The Westminster Confession, written in the 1640s, declares emphatically that ‘God alone is Lord of the conscience’ (XX.II). In so doing, it is merely reflecting what is stated in the Word of God. Each Christian is to be fully convinced in his own mind (Rom.14:5), knowing that each of us will give an account of himself to God (Rom.14:12). We are not to grieve other people on secondary issues (Rom.14:15) but to seek peace and mutual upbuilding (Rom.14:19). Defiling or wounding another conscience is a sin against Christ (1 Cor.8:7, 12). Even the mistaken conscience of another is to be respected (1 Cor.10:28-29).
A society fleeing from God will think it is progressing in liberty when it tramples upon the rights of conscience. In the USA a Christian photographer in New Mexico was fined $6700 for refusing to photograph a lesbian commitment ceremony; a baker in Oregon has been threatened with gaol time for declining to bake a cake for a same-sex ‘wedding’; a florist in Washington is being sued by the state attorney-general for refusing to prepare an arrangement for a same-sex ‘wedding’; a broadcaster on Fox Sports was sacked after one day in the job for supporting heterosexual marriage; an inn in Vermont was fined $30,000 and forced to close down because it declined to host a lesbian ‘wedding’. And so it goes on in the land of the free and the home of the brave. A Twitter witch hunt led to Brendan Eich, the CEO of Mozilla, being removed from his position because he financially supported Proposition 8 in California, which sought to confine marriage to one man and one woman. Medieval inquisitors could have done wonders with modern social media, but perhaps not much more than the enlightened juggernaut is already doing.
In the United Kingdom in September 2011 a Christian street preacher was proclaiming John 3:16 to all and sundry when two homosexual teenagers asked him what he thought of homosexuals. He trotted out the not altogether convincing answer that God hates the sin but loves the sinner, and then referred them to Revelation 21:8. The youths responded by performing some obscenities in front of him, and then complaining to a passing policeman. Our preacher spent the next nineteen hours in gaol. One’s first response is that surely the policeman arrested the wrong man.
Regarding abortion, in 2008 the state of Victoria passed legislation which, among other things, declared that if a health practitioner had conscientious objections to abortion, he or she had to refer the woman to another registered health practitioner who was known not to have such objections. The Tasmanian law of 2013 went further and provided for a fine of 75 penalty units and twelve months in gaol for anyone who protested in any way outside an abortion mill (they ought not to be called clinics). Abortion was decriminalised but protest at abortion was criminalised.
One thing that is common to all this sort of legislation – no matter what the subject or the country – is the disregard of the rights of conscience, and the rejection of precious freedoms. In Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell famously asserted that ‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.’ Orwell may not have got it entirely right. The picture may look more like endless expensive litigation, legislation by coercive Utopians, and the erosion of the idea of conscience from the public mind.
Looking over his life in 1864, John Henry Newman said that quite early in his meandering career he had come to rest in ‘the thought of two and two only supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator’. Now, a professedly liberal state is becoming more devouring in its claims. Morality is defined by whatever the media deem to be fashionable in contrast to whatever it deems to be worthy of moral outrage. A believer in the presence of God draws strength to stand against the world and yet is sensitive to the conscience of others. An unbeliever is weak before the fads of the world, and has little concept of the notion of a moral conscience. In the name of freedom, we are losing freedoms.
With warmest regards in Christ,
Peter Barnes