Marion H. Nelson

BCSA office on Christlikeness shelf

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p 67—That part of the mind that says, “Don’t do it; it’s wrong,” is the conscience.
It is sometimes weak (I Cor 8:7), meaning that it does not always have the right information and needs to be reeducated.
This education of the conscience is important. It is accomplished by acquiring a knowledge of the Bible. Paul, in I Timothy 1:19, indicates that some, by not maintaining a good conscience, fell into error and ended up in spiritual shipwreck.
p 68—Every decision he makes is followed by doubts as to whether it is right.
p 69—Actually, he needs to learn to pay less attention to the overly strict, illogical part of his conscience. . . . If he is trusting in God to energize him to want the Lord’s will, he can act in this direction and try to train himself to ignore the irrational doubts that stem from such an abnormal conscience.
p 69-70—The Christian with an overly strict conscience hangs back, unsure of himself. He is doubtful and reluctant to go ahead with a decision about the Lord’s will. The Christian with an underdeveloped conscience rushes ahead impulsively without enough forethought and makes decisions too quickly, often rashly and incorrectly. The desirable balance is somewhere between these two extremes. One extreme is to wait forever for the Lord to reveal His will, when one would only have to go ahead in some direction and the Lord’s will would quickly become obvious.
It is true that “whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Rom 14:23). But to have an irrational doubt about something does not mean that it is “not of faith.” The irrational doubt must be recognized for what it is—a symptom of a psychological problem—that of an overly strict conscience.
So, one must consider what the conscience says, but it should not have life or death veto power over a decision.… (más)