How “conviction ping pong” can shipwreck your faith …

Have your ever felt the painful twinge of a guilty conscience?

Of course you have!

We’ve all known times when we’ve done something we knew was wrong, and our consciences gave us trouble because of it! In fact, the United States government has maintained a “Conscience Fund” since 1811 when someone who had defrauded the government mailed in $5 in a attempt to make amends. During the first 175 years of the fund, more than $5.7 million dollars was paid to the government by conscience-stricken citizens. According to Wikipedia:

• • A 9 cent donation was made by a person from Massachusetts who had reused a three-cent postage stamp.
  • A person from Jersey City sent $40,000 in several installments for $8,000 he had previously taken.
  • Another donor sent handmade quilts in an effort to settle her tax bill.
  • Some donations to the fund are forwarded by clergy who have received deathbed confessions.
  • The sincerity of some donors’ repentance can be uncertain, as demonstrated by a received letter reading, “Dear Internal Revenue Service, I have not been able to sleep at night because I cheated on last year’s income tax. Enclosed find a cashier’s check for $1,000. If I still can’t sleep, I’ll send you the balance.”

It’s important to have a “clear” or “clean” conscience, first with God and also with others, so let’s clarify, “What is conscience?” Pastor John MacArthur describes the conscience as “… a built-in warning system that signals us when something we have done is wrong. The conscience is to our souls what pain sensors are to our bodies: it inflicts distress, in the form of guilt, whenever we violate what our hearts tell us is right.”

The writer of Hebrews highlights how having a conscience cleansed from sin is our path to being able to worship God:

“Under the old system, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer could cleanse people’s bodies from ceremonial impurity. Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God. For by the power of the eternal Spirit, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins,” Hebrews 9:13-14.

“And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water,” Hebrews 10:19-22.

Having a clean conscience — and keeping it that way — is mentioned several times in scripture, but is a topic especially taken up by the Apostle Paul:

“The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith,” 1 Timothy 1:5.

As important as it is to maintain a clear conscience before God, Paul warns Timothy that some people intentionally violate their own consciences, with disastrous results:

“Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear. For some people have deliberately violated their consciences; as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked,” 1 Timothy 1:19.

An express way to wreck your faith is by what I call “conviction ping pong.” That’s when a person is stirred by their conscience that what they’re considering or actually doing is wrong, but they “hit back” at the twinge of conscience with excuses in an attempt to justify their sin, knowing deep down that they’re really just ruses raised to try to assuage their guilt. There’s a danger of creating a “ping pong” action of answering warnings from our conscience with excuses; that danger is that persisting in “conviction ping pong” can lead to a person eventually “searing” their conscience so that they no longer hear or feel the danger. Paul wrote about this:

“Now the Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the last times some will turn away from the true faith; they will follow deceptive spirits and teachings that come from demons. These people are hypocrites and liars, and their consciences are dead,” 1 Timothy 4:1-2.

Even the late newspaper journalist, Sydney J. Harris weighed in on the danger of ignoring the warnings from our conscience: “Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a ‘necessary evil,’ it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.”

How did Paul tell Timothy to avoid a shipwreck of his faith? “Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear …” 1 Timothy 1:19a.