How does [Matthew 16:26] influence the way you make priorities? (Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, page 1364). The referenced verse is: “And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your soul (or your self)? Is anything worth more than your soul (or your self)? (NLT).
I
have a favorite saying given to me by a friend (Cato) at work. It
was penned by Stephen C. Paul. It is: “When you give up your
own truth to win at someone else’s game, everyone loses.” Respect for individual conscience (your own truth arrived at through experience
and divine guidance) is the final and ultimate factor that
distinguishes the United States. In the end, it is the practical
source of effective humility. Sometimes great clamor and insistent
haste can be stopped short by individual conscience.
Now
of course the essential corollary to this belief is that “what goes
for me goes also for you.” That is, not only is my conscience
sacred—but so also is yours. I have to somehow believe that when
you confound me with your obstinate “no’s”, I must (even when I
think your thinking is absolutely absurd) relentlessly respect your
right to disagree. I personally believe that contention and
contrasting viewpoints are in a large measure the will of God.
Certainly the greatest dangers for humanity occur when compliant
“yes’s” forfeit the insistent contrary urgings of individual conscience.
Uniform “peace and harmony” should never be had at any cost.
Of
course, we sometimes are sent into consternation by other people’s
beliefs. That is the name of the game. We all have our individual
take on whether in actuality we are moving forward or backward. We
must appreciate with deepest faith that “When you give up your own
truth to win at someone else’s game, everyone loses.” Or as
Jesus said, “And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world
but lose your soul (or your self).
Now
the hardest thing to deal with in all this is the following
qualifier—all this applies so long as your conscience does not lead
you to hurt others. Like so much in human affairs, the conditions
that meet this qualifier are themselves steeped in contention. For
more often than not, what one sees as “hurt” another sees as
“help” in all affairs other than rank criminality. Is a certain
action harmful or helpful? Well, this is the very kind of thing that
individual conscience leads us to disagree about—or another way of
putting it, this is the kind of thing that individual conscience is
made for and is its ultimate raison d’être.
If
all this seems rather risky—it is. We must in the end be guided by
our own conscience within fields of public discourse, be earnest
players, and (shaking our heads) trust in God to bring us home.
Respect for individual conscience makes trust in God necessary.
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