Jiminy Cricket

I have never read the children’s book, Pinocchio, by Carlo Collodi but have seen the Disney film on more that one occasion.  Please don't judge me... My knowledge of the story, therefore, is from the derivative and not the original.  But the derivative, at least, has some interesting features.  It is the story of someone becoming real - overcoming his wooden and later beastly nature and letting the new man (or boy in this case) have ascendency.  As such it is an interesting picture of the Christian life.  Pinocchio, like perhaps Pilgrim in Bunyan’s classic, encounters much that looks attractive but ultimately enslaves, and ultimately overcomes.

There in another part that I also find interesting.  As a puppet, Pinocchio has no conscience and is given one by the Blue Fairy in the person of Jiminy Cricket.  The cricket character does appear in the original book, by the way. “Jiminy Cricket” is one of those phrases, minced oaths we call them, that are uttered when our conscience prevents us from using the name of Jesus inappropriately.  The more common minced oath here in Vermont is "Jeezum Crow" - initial letters say it all.  It rather makes me wonder, what with Jiminy’s initials, if this was not intended at the outset and that the creators were making some assertion about the conscience and its connection to Jesus.  But that is mere speculation, and I don’t think that Christian catechesis was Walt Disney’s intention in making the film (although it is a perhaps unintended result).

But what is conscience anyway?  It is that inner voice that tells us that something is right or wrong.  Typically I think of it more as the voice that warns against the wrong.  But what does the word mean?  I asked this question in reading the word in Hebrews recently.  In speaking of the shortcomings of the law and existing sacrificial system compared to the sacrifice of Jesus, the writer says:

According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation.

(Hebrews 9:9-10 ESV)

The English word is a compound word from Latin; con- meaning together or with and science meaning knowledge.  The Greek work used in the Hebrews text is nearly exactly the same, a derivative of sun-eido, which means to see or know together.  So to have a conscience is to know something about oneself together with someone else - to agree with someone else about one’s actions. But to see or know together with WHOM?

The ancient Greeks invented the word, which is used by the writer to the Hebrews.  I do not know whom their WHOM was.  But I suspect, as I recall my Plato and other ancient philosophers, that they may have intended it to mean agreement or knowledge with the known moral order of the universe, or an expression of just or appropriate sentiments in light of same moral order.

Christians would agree with this, but add something more.  Because our WHOM is actually a person.  God in Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit IS the inner voice.  To have a conscience is to know together and agree with Him what is good and what is bad. 

So in the end, Jiminy Cricket, or rather the One for whom he stands in the story, is our conscience.