Holy Scriptures and the conscience
Living as Christian
Nobody denies that the conscience can be molded, shaped and also wrongly formed by various circumstances. But the ability to distinguish between good and bad is generally inborn. Of course, this does not include every detail of all possible variations. Our conscience can also be compared to our linguistic capability, which is common to all humans but realized in different languages.
Holy Scriptures and the conscience
The Bible often uses the term "heart" where we talk of "conscience". This means that the decision of the conscience issues from the center of our human personality. So it is not only a matter of the intellect, the will or the emotions, but comes from the depth of the human being (see Romans 2,14,15).
Since the decision of the conscience emerges from "the heart of man" and his whole being is involved in it, the individual has the obligation to follow the voice of his conscience. And this cannot be touched by any other person. The conscience is the last resort beyond which there is no right of appeal. God does not judge us according to what we outwardly do, but by "what proceeds from the heart" (Matthew 15,18).
Formation of the conscience
Nobody can relieve us of the decision of our conscience, not even the Church. It is imperative to develop the conscience and care for it, since these decisions are so important and unavoidable. There are three developmental stages: habit (children imitate parents without judging for themselves whether things are good or bad); identification (inner acceptance of norms after continuously having witnessed their application by others); the mature conscience (judging and questioning role-models and authorities resulting in responsible decisions made by ourselves).
For many people, the development stops at the second stage. Even as adults, they remain dependent on some authority and are afraid to make their own conclusions and take personal responsibility. For this reason, parents should not simply give their children strict instructions and prohibit things, but try to lead them to understand what is good.
The best way for our conscience to develop and eventually reach maturity is to keep it active, similarly to a student driver who develops a feel for the car not so much in driving school, but through driving practice. However, the ability of the conscience to reach clear decisions can be impeded or fully obstructed through negligence, idleness or repeated unscrupulous actions. We are easily tempted to falsify the voice of our conscience in order to gain personal advantage. On the other hand, exaggerated anxiety may result in an overly-scrupulous conscience which suspects everything and everybody of being evil.
The conscience, an inborn compass
Living as Christian
Human beings
realize that God put them in the middle of these realities and therefore they are not strangers in the world, but trustees and custodians who can see their own interest in God's creation. Non-believers often feel that they are the only ones who really take the world seriously. But if people recognize in all these circumstances the call of God, they will develop a strong sense of responsibility toward everything.
Humans have always tried, to their own detriment, to make themselves the norm of all things. We have all heard slogans like: "Whatever is useful to the people is good"; or: "It is the purpose which makes the means holy". With these principles we easily lose the standard for proper order in life and harm ourselves. What looks like a special love for the world in the beginning proves later to be the ruin of human society.
And with this we come to an important thought: It is really not that easy for us to decipher the reality in which we live and to recognize here and now the behavior that is asked of us. Our ability to identify clearly may be dimmed by social or economic circumstances, but also by individual weakness and indolence. Everybody knows how hard it can be to fight for what is good and how simple it is to make excuses. "It is easy to believe what we wish to believe".
But two valid norms help our ability to recognize and identify: our own moral judgment, which is called our conscience, and the manifestation of the will of God in the Revelations of the Old and New Testament. Let us discuss this now.
The conscience, an inborn compass
Every human being, believer or non-believer, can distinguish between good and bad. Nature has given him a feeling, a kind of "ethical instinct" for what he is supposed to do. This natural ability is called "conscience".
When a defenseless child is ill-treated in our presence, "something" within us makes us feel spontaneously and distinctly that this is mean and bad and we are prompted to intervene. If we do not act for lack of courage, this will bother us for a long time.
Our conscience is comparable to a compass which shows us the way, like a radar detector announcing imminent danger. Prior to decisions it warns or spurs us on and afterwards, it causes joy or uneasiness (remorse). Over the last 150 years, numerous objections have been raised against the natural existence of the human conscience. Darwin, Nietzsche and Freud, for instance, maintained that it is not an inherited capability, but one that evolves according to historic developments, milieu and education, so that our conscience can be manipulated.
....life and faces (cartoon puzzle) lve
