don’t believe against conscience

The story of Bishop Pike is a fascinating one… from genuine heresy trials to getting lost and dying in the wilderness of Judea. In my opinion the two best books on this man are by William Stringfellow and Anthony Towne, titled, The Death and Life of Bishop Pike, and The Bishop Pike Affair.

What I admire most about Pike is his passionate

quest for that which could be conscientiously believed by twentieth-century Christians.

Now we are in the twenty-first century. And things have changed even more. But I think his passionate quest is just as needed today: how can we conscientiously believe or claim to know? That is, how can we believe without going against our own consciences? How can we say, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t in good conscience believe that!” without being told that our “consciences have been seared with a hot iron” (1 Timothy 4:2) and that we are on the road to perdition?

The Puritans taught that the conscience is the inner monitor of the Spirit. The bible teaches that we are not to go against our own consciences for this reason. So here’s a question:

would God require you to believe something against your own conscience? Or would God actually honor your step to refuse to believe something, even your long-held idea of God, because it offended your conscience?

I have a book full of cartoons like this one on amazon.com, amazon.ca, amazon.de.