Paul told a Roman governor, "I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man" (Acts 24:16). A conscience is a gift. It can stop us in our tracks, give us courage when everyone else goes along, and warn us before we do harm. But a conscience can also be mistaken, dulled or misled.
These two stories about conscience, retold in our own words, look at both sides. The first is the true story of a television interpreter in Ukraine whose conscience would not let her pass on a lie. The second is a simple picture from the Christian writer John White that explains why even a sincere conscience needs the right light shining on it. Each ends with a takeaway for preaching or personal reflection.
Stories in this post:
Natalia Dmytruk: The Small Screen of Truth
This is a true story from the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004. Accounts differ slightly on the exact date of the broadcast; we follow the main published reports.
In 2004 Viktor Yushchenko ran for the presidency of Ukraine against the candidate backed by the government of the day. The campaign was bitter and dangerous. In September of that year Yushchenko fell violently ill, and doctors later confirmed he had been poisoned with dioxin. His face was left badly scarred and swollen, and he came close to losing his life. Even so, he refused to withdraw from the race.
When the second round of voting took place in November 2004, independent observers and exit polls suggested that Yushchenko was ahead. But the official count told a different story. The results were manipulated, and the state-run television channel, UT-1, duly announced that the government's candidate had won and that the challenger Victor Yushchenko had been decisively defeated.
In the lower right-hand corner of the screen was a small box. Inside it sat Natalia Dmytruk, the channel's sign language interpreter, whose job was to translate the news for deaf viewers. She was expected to sign exactly what the presenter said. That day she did not.
As the newsreader repeated the official results, Dmytruk ignored the script. With her hands she spoke directly to her audience. She told deaf viewers across Ukraine that the results announced by the election commission were lies, that she was ashamed to translate them, and that Yushchenko was their president. She added that they might not see her again.
Most of the hearing audience had no idea what had just happened. But the deaf community understood every word. According to the way the story is usually told, deaf viewers began sending text messages to friends and family, and word of her quiet act of defiance spread quickly. Her colleagues at the station were stirred as well. Around 250 journalists at UT-1 stopped work in protest, and within days the channel began reporting the election far more honestly.
Over the following weeks the Orange Revolution swept the country. Hundreds of thousands of people, by some estimates as many as a million, poured into Independence Square in Kyiv wearing orange, the colour of Yushchenko's campaign. They camped in the snow, sang, prayed and refused to go home. Ukraine's Supreme Court annulled the result, a new vote was held on 26 December 2004, and Yushchenko won with about 52 per cent of the vote. He became president in January 2005.
The writer Philip Yancey later reflected on this story in his book What Good Is God? For him, the picture of a small screen of truth in the corner of the big screen became an image of the church. The church, he said, does not control the big screen, and when it has tried to, it has usually made a mess of things. The big screen keeps telling us that what matters is beauty, money, power and winning. Then, like the interpreter in the corner, Jesus quietly says something different: do not believe the big screen. In Yancey's words, Jesus is saying in effect, "Don't believe the big screen, they're lying." It is the poor who are blessed, and the mourners, and those who hunger and thirst for what is right, and the persecuted. Those who think they are on top will end up at the bottom, and those who feel they are at the bottom will end up on top. After all, what good is it to gain the whole world and lose your soul?
Takeaway: Natalia Dmytruk had a tiny corner of the screen and a script she was paid to follow. Her conscience would not let her sign a lie, and that small act helped change a nation. You may never control the big screen either, but you always control what you are willing to say with your own voice. "We must obey God rather than human beings!" (Acts 5:29). Where is your conscience asking you to stop translating someone else's lie?
Source: Philip Yancey, What Good Is God?, pages 184 to 186; with additional background from reports on Nataliya Dmytruk and the 2004 Orange Revolution.
The Sundial: Why Conscience Needs the Right Light
The Christian psychiatrist and writer John White once compared the human conscience to a sundial.
Think about how a sundial works. It is a simple instrument: a flat dial marked with the hours and a raised pointer that casts a shadow. When the sun shines on it, the shadow falls across the right mark, and the sundial tells you the correct time. It does exactly what it was made to do.
In the same way, our conscience is meant to point us in the right direction in life. When it works properly, it nudges us towards what is good and warns us away from what is wrong.
But there is a catch. A sundial only works when the sun is shining on it. Stand it in the moonlight and the shadow will still fall somewhere, but it will point to the wrong time. Shine a torch on it at night and it will give you a reading that looks just as confident and is just as wrong. The instrument has not changed. The light has. And when the wrong light falls on it, the sundial becomes unreliable.
Our consciences can be like that. Sometimes the light shining on them is not the voice of God at all. It might be the expectations of our family, the values of our culture, the opinions of our friends, or even the voice of the enemy. Under that kind of light, conscience starts giving false readings. We can feel crushing guilt over things that are not wrong at all, and feel no guilt whatsoever about things that really are.
That is why a sincere conscience is not enough on its own. Plenty of people have done terrible things with a perfectly clear conscience, and plenty of others have been tormented by guilt that God never placed on them. The key for the Christian is to keep our conscience continually lit by God's Spirit and shaped by God's Word, so that the shadow falls where it should.
Takeaway: Paul could say that his conscience was clear and in the same breath admit that this did not make him innocent; it is the Lord who judges (1 Corinthians 4:4). Ask yourself which light is shining on your conscience right now. Is it the approval of others, the habits of your culture, or the steady light of God's truth? "Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path" (Psalm 119:105).
Source: Reported in John White, The Fight.
Final thoughts
One woman refused to let a lie pass through her hands, and a simple sundial reminds us that even an honest instrument can mislead in the wrong light. Together, these stories about conscience call us to listen to that inner voice, and to keep it tuned to God rather than to the crowd.
What is your conscience saying to you this week, and whose light is it reading by?
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These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.
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