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No Conscience Clause: Canadian Federal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler admits that under the proposed Liberal same-sex “marriage” bill being fast-tracked through parliament, there would be no guarantees of protection for religious organizations that refuse to “marry” homosexuals. (Religion Journal.com 6/10/05)
Wheaton College has revised its behavioral standards and will now permit faculty, staff and graduate students to use alcohol and tobacco. Additionally, the issue of dancing on campus will now be a matter of “individual conscience.” (Foster Letter 3/10/03)
Sin is the excrement of our soul. I’m not trying to be gross, but as much as our physical excrement may disgust us, our spiritual excrement disgusts God even more.
We sin every day, even when we try our best not to do so. We sin less than we did before, and when we let Jesus into our lives, we recognize our sins for what they are, but still we sin and in so doing, we soil our soul. If we don’t excrete our sins from our souls, sin just continues to build up, and our spiritual life deteriorates until we finally reject God and any hope for life with him.
Our kidneys process the poisons that accumulate in our bodies, and eliminate them. Without that process, we poison ourselves. Humans die from kidney failure every day. The poisons in our bodies can’t be processed out, and those poisons eventually backup into our bloodstream and kill us.
The Center for Disease Control states that nearly 17 percent of adults in the United States aged 20 and older have kidney disease. That rises to 40 percent for Americans over age 60.
Each year kidney failure sends about 400,000 Americans into treatment.
Most of those people had no idea that they had a kidney problem, that their bodies were slowly killing them by not excreting the poisons that were building up inside.
When doctors told them about the problem, most of them accepted their doctor’s advice, and the required treatment. They want to live, so they follow the treatment plan, and continue living.
Many of those same people, as well as the rest of us, are told through the Bible, our pastors, or even our own consciences, that our accumulated sins will kill us, but that God will cleanse us of those sins and restore us to the sinless state he designed for us originally.
The required treatment is merely to accept his grace through his son, Jesus Christ, who will fill us with his cleansing spirit. You might even think of it as spiritual dialysis. We say that we want to live, but we reject the only treatment plan and guarantee our own spiritual deaths.
Only Jesus can purge the sin from our souls through his sacrifice for us.
Cultural Creatives is the new label for a individuals who reject traditionalism and modernism in favor of their 1960’s values. Proponents are typically upper middle class and consider themselves leading edge thinkers. The read a great deal, but don’t see their values reflected in what they read. Advertising and marketing hold little appeal. Bullet points are suspect--they want the whole story. They value ecological sustainability, globalism, women’s issues, altruism, self-actualization, spirituality, social conscie...
CORPORATE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE
In ’05, one-third of America’s top rated companies issued voluntary SSE (Social, Environmental, Ethical) reports on their social responsibility. In Great Britain, 70% of top companies issue social progress reports, half of which are independently audited. (The Gospel According to Starbucks, Leonard Sweet, WaterBrook, 2007)
2008 POLITICS
This time around, our American bishops weren't cowering in a corner–they were telling everyone that politicians who fail to defend the most defenseless humans–preborn babies–and who want to use your tax money and mine to murder these children–are not worthy of our vote.
And even though the voters just elected the most pro-abortion candidate in U.S. history to the highest office in the land, and even though a majority of self-professed Catholics actually voted for him, they had to ignore the clear voice of the Church standing up for the right of all humans to life, and their own consciences, to do so.
THE IMPACT OF MOTHERS ON CONSCIENCE
According to research published in Psychological Science (October 2004 issue), children who have the good fortune to interact with their mothers a lot develop healthier consciences.
These researchers conducts a couple of experiments where they encouraged toddlers to imitate their mothers in such simple activities as playing tea party or playing with a stuffed animal. As the researchers monitored this interaction, they classified the children based on their readiness to imitate what they observed in their mothers and then graded them on a sliding scale.
Then, in subsequent sessions, they enticed those same young children with prizes for games that they could win only by cheating or breaking an object that had some value to them.
What they found was: Toddlers who eagerly imitated their mothers were more likely to follow the rules and more likely to exhibit a sense of guilt when they broke something.
(From a sermon by Jeff Strite, On The Catwalk, 5/13/2012)
SERVANTHOOD AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH
I surveyed my church to see if people saw a relationship between ministering to others and spiritual growth. When asked, "To what extent has your ministry or service to others affected your spiritual growth?," 92 percent answered positively. None responded that ministry had a negative effect on their spiritual growth. Sixty-three percent indicated that service was equally significant in their spiritual growth compared to other spiritual disciplines, such as Bible study and prayer. Twenty-four percent responded that ministry or service to others had been "a more significant factor" to their spiritual growth than Bible study or prayer. Over half (58 percent) of those who were not actively ministering to others felt either "not satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied" with their level of spiritual growth. [Eric Swanson What You Get from Giving (Leadership Journal, Spring 2003), p. 37]
The survey shows what the Bible has said for centuries: "Serving is good for you because it will make you happy and it will have eternal value." The problem comes into serving when the person who serves comes with the wrong attitude.
Listen to what Bill Hybels has to say about this: "The right motivation for Christian service is love. When we discover God loves us with an everlasting love and that we matter deeply to him, we want to serve. He has given us salvation as a free gift. He has done for us what we could never do for ourselves. He has shed the blood of His most precious Son as a sin sacrifice for undeserving souls like ourselves. When all of that comes together and clicks, an unquenchable, divine energy is infused into the spirit of the believer. There is an insatiable desire to return love to God. That love is returned to God through worship and service. It is so natural that anything short of passionate service seems unnatural. One major cause of servant drop-out is faulty motivation. Some people are motivated to serve beca...
Leader Character: Of the 13 “character clusters” evaluated by the Christian Leader Profile, the Barna Research Group has identified the strongest attributes associated with Christians involved in church leadership are having a conscience that is sensitive to sin, morality, godly demeanor, humility, values, faith maturity, and trustworthiness. Attributes that are not as strong included using appropriate speech, having a controlled temper, and teaching a...
