In the course of controversy, due consideration must be given to those who get caught in the crossfire. The Westminster Confession says that God alone is Lord of the conscience, and this is not just talking about those consciences that are rightly informed. We tend to understand this principle on some subjects — there are many issues where we are told in Scripture to leave the sensitive conscience alone, and this presupposes that the sensitive conscience is too scrupulous. Now people can have conscience issues about all kinds of things — dress, food, reading, entertainment — and this is the kind of thing the apostle Paul addresses in the latter part of Romans.
But people can also have conscience issues based on controversies, rumors, and stuff they read on the Internet. And, as in the earlier cases, their consciences can be ill-informed. Say that someone is invited to visit a CREC church somewhere in the country, and they decline to do so. The reason for this is not because they know anything for certain, but rather because they are nervous over stuff they have heard. Their church used to have Canon Press family titles on the book table, and now they don’t. The pastor has made a couple of oblique statements from the pulpit, hinting darkly that all is not well in Moscow. This person doesn’t stay current with the Fury of the Blogs, but his cousin does, and makes dogmatic pronouncements from time to time. And the church they were invited to visit while on vacation is not pastored by Doug Wilson, but the pastor there has met him several times at conferences and once at presbytery. All this is enough to make attending such a church a conscience issue for this individual. He wants to stay as far away from racist, justification-by-faith-denying, plagiarizing clerics as he can, which in itself is a noble sentiment.
What are we to do with such an individual? Well, nothing. We bless him, and ask God to keep him, and make His face to shine upon him. Whether or not he was as skeptical about things he heard as he should have been, whether or not he has understood the biblical principles of justice, he honestly holds what he does, and his conscience is to be honored and treated with respect. This means that I am called to honor certain opinions (as honestly held) that reflect poorly on me. And I shouldn’t really want to argue about it. This is just part of the cost of doing business. To modify an image I have used in other settings, if I stick my head through the canvas in a booth at the county fair, I can’t really be surprised if people throw wet sponges at it. What this boils down to is the undeniable reality that there are godly Christian people out there who think that I am a dangerous man who ought to be made to take his medications. They don’t feel like investigating; they don’t want to check; the instinctive blech is sufficient. Depending on how they got there, God bless them all.
But in Scripture, deference to conscience is always to a tender conscience. Jeremiah Burroughs makes a helpful observation on how to deal with those who want to make “conscience” the universal trump card. “You can’t make me stop what I am doing because I really think it, and my conscience is set.” If we apply what is argued above, then does this not make the city of conscience the all-purpose city of refuge? Do whatever you want, say whatever you want, slander however you want, and then scurry off to the altar of conscience and like Joab grab the horns of the altar? Burroughs makes a distinction between the tender conscience and the turbulent conscience. “If a man is proud and turbulent in his carriage, by that you may know the devil is rather in the will than in the conscience. Though an erroneous conscience may cause one to hold fast an error, yet it does not cause proud, scornful, turbulent behavior” (Irenicum, p. 45).
As the CREC is seeking to deal respectfully and carefully with the issues surrounding St. Peter and RC Jr., we know that there will be differences of opinion on it, and we also know that these differences can be conscientiously held by men in fellowship with the Father. But it is not possible to be conscientiously turbulent and arrogantly scornful. The thing that is necessary, as I have said before, is for conscientious men (who have a role to play in it) to work diligently at respecting the RPCGA, the CREC, and the congregation St. Peter. The one thing we know at the outset is that to the extent they deal with conscience at all, turbulent blogs are places that sear them.
I would only want to add one thing to Burroughs’ observation. Not only would I summarily dismiss the turbulent as having nothing constructive to offer, I would also warn those who use the turbulent agitators in a good cop/bad cop kind of way. They don’t themselves heave any jello in the junior high Reformed cafeteria food fight, but they encourage and cheer on those who do. “Good shot, Raymond!” They refuse to sign on to the entire agenda of Turbulence.com, but they do think that some legitimate points “have been raised there,” and so they “want answers.”
Sorry. Answers are for responsible people.