Eliminate anything you’re not sure about. Romans 14:23 says, “He who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin.” This is a warning that no one should act against his or her conscience. It is not spiritually healthy to do so, and it is also displeasing to God.[1] He who doubts that what he doing is right, the Scripture says, is condemned if he does it (“condemned” here means guilty, or sinning). From the context, we know that this statement applies even to activities that are not wrong in themselves, like eating meat that had been offered to idols. Yet we are told that someone who eats meat, or does anything else the Bible does not address, is sinning if he is not sure it is right. How can this be? Well, Paul explains in the second half of the verse: “Because his eating is not from faith: and whatever is not from faith is sin.”
If we think something is
wrong to do, and we do it anyway, it is a sin—even if God never said that the
activity itself was wrong. This is
because our choice has not been made because of faith, but because of some
other motive. So it is not the action
itself, but the choice, that is displeasing to God. A helpful illustration in the realm of
entertainment would be a woman who was taught while growing up, by her parents
and her church, that listening to “rock music” is always wrong. That style of music is “of the devil” and “worldly,”
the argument goes, and we should not enjoy it even if it has good words,
because that would be compromising with the devil and the world. This is a legalistic view that goes beyond Scripture and does not proceed from a sound interpretation of the Word.[2] However, any idea has a certain power when
you hear it over and over again from the people you love and respect,
especially when you are a child. So the
woman in our illustration has been convinced that it is wrong for her to listen
to any music with electric guitars and drums.
Now suppose a group of friends
from work give her a hit album for her birthday and say they want to hear what
she thinks of it when they take her out for dinner the next night. If she decides to listen to the album, while
she still thinks it is wrong to do that, she will be sinning, because at that
moment something is more important to her than pleasing God. It will not be her faith in Him that
motivates her to do it, but her fear of what her friends will think, or perhaps
her own curiosity. Should her conscience
be realigned, or retrained, so that she could listen to something like that
without feeling guilty? Yes, I think it
should (see below). But until that
happens, she should not listen to the music, because it will come between her
and God if she does. It will damage the
most important relationship she has, because when she prays to him she will not
be able to pray “in faith,” believing that He hears her. Instead she will be thinking something like
this: “I don’t know if I should be doing
this—God might be upset with me.”
Your conscience is like a
diagnostic program running at all times on a computer. Depending on the information it has been
given, it will judge whether you are doing the right thing or the wrong thing. If it judges that you are doing the wrong
thing, it will flash a “warning light” (we call this “feeling guilty.”) That warning light of guilt is very helpful
in keeping us from moral crashes, but sometimes a conscience can be overactive
on a particular issue, because it has been given wrong information. So like a computer, it can be reprogrammed
with different and better information, so that it will not set off an alarm
when it is not really necessary. Your
ultimate goal should be to have a conscience that is fully informed by
Scripture, which will only keep you from doing that which is displeasing to
God, and not from good things you have the freedom to enjoy (see Rom. 14:22).
So your conscience may
need to be re-trained on a particular issue or issues, but as long as you think
something is wrong, don’t do it. Because
if you act against your conscience repeatedly, then you will develop what the
Bible calls a “seared conscience” (1 Tim. 4:2, Titus 1:15, Ephesians
4:19). In such a conscience, the warning
light has been ignored so often that it no longer flashes anymore, and we find
ourselves blind and enslaved to sins that will eventually destroy us. As Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 say, “There is a
way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”
The old saying, “Let
your conscience be your guide,” is not entirely true. Your conscience can be wrong, and may need to
be re-trained, as in the case of the women who cannot listen to any “rock”
music. But though your conscience should
not be your guide in determining the truth, it should be your guard in
the sense that it can keep you from wrong paths that lead to destruction. We should never push past this guard, but
sometimes we might persuade it through biblical reasoning to move out of the
way. On the other hand, we need to be
constantly “arming” our conscience with more principles from Scripture, so it
can protect us from choices that would hurt us in the end.
This principle of conscience applies to your entertainment choices, as well as all other areas of your life. If you are wondering whether or not God wants you to watch that movie, listen to that music, read that book, or whatever choice you face, it is better to be safe than sorry. Don’t let an insignificant form of entertainment get in the way of the most significant relationship you will ever have! As Romans 14:17 says, “For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”
[1] For more verses about the importance of having a clean conscience, see Acts 23:1 and 24:16, 1 Timothy 1:9, and Hebrews 13:18.
[2] The arguments used against contemporary musical styles can
sometimes exhibit award-worthy creativity. Some say that if the rhythm in music is emphasized more than the melody
and harmony, it is ungodly. Another
argument is that some types of music are acceptable to God because of where the
primary beat falls, but others are not acceptable because the primary beat
falls somewhere else. These ideas do not
arise from the exegesis of Scripture, to say the least, and upon closer
inspection are actually inconsistent
with Scripture. When we take into
account the types of instruments that were used in Old Testament worship, which
included tambourines, cymbals, and the guitar-like “lyres” and “lutes” (Psa.
68:24-25, 98:4-6, 149:3, 150:1-6), it is likely that the music of the Jews was
quite heavy in the rhythm department. And given the lack of professional composition in most cases, the beat
was probably falling all over the place!
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