know anything about flying? Do you know how to work an altimeter? Is that what you call it in the States? Altimeter? To tell you the altitude? It works on pressure, you know. Now, if you're flying in Florida, you set it on the level of Florida, and you can tell how high you are above the ground. If it shows 1,500 feet, you know where you are. But supposing you were flying in Colorado, you have to set it on the base level of Colorado so you don't go below that. There's no good, friends, going down to sea level in Colorado.

You've heard of the flyer in the Navy at Pensacola in the trainer, and he finally worked out he was 500 feet below sea level when he was flying in the trainer. This is in the link trainer, of course, not the actual trainer. Actually, that's what conscience does. You set it. It can be set to a level. When you became a converted man, well, now, if you'd just been, supposing you'd been a Mason, you'd be set to the level that the Masons have. On the other hand, supposing you were born in the tribe of Thuggee, Thugs in India. They steal and rob to worship their gods. Your conscience is set to that level.

Some, I think it was Costello, made a big contribution towards war bonds. He said, well, I may be a gangster, but I'm patriotic. Now, what about you as Christians? If you have fallen short and your conscience troubled you, you may repent and confess. Put it right where necessary, and you adjust your conscience back again. But I have two questions to ask you. One is this: Presently, does your conscience bother you about something? If so, you better check. Second, did your conscience used to bother you about something, but it doesn't bother you now? You better check. It may be that you were mistaken or over-scrupulous, but it also may be that you've got a seared or a weak conscience now through quenching the voice of conscience.

Now, that's a little bit of history. Have you learned anything? Well, nothing really that's new. And yet, when you put things together systematically, it helps you to understand. Now, I hope you'll be better able to serve God when you witness to other people. I can tell you this in evangelism: Where I meet a hostile or indifferent crowd, I can get them interested through talking on this subject.

Any questions before we close? Have you ever heard of over-scrupulous? I thought I gave you one, but maybe I didn't. Over-scrupulous, 1 Corinthians 8, verses 10 and 25. No, excuse me. 1 Corinthians 8:10 and 10:25. Speaks of over-scrupulous conscience. It may not use the actual word over-scrupulous, but it'll give you the gist of that. Put into modern language. I may have gotten them from a modern translation in some cases. But 1 Corinthians 8. Chapter 8 in 1 Corinthians has a lot about conscience.

Now, may I ask you a question? How many of you ever heard a sermon on conscience? A what? A sermon on conscience. I never have, except when I've preached myself recently. A pastor said to me the other day, and I told him I was going to preach on it, he said, let's choose a hymn to go with it. I said, there's no hymn to go with it. Do you know any hymn on conscience? I don't know one. There are hymns on temptation, there are all sorts of hymns on all sorts of subjects, but not on conscience.

Any other question? I was wondering, where's the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit speaks through conscience. For instance, do you believe the Holy Spirit can speak to an unconverted man? I do. He can speak through conscience. He can speak to a Christian through conscience. I think he uses conscience to reach the intellect and will and emotion regarding sin. Now, the Holy Spirit can speak apart from conscience. For instance, supposing you're going to make a great blunder that God doesn't want you to make, he may speak directly to your intellect, not conscience. Like, for instance, when you make a mistake, but when it comes to right and wrong, that's the mechanism that he has set up when he made you, and actually he uses your conscience. He reawakens conscience.

What can you do with a person who would fall in the category of having a seared conscience and he's not aware and unwilling to accept the fact that he has a seared conscience? Perhaps if you give him some, if he's amenable to scripture, give him some scripture or if, on the other hand, where it's a non-Christian, you can show him, like now, for instance, take a man who practices a premarital sex relationship. I would tell him, quite frankly, if you loved that girl, you certainly wouldn't jeopardize her character and prestige like this. That's not love. See, they're very vulnerable at these points. Like, for instance, when a man is a thief, he always has excuses for it. "I only steal from those who can afford it," he'll say. But you can soon show, if everybody did this, what sort of world would it be? He knows really deep down you have to appeal to his conscience, reawaken his conscience because he once believed this, generally speaking.

Any other questions? I realize that conscience is also prayer. But what about the outward talking, to other individuals? Well, conscience will work entirely apart from prayer. I mean, I understand that through prayer our conscience is going to change. Yes, that's true. Through reading the Scripture, our conscience will be reawakened. Does other people fit in this? You can pray for another person that his conscience may awaken. You know what I mean? Like, for instance, supposing you know somebody that's cheating, we'll say, in examinations. You can pray for him, but you can also speak to him about it.

You see, I quoted Immanuel Kant in the test of universality. I was speaking to a bunch of students recently who said, well, what's wrong? I mean, everybody cheats a little, you know. So I said, well, just a moment. I'm waiting for your next class. The professor says, welcome to our class in historical bibliography and criticism. May I say that this class is slightly different. You're invited to cheat. Please cheat. Everyone cheat. I'll cheat, too. You may write the best paper that's ever been submitted to this university, but that won't guarantee you'll get an A. I'll cheat you. I'll give you a D.

He has all kinds of writing, but he's out to cheat the rest of the class and give you an A. Well, I think somebody will get up and say, sir, let's go back to orthodox procedure. The test is universality.

What I was trying to relay was, say, for example, a man did something maybe years ago, and it bothers him, and possibly he never had a chance to go make this right. Now, isn't it correct that we should go make something right? Well, that's the doctrine of confession. Yes. I'd say a few. So this works on the conscience, too. Yes. But, you see, it also works through memory. Memory is under the control of intellect in that sense.

For instance, the scripture says, if you're offering your gift at the altar and there, remember, your brother has something against you. Leave your gift before the altar for reconciliation or restitution before you get the blessing from God. But some people, of course, you see, when we have unpleasant experiences, especially those that hurt our own feelings, our own self-esteem, we try to forget them as soon as possible. Conscience will remind you. Memory becomes a servant of conscience there.

Would you say that conscience comes with accountability? I hadn't thought of that before, but I suppose, yes. With conscience comes accountability. On the other hand, you see, a man is still accountable even though his conscience hasn't bothered him. Like, for instance, Jack Ruby may try and make a case for himself that he acted conscientiously. He shot down Lee Oswald like a mad dog. But that doesn't mean he's not accountable. What's more, the prosecution will say no matter what he thought, he had no right to take the law into his own hands and he's still accountable. You see, you can have a mistaken conscience and still be accountable if that's what you mean.

Dr. Orr, I know that we've demanded a lot of you today. We've had a hard day, but if you still got some vigor left and would shift gears, it would be a real blessing to us, I think, to see some of your experiences improving.