Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide Series

Even secular experts recognize the existence of a human conscience. Dr. Marvin W. Berkowitz, an expert on moral development writes: “Kids have an internal conscience. It starts developing in the first few years of life and really kicks into high gear around 3 or 4 years of age. Our consciences tell us when we are about to violate (or have violated) our moral code. You can see this even in pre-schoolers who cry at their own selfishness and who try to soothe those they have hurt.” (Sanford N. McDonnell Professor of Character Education; University of Missouri-St. Louis)

Even without being taught a moral law, people are born with a sense of what is right and wrong. The Bible teaches that God provided two solid proofs that point to His existence. The first is an external witness–creation. When you understand the amazing complexity and order of the Universe in which we live, you are driven to admit there is a higher intelligence that designed all this and created it.

The other witness to the existence of God is an internal witness–conscience. The fact that we are born with this moral equipment called conscience should prove there is Someone who determines the rightness and wrongness of actions. You don’t have to read a written law to know that stealing, killing, and lying are wrong; that’s something everyone instinctively knows.

Romans 2:14-15 says, “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.”

Just as a compass points to magnetic north, we are born with a moral conscience that points to right and wrong. Your conscience doesn’t make you do right, or wrong, it just lets you know when you are about to do wrong, and it makes you suffer when you have done wrong. Conscience is like the yellow line on a two lane highway. When there is a yellow line, you know that it’s not safe to pass the car in front of you. The yellow line doesn’t keep you from passing that car; it just tells you that you shouldn’t.

2. YOUR CONSCIENCE CAN BE DEFORMED BY SIN

When a person continually ignores the dictates of his conscience, the conscience can become faulty. You can take a perfectly good compass that is pointing north, and you can hold a magnet next to the compass, and the needle will rotate and no longer be a reliable guide. The same thing happens to your conscience when you expose it to repeated sin–it no longer is reliable guide. Your conscience doesn’t become ruined instantly, it happens gradually.

Step One: Moral guidance is distorted

The first thing that happens is your sense of right and wrong becomes distorted. Your conscience is like a triangle that operates within your soul. It has three sharp corners, and when you are considering doing something wrong, the three corners stab you on the inside. However, every time you ignore or deny your conscience it’s like filing down the sharp edges of that triangle. The next time you are confronted with the same opportunity to do wrong, your conscience stabs you again, but this time the jab is not as sharp. Over time, as you continually resist the dictates of your conscience the sharp edges are worn down until you seldom feel them. Instead of being a triangle, it’s as if your conscience has become a moral beach ball bouncing around inside your soul.