What is the starter motor in
a car used for? (Answer: To start the car.) Once the car is started what takes
over? (Answer: the engine). If the starter motor would continue to run, what
effect would it have on the overall health of the engine systems? (Answer:
Could damage major components, leaving the whole car un-drivable.)
Consider the common home
coffee brewer. The water pump delivers water to the coffee beans in order to
extract the oils and flavor. Once all the water is pumped out, the pump
turns off. What would happen if the pump kept running? It would ruin the coffee
maker as a whole so that not only is the pump ruined, but the whole coffee
maker is useless.
The God-given conscience is
like the starter and pump. Both are designed to work until it has fulfilled
it goal. What do you understand to be the goal of the conscience? The goal is
to turn us away from even considering badness. But what if, even after it has
accomplished it goal and we are doing good, it continues to torture us? Then,
not only has the conscience become defective, but the very well-being of our
whole self begins to break down. Instead of serving the “happy God”, we
become sullen and weighed down in guilt—definitely not a good basis to build
faith and love on. Yet God wants us to feel loved and wanted.
Consider this further relationship illustration:
A mother of twin boys was watching them play outside. They were just common kids--while generally obedient and respectful, they were imperfect humans like the rest of humanity. The boys started playfully “roughing it up,” tumbling, laughing and having a great time. But as the energy continued to grow, the boys went from playing in the grass to rolling and jumping in their mother’s flower and vegetable gardens. All of a sudden the mother shouted from the kitchen window, “Boys! Get out of the garden, you’re ruining my plants.”
Both the boys felt very badly about what they had done. They knew how much the garden meant to their mom. Both boys offered to help fix the problem and the mother readily accepted. David, the first brother, felt good about having been forgiven and having helped his mom fix his mess. The other brother, James, continued to have a tortured conscience. For several days he went up to mom profusely apologizing for his part in messing up the garden. Each time, the mother reassured James that she had forgiven him and that he needed to “let it go.” However, it continued eating at James and soon his whole demeanor changed. He was no longer happy, but depressed. He felt overwhelmed with guilt for having stomped on some of his mother’s favorite flowers.
You see, just like the starter on a car or the water pump in the coffee maker, if our conscience doesn’t turn off after having accomplished it’s goal, it can ruin the general spiritual health of a person. We worship the “happy God” and he wants us to be like him, happy. We can do that if we learn to accept that as much as we’d like to, none of us will be perfect prior to the end of the thousand year reign of Christ. So in order to be happy, we must accept that we will need to seek forgiveness from Jehovah and then, after having received it, put the event behind us, once again happily determined to be obedient. In this system it is the only solution that will work and sadly it will be a repeating cycle. But as you continue to mature spiritually, the events will become spaced further apart. It is like a child learning to walk. At first, they fall and stumble many times. But over time, they walk farther and regain faster from setbacks. Whereas at the beginning they may have completely fallen down, now it is just a momentary unsteadiness that they quickly compensate for by pausing and concentrating.
So when you find yourself on the rough edges of imperfection, let your conscience kick into gear. But after you’ve corrected the issue, let your conscience rest regarding that event.
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