Articles
Are Feelings Or Conscience A Safe Guide?
by Garland M. Robinson
If God allowed everyone to follow their own feelings, then there would be no need for the Bible. You would believe one thing while your neighbor believed something different. If such were the case, there would be no standard or pattern by which to live. Everyone would be a law unto themselves.
When we send our children to school, do we allow them to follow their own feelings? What if we allowed them to follow their feelings while studying math? A child can be so sure of himself to think that 6+5=12 when it is not. It is thus required that everyone follow the accepted standard of math; and, it is not allowed any other way. The same is true regarding weights and measures. Can you imagine a society where everyone followed their own feelings in how much a pound weighed or how long a yard was?
Spiritually, men and women cannot guide themselves. When it is tried, chaos and confusion results. God, our creator says, "O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps" (Jeremiah 10:23). "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death" (Proverbs 14:12). Saul of Tarsus followed his feelings in persecuting Christians. After learning he was wrong he said, "I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth" (Acts 26:9). He admits that when he followed his feelings he was consciously wrong.
The Bible is our spiritual standard given us by God. It is the book to which all must adhere. It is the pattern we must follow if we expect to be right with God. Whenever there is a disagreement over what someone thinks or feels spiritually, we must turn to it to find what is right. As in math, there is but one right way and all other ways wrong, in the spiritual realm, there is but one right way and no other (John 14:6; Acts 4:12; 2 Peter 2:15; Matthew 7:13-14).
The Bible is the book from which all men will be judged. Jesus said, "He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day" (John 12:48; cf. Revelation 20:12).
One's feelings or conscience is not the guide, God's Word is. When you follow your conscience you are following a false sense of hope. Accept the righteous and moral standard, God's Holy Word!
