CONSCIENCE IS MORE THAN GUILT TRIPS!

riving is fun for most people, so if you drive or if you're learning to drive, you probably enjoy it. Now and then maybe you wish that there were no such things as speed limits to stay under and lanes to stay inside of. No stop signs or yield signs or traffic lights. Wouldn't it be a trip to do absolutely anything you wanted with the car?

Let's imagine it: nothing around but miles upon square miles of concrete in every direction. No lane markers, no speed limit signs, no signals, no rules of any kind. Just you and your car and lots of empty space; get behind the wheel and do whatever seems like a real kick.

Fun? I think we could safely say that for a while there'd be a certain thrill to it. I think we have to admit a couple of other things, too.

First, it would get boring. Yes, boring. Not going anywhere gets to be a drag, even when you're not going anywhere at high speed. With no lanes to stay inside of, no situations to handle or places to arrive at, all you'd proved is that you know how to step on the gas pedal. Wow. Fantastic achievement!

Secondly, even with nothing around but miles upon square miles of empty concrete, there'd be a good chance of wiping out. Sooner or later would come the temptation to do a little slalom, a little fishtailing, a few spin-arounds ... and before long the wheels would end up in the air instead of on the concrete.

Operating without a conscience--without any regard for right and wrong--is something like that. What seems like unlimited freedom eventually leaves us burned out. But a place with nothing but bare concrete doesn't exist. To make our example real, let's put some people and some homes and some other cars on that empty surface we imagined. But let's also imagine somebody driving around there pretending that speed limits and signals and traffic laws don't exist.

What's going to happen? Lots of people will get hurt, that's what. Including, eventually, the driver. That's what people are like when they go through life without listening to well-formed consciences. They become destroyers, eventually of themselves as well as of victims who were in their paths. Often they're hardly aware of how many people they hurt with their "Who cares if it's wrong?" approach through life.

That's not the kind of life you want for yourself, I'm sure. We Christians are builders, not destroyers. We are people who help, not people who hurt. We simply can't ignore conscience and call ourselves Christian--or even human. But where does this conscience come from?

We mentioned once before that it's not a little box implanted into our brain at birth, which automatically beeps or buzzes or gongs whenever we consider or do something wrong. Our "conscience" is simply our ability to make judgments about right and wrong.

Like any other ability, we can simply refuse to develop it. Or we can deliberately twist and warp it in the wrong direction until it spits out wild, off-base, even crazy and sick judgments about what's right and what's wrong. (How often do you read about people doing really horrible things--without seeing much wrong with them? Those people didn't all begin that way. A lot of them did some convenient conscience-twisting along the line, usually a little at a time, until even gruesome things didn't seem so terribly wrong).

We can't afford not to make judgments about our actions. Our judgments evaluate where we are going in our lives. But where do these judgments come from? Not from thin air. So where do we go to get ideas on right and wrong?

It depends on whether or not Jesus makes a difference to us. He did, after all, say a lot about how to live, and a lot of it was pretty blunt. It's in the New Testament. He also left behind a group to carry on, interpret, and spread what he began. We call it the Church. That's how Jesus chose to stay with us. "He who hears you, hears me," he told his apostles.

Chemists and astronomers, doctors and mechanics, governors and carpenters and investors ... none of them ignore what people in their fields have discovered. Christians, in deciding what's right and wrong, shouldn't either.