[Conscience]
Dear Donagh,
I'm looking at my grandchildren now and I'm very struck by the fact that they love going to school. I'm thinking back over all the things that were beaten into us in school in my time. Why were they teaching innocent children how to examine their conscience, 7 year olds, when that was miles beyond them? We used to hear all about consciences long ago but we hardly ever hear about them now, unless people are talking about corrupt politicians and business people. I think I was born in the wrong times. Joe
Dear Joe,
Dickens once said, “I hear of consciences much too often to believe in them.” When we talk a great deal about a subject, it’s quite possible that the talk is becoming a substitute for the real thing. Conscience is a key-work in every discussion of morals, but like the ‘x’ in algebra it can be very familiar while remaining an unknown quantity. This ‘x’ then means something different to different people, so it’s important to look for a degree of clarity. One thing that doesn’t change is that 7-year-olds grow up, and some of them become politicians and business people – two professions that people often have in mind, somehow, when it comes to questions of conscience. So it’s never too early to start.
Sometimes the ways in which a word is used are quite puzzling. When people have a good reason for doing or not doing something, they give you the reason; but when they can give no reason at all, they often tell you their conscience has decided for them. This may be because we can retain into adult life the child’s idea of conscience as a little voice inside you, somehow independent of you. It comes in handy when we want to steer clear of unpalatable facts or hide your real reason for doing something.
This fanciful notion becomes unnecessary the moment you begin to see conscience as just another word for open-eyed moral decision. There’s nothing hidden or mysterious about it in principle. Our consciences are not purely private, because we ourselves are not purely private beings. Everything we do and say affects other people and is affected by them. We are “members of God’s household” (Eph 2:19). No doubt, God can enlighten a person’s conscience directly, but he also does it through the ‘household’ – other people, your family, your neighbours, the Christian community. the wide world.
We all have an eye for minimum requirements: how much can I get away with? But our life, surely, should be about maximum possibilities. If conscience becomes a game of brinkmanship it is better to call it by another name. It is a great loss that the word conscience so often calls up only images of guilt, fear, or oppression, or being trapped in something you only faintly believe in but are afraid to disbelieve. All this, by itself, would make you a broken spirit - not improved, but made weak, sickly, and full of suspicion of everything strong and happy. The Christian spirit connects conscience with growth, life, courage, becoming what you really are: “you are God's children.” It’s strange how we think that conscience is about things we have done wrong, and not about what we have neglected to do. When we speak of guilt, we should see it in a correct light: not as slaves expecting an impersonal and merciless punishment for crimes they don’t even understand, but as children who know that their father who loves them as they are also wants them to grow up.
I hope this throws a little light on it for you, Joe.
Donagh