Why Do We Have a Conscience?

Throughout history, the involvement of conscience in the affairs of mankind has been enormous. Many men and women suffered for what they considered to be right rather than taking the easy way out. They fought for justice and sought to help the oppressed. They spoke out against what they considered to be wrong and influenced the laws of their land. Some even gave their lives. And then there is each one of us. Don’t we expect our brothers and sisters in Christ to have a conscience when dealing with one another? After all, we are supposed to have the mind of Christ. Just imagine what the world would be like if people did not have a conscience! But then, what exactly is that conscience? Do all people have it, or only some? Is it a part of us from birth (nature), or is it acquired through our upbringing (nurture)? Why do some people have extremely sensitive consciences while others seem to have no conscience at all? These are interesting questions.

Allport, for example, wrote of a generic conscience that enhances one's life. Freud parallelled it with his idea of superego (a source of morality and moral judgement), and Fromm distinguished between two types of conscience: a fear-based, authoritarian infantile sense of right and wrong, and a more mature, rational, sensitive, humanistic one. But despite their differences, psychologists would agree that everyone is born with the capacity to develop moral character, which influences our conscience and progressively takes on shape as our cognitive capacities develop from infancy to adulthood and beyond. This capacity, which enables us to make judgements based on values, develops as a result of interactions between our own desires to earn acceptance and avoid punishment, and the influence of socialising agents such as parents, peers and wider society.

The Bible gives a more definite explanation as to the origin of our conscience. At the very beginning of mankind’s history, God gave Adam the following command: “… of the tree of the knowledge of good an evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen.2:17). And Satan added “…God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen.3:5). Adam and Eve may have believed that God wanted to deprive them of something good, that he wanted to withhold knowledge from them, but in reality His prohibition was meant for their protection. Why? Because once they knew both good and evil, they would not be able to abstain from doing evil. Contrary to what Satan had said, they would not be like God, because He alone is capable of doing good only and not evil. 

 

Jesus confirmed this by saying that “No one is good but One, that is, God” (Matt.19:17). When Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree, their conscience was activated immediately: “…the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings” (Gen.3:7). Their conscience told them that they had done wrong, and they “hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God” (Gen.3:8). And ever since then, mankind has been hiding from God. After all, who likes to have their wrongdoings exposed? It’s so much easier to blame others, just as Eve blamed the serpent (Satan), and Adam blamed Eve and ultimately God by referring to “the woman whom YOU gave to be with me” (Gen.3:12-13 - emphasis mine). 

 

Our conscience is therefore the inbuilt knowledge that some behaviour is good and other behaviour is evil. It is a God-given moral potential rooted in the image of God, which progressively unfolds as our cognitive capacities develop. We cannot escape the fact that we are moral beings, and the Bible is clear on this point: “…when Gentiles, who do not have the [Jewish] law, by nature do the things contained in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my [Paul’s] gospel” (Rom.2:14-15).

 

Yet there exists an interesting phenomenon: although people have the faculty called conscience, the judgements determined by that conscience can vary greatly. A native person might be honoured for being a headhunter and severely punished for doing something our culture might consider acceptable.  Another person may be honoured for being utterly deceitful and despised for being honest. This proves that all human beings distinguish between good and evil, yet their perception of what is good or evil can vary greatly. Even gangs and outlaws have a set of values and their own code of conduct.

This shows that our conscience is a moral capacity we are born with. It only develops into specific values and ideas as we grow up and are influenced by people and culture. This learning takes place as we socialise with people who are important to us. We internalise their expectations (standards, ideals) and merge them with our own desires until we finally arrive at our own perceptions of right and wrong. But these are by no means fixed. If the impact of external factors is strong enough, and a person has the necessary internal motivation to change, their moral code can be adjusted.
 

Why is it that the shaping of our conscience is so dependent on our surroundings? We are influenced by two strong motivators from an early age: love and fear. We love and admire our parents (or some other significant person), and we fear their punishment or rejection if we fall short. As we grow older, we increasingly look to the standards of peers and the broader society. This means we normally experience a good conscience when we do what we have been taught to be right.
 

Unfortunately, people can also develop a false 'bad' conscience, which is unhealthy. Therapists are all too aware that angry, unloving and punitive environments are likely to foster emotions of false guilt. When people who are important to a child display unloving, punishment-driven attitudes, the child usually takes these on board and merges them with their own inherent sense of moral justice. As a result, the child then develops inappropriate corrective attitudes and emotions. Severe false guilt feelings, for example, are often found in depressive and obsessive-compulsive personalities. When child education focuses on loving disciplinary actions, on the other hand, it will produce a love-based set of corrective attitudes in the child and enable them to experience true guilt only when they have done something to hurt another person. Problems of conscience are usually the result of developmental disturbances, as people fail to internalise acceptable standards, or as they repress their inherent moral nature and develop antisocial or sociopathic personality styles because of inappropriate values.

The attitudes of our conscience are therefore shaped by upbringing, education, and other external influences. Unfortunately, this also means that media exposure, advertising and associated peer pressure easily exploit children, teens, and even adults. How important it is to be selective in what we allow to enter our minds and affections, so that our conscience can be shaped according to Godly values instead of the values of secular society!

It is for this reason that the Bible emphasises the upbringing of children. The Old Testament advises parents to teach their children the Law of God in and through all of life’s circumstances (Deut. 11:18-21), and the New Testament entreats God’s children not to be conformed to this world, but to be conformed instead to God’s standards. This requires a renewing of the mind in accordance with Scripture (Rom. 12:1-2) and a focus on those things that are true, noble, just, lovely and praiseworthy (Phil. 4:8). It is in following this advice, and by having their conscience directed by Him, that His children can prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
 

The Bible also teaches that the functions of conscience are to convict us of wrongdoing (John 8:9) and to bear witness to our doing right (Romans 9:1), thus guiding our behaviour. However, some people may have a weaker conscience than others due to a lack of understanding. We find an example of this in 1 Corinthians 8:7-12, where some believe that eating meat offered to idols is unlawful, whereas others don't have a problem with it. Paul advised that this is not a problem before God because idols have no power (1 Cor. 8:4-6), but he insisted that love would not force this understanding on others who would violate their conscience by eating, which would be sin to them.
 

But best of all, the Bible tells us that the blood of Christ cleanses our consciences from sins, so that we may serve the living God with a CLEAR CONSCIENCE (Hebrews 9:24 and 10:22). This is our positional standing before God when we are His children - how good is that!