Can I Bind the Conscience More in the Counseling Room than in the Pulpit?

Abstract: Deepak Reju helps pastors counsel their people when there is no passage of Scripture that explicitly addresses a particular question or issue. Though pastors should avoid binding someone’s conscience without biblical warrant, they should not give the impression that issues not explicitly addressed in Scripture are therefore morally neutral. Pastors are usually able to address complex questions in a more nuanced way outside of the pulpit. However, rather than merely stating their convictions, they should help their people understand how their reasoning has been shaped by Scripture.

Let’s say that Phil and Alice Jones, a young couple, come to you asking for advice on schooling their children. They’re sorting through options: public, secular private, Christian private, full-time homeschool, and a homeschool co-op. They’re bewildered by so many choices, and they’re not sure what’s the best fit for their growing family. So, you sit down with Phil and Alice, ask a lot of questions, sort through their conscience convictions, and then advise them as best you can. That’s a typical part of your private ministry of the Word—teaching church members how to wisely sort through conscience convictions and apply Scripture to their situation.

It turns out there are a lot of families in your congregation with preschool children who wrestle with similar questions. You talk this over with your elders. The elders feel like hosting a panel that represents the different schooling options would be helpful for your church. They also encourage you, their senior pastor, to preach on the conscience from Romans 14:1–15:7. That’s a normal part of your public ministry of the Word—teaching and preaching to edify and instruct your members on God’s perspective.

When most Christians (and many pastors!) sort through these conscience differences, they often assume moral neutrality. Christians believe that so long as there isn’t a Bible verse explicitly condemning a specific action, then that must mean that it’s morally solid. Now it’s true that my church members have freedom in Christ to choose from a range of schooling options—public, private, homeschool—so long as they don’t have bad motives in their choice. The apostle Paul tells us: “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5).

But is that all there is to it? Not at all.

Here’s my assertion—not all options are morally equal simply because they are morally acceptable. What’s more, pastors have a responsibility to teach moral reasoning to their congregation in both their public and private ministry of the Word, though each of these ministries will likely look a little different. More on that in a minute. First, let me try and prove the assertion.

An Example of a Morally Significant Conscience Decision

Phil and Alice let you know they’ve looked at all the schooling options. They like homeschooling a lot because it offers significant time for discipling their children. That’s attractive to them, but they’re not sure if Alice has the organizational skills to pull it off. They’re also very evangelistic and eager to see their children be a gospel witness in the secular public schools. They know there are challenges, but they feel like the risks are outweighed by the benefits. They inform you that they’ve sorted through their schooling options and plan to enroll their daughter in public school in the fall semester. At first glance, this seems like a fine decision for them to make.

However, you decide to investigate it further since you don’t live in the same neighborhood and don’t know their public schools. You ask Charlie, a longtime deacon, who lives a few blocks from Alice and Phil. He’s immediately alarmed. You can see concern written all over his face. “What? They’re going to put their kid in that school?” he says. His shock and tone have got your attention, so you ask him to explain why he’s so disturbed by Alice and Phil’s decision.

Here’s what he tells you: “The public school in our community is one of the most liberal in the country. They’re pro-LGBTQ and very aggressive about teaching this agenda in the classroom. Alice and Phil’s children will get extensive exposure and be brainwashed in this kind of environment.”

You are now more concerned. But you ask, “Can’t parents just opt their kids out of this teaching?”

Charlie shakes his head. “No, they’ve passed rules on the school board that strip all rights from parents. So, if Alice and Phil’s daughter Shirley starts to question her gender, the school won’t tell the parents. They’ll encourage Shirley to pursue a gender change if she expresses a desire. They won’t involve the parents. If the parents oppose it, the school will contact Child Protective Services.”

You now understand Charlie’s alarm. You’ve got no choice. To shepherd well (1 Pet. 5:2–3), you should talk to Alice and Phil and help them see the moral freight attached to the decision to put their children in this school system. Can you explicitly say that it would be sin for them to do it anyway? Maybe, maybe not. At the very least you can say that it would be very unwise, bordering on reckless, for them to take this path.¹^{1 .}Lest you think that I’m opposed to public schools, I could come up with scenarios in homeschooling and private Christian school that would also be unwise and bordering on sin. No option is excluded from this moral weight category, depending on the circumstances.

You see, saying that a decision is acceptable is not the same as saying that two acceptable decisions are morally equal in value. This is the case for at least two reasons. First, different options in any given conscience issue may come with different gradations of moral clarity. Our ability to discern the good from the bad is not always a black-and-white game. Sometimes we aren’t 100% sure, but one decision does seem to be better than another when we bring various biblical principles to bear on it. Pastor, you need to teach your people how to collate principles from Scripture that can help them weigh their options on a scale and then choose what is best.

Second, even if one decision seems to be equal to another, morally speaking, there is a second scale that we need to consider—the wisdom-foolishness scale. So you can do A or B and probably not be sinning in either case. But A seems to be the wiser of the two options for reasons one, two, and three. As a pastor, you need to be able to share why wisdom leans one way and not the other. Sure, the person is free to do either, but that doesn’t mean they should do either. Sometimes your counsel will be the difference between a wise option and a suboptimal, borderline foolish option.

The need to help members reason morally through various conscience issues is just one way in which pastoring is tough business.

The Private Ministry of the Word for Phil and Alice

Let’s now consider how helping members privately takes a slightly different shape from instructing the entire congregation behind the pulpit.

