Your Conscience As a Guide...

Have you ever wanted to tell someone something, but haven’t? All the opportunities are there for you, but your conscience keeps you quiet? I don’t know, maybe it’s not your conscience as that can tend to infer a moral dilemma. And I suppose that dilemma isn’t the right word either, as that infers a heart felt problem.

What is our conscience? Is it, as Freud would have it, the superego (or, more literally, the "above-I"), one of the multitude of impulses composing the psyche? Is it, as the Gnostic's would have it, the pneuma, the divine spark within us that predates this creation and seeks return to the true God? Or is it, as it is most commonly understood, our better self, some combination of the two others that is informed by superior moral authority? Whatever your answer, it becomes clear that our conscience should be heeded only insofar as it derives moral authority from beyond ourselves.

I believe that, somewhat, evil is its own punishment. To commit evil is to choose to be apart from God, and so it is apart from God that the evil remain. I can imagine no torment that would be more horrible. Nothing that Dante describes in his Inferno sounds more awful than Limbo, the first and outermost circle of Hell, where virtuous pagans and un-baptized infants suffer an eternity of "desire without hope." Seen this way, our conscience is fulfilling its role only to the extent that it leads us toward God, making it indistinguishable from faith. So those who would follow their conscience without the benefit of faith are deluded. They're deluded not because they lack faith, but because they follow a course that lacks meaning in the absence of faith. Those with faith need only be concerned about whether the voice they're heeding is their legitimate conscience or one of the psyche's many other internal actors. After all, neither faith nor conscience allows us to transcend our humanity.

Is it dangerous to let only your conscience guide your actions? I would say it is very dangerous - since your "conscience" is, I believe, the results of your early 'enculturation' about what is right and wrong - often becoming ingrained well before you have any real ability to rationally critique the messages you are given.

Therefore, if your parents believe that treating members of ethnic groups different from your own as fellow humans is wrong, if you trust your conscience, you may never critically examine the messages you were given - although, if other messages you are given conflict with this, you may.

If I let my 'conscience be my guide' in certain situations, I would be in trouble! Many of my decisions are based on the golden rule 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. Some people, like career criminals, don't seem to have a conscience or they simply don't care about the consequences of their actions; for various reasons.

I don't feel like I have a strong conscience. Left to my own devices, I would do just about anything short of murder. Okay …. Sorry, I'm stretching the truth a bit, but it makes my point. I live my life on the straight and narrow simply because I don't want to hurt others, don't want to do things that are illegal...break the law and go to jail and because of religious teachings I've been subjected to since childhood.

So how did I get from asking a common question to rambling about our conscience? Is this ever going to start making sense? Good question! Bear with me. ..