Back to Phil and Alice for a second. After talking to Charlie, my next step is to sit down with Phil and Alice and talk to them about their decision to send Shirley to the public schools in their community. I text them and we arrange a face-to-face meeting.

Whereas preaching and teaching casts a large, generalized net because you face a large audience, the private ministry of the Word ministers to specific persons with specific circumstances and specific conscience convictions.

As Phil and Alice’s pastor, I state my personal opinion for them while they sit on the couch in my office. I let them know what Charlie told me about their local public school and express my concern about their choice.

Because of the specific details I now know about their public school, I can work out the nuances and implications for their situation. “While you may be free to choose this school for your children, I fear that you will be in danger of disobeying one of your chief responsibilities as parents—teaching your children to know God (Deut. 6:6–7; Prov. 22:6).”

I can press into their specific situation and help them to recalibrate their consciences if needed. “You might reconsider given the school’s progressive ideology whether this is a good thing for your daughter. You’ve got a responsibility to educate her, but you also must protect her from lies as the school attempts to brainwash and confuse her. Does this lead you to reconsider your choice?”

I can warn them what the consequences of their decision might be in order to help them make the right one. “If your daughter becomes convinced that she’s a boy or adopts a favorable attitude toward LGBTQ issues, it will put you at odds with her as her parent. It will be a long and hard road. How does that make you think about this decision?”

My conversation is meant to help them see the moral freight of this weighty decision. I think it’s unwise and potentially sinful to send their child to an aggressively pro-LGBTQ public school like the one Charlie described. It’s my responsibility to counsel them as best as I can based on God’s Word. That said, I don’t have the authority to make them do what I say, and I can’t go so far as to say that going with the public school is obviously sinful. At the end of the day, Phil and Alice must choose for their daughter and live with the consequences of their decision.

Be warned, pastor. If you start trying to force people to agree with you on these conscience issues—even those issues where you think one option is morally superior to another but you can’t say one is definitely sin—you’re flirting with authoritarianism. Share with your people your reasoning from God’s Word. Challenge them with the truth. But stop short of trying to make them do as you say.

My Public Ministry of the Word for the Entire Congregation

Okay, so I can go pretty far in the counseling room with Phil and Alice. I think, given the details of their situation, I can basically say, “I wouldn’t recommend sending your kids to that school. It seems unwise at best and potentially sinful to do so.” Does this mean that I should stand in the pulpit and say to my congregation, “Don’t send your children to public school! To do so would be unwise at best and potentially sinful?” Uh, no, not quite. Here are a few reasons why speaking so directly would be a bad idea.

First, in the absence of explicit biblical teaching, you must be careful not to push your people to conclusions—even right conclusions!—before you teach them how to work those conclusions out based on various biblical texts and their application to our context. Fourth-grade math teachers don’t hand their students calculators before they’ve first taught them to do basic addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication. Similarly, you shouldn’t skip over the process of moral reasoning to quickly arrive at your conclusion. A habit of going straight for the right answer may lead people to assume that it’s your word they must follow rather than God’s.

Second, the Bible doesn’t condemn public school full stop. In the case of Phil and Alice, the problem was with their specific school district. I may have other members who have a much better school district. They may choose to send their kids there for evangelism reasons and that be morally right and wise.

Lastly, the Bible doesn’t hold out a specific form for how parents should educate their children. Let’s say that I do condemn public school full stop (I don’t and wouldn’t but keep going with the hypothetical). What do I then tell parents they must do with their children? The Bible doesn’t tell us private school is morally superior to or wiser than homeschooling! I must be careful not to prohibit what the Bible doesn’t because doing so may mean then having to require what the Bible doesn’t. One wrong begets another.

So there I am in my pulpit preaching on Romans 14–15. This section of Scripture clearly provides guidelines on conscience differences and prioritizes love. In my sermon, I’ll explain how the apostle Paul teaches us to navigate differences between believers charitably. I’ll instruct members on differences between strong and weak consciences and apply those to contemporary situations. I may even hold out specific case studies or examples and show the congregation how the moral math recommends one decision over another. But I stop short of drawing a universal that the text doesn’t commend.

After church, we host a panel on the different schooling options. (The schooling question is just one example of how to sort through differences between consciences, but it’s the area where my congregation needs help!) If I’m standing in front of a room full of parents, what should be typical of my teaching and instruction in this public setting?

I must show consideration to those who have a conscience conviction: “You might feel convicted that homeschooling is a good fit for your family and struggle with public or private schooling options.”

I should instruct and recalibrate more restricted consciences to show charity to those with a stronger conscience. “You might feel personally convinced that homeschooling is the best option because of how much time it gives you to disciple your children. But that doesn’t mean it is necessarily the best option for every family in the church.”

I should teach the strong and weak consciences to show charity to one another. “Whatever schooling option you choose, you want to respect the conscience choices of other members. Christ gives us freedom to choose differently.”

I should reflect the freedom of conscience that Scripture affords: “As a believer, you have freedom to choose any schooling situation that fits your family.”

But I must be willing to trace out the moral parameters entangled with different options. Not all choices are morally equal. “Some of you might consider public schools in the Cheverly District, but I need to warn you of schools that will go contrary to our Christian values and strip the authority that God gives you as parents of your children.”

Public and private settings offer different challenges. But they also provide wonderful opportunities to shape the consciences of your church members and to be honest about the moral parameters that surround their decisions.

Pastor, don’t let your members assume that their freedom in Christ neutralizes the moral value behind their decisions. It doesn’t. Be wise and deliberate about your moral instruction, both in counseling and preaching, for the glory of God and the good of your church.