Topic : Conscience

The haunting story of fourteen-year-old Rod Matthews serves as a warning to a culture gone adrift. Rod was not interested in the things that normally interest teenagers. Neither sports nor books were enough to quench his insatiable boredom. Only one thing excited him: death. He spent hours watching the video Faces of Death, a collection of film clips of people dying violently. Rod’s curiosity about death led him to want to see death personally, not just on the television or movie screen.

Eventually, he found a way to satisfy his curiosity. One winter afternoon he lured a friend out into the woods and proceeded to beat him to death with a baseball bat. During his trial for murder, the most telling remark was made by a child psychiatrist who was asked to give a clinical evaluation of Rod’s condition. The doctor’s assessment was that Rod was not insane in the conventional sense but that he simply didn’t “know right from wrong. … He [was] morally handicapped” (emphasis mine)”

Mark DeVries, Family-Based Youth Ministry, (Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 1994, p. 53

A man consulted a doctor, “I’ve been misbehaving, Doc, and my conscience is troubling me,” he complained.

“And you want something that will strengthen your willpower?” asked the doctor.

“Well, no,” said the fellow. “I was thinking of something that would weaken my conscience.”

Bits & Pieces, May 27, 1993, Page 21

I have to live with myself, and so
I want to be fit for myself to know,
I want to be able, as days go by,
Always to look myself straight in the eye;

I don?t want to stand, with the setting sun,
And hate myself for the things I?ve done.
I don?t want to keep on the closet shelf
A lot of secrets about myself,

And fool myself, as I come and go,
Into thinking that nobody else will know
The kind of a man I really am;
I don?t want to dress up myself in sham.

I want to go out with my head erect,
I want to deserve all men?s respect;
But here in the struggle for fame and pelf
I want to be able to like myself.

I don?t want to look at myself and know
That I?m bluster and bluff and empty show.
I can never hide myself from me;
I see what others may never see;

I know what others may never know,
I never can fool myself, and so,
Whatever happens, I want to be
Self-respecting and conscience free.

• “A good conscience is able to bear very much and is very cheerful in adversities. An evil conscience is always fearful and unquiet. Never rejoice except when you have done well. You shall rest sweetly if your heart does not accuse you.
• “Sinners never have true joy or feel inward peace, because ‘there is no peace for the wicked,’ says the Lord (Isaiah 57:21).
• The glory of the good is in their consciences, and not in the tongues of others, The gladness of the just is of God, and in God; and their joy is of the truth.
• “A person will easily be content and pacified whose conscience is pure. If you consider what you are within, you will not care what others say concerning you. People consider the deeds, but God weighs the intentions.
• “To be always doing well and to esteem little of one’s self is the sign of a humble soul.
• “For not he who commends himself is approved, but whom the Lord commends,” says Paul (2 Corinthians 10:18). To walk inwardly with God, and not to be kept abroad by any outward affection, is the state of a spiritual person.”
• “Conscience is that faculty in me which attaches itself to the highest that I know, and tells me what the highest I know demands that I do.
• “It is the eye of the soul which looks out either toward God or toward what it regards as the highest authority.
• “If I am in the habit of steadily facing toward God, my conscience will always introduce God’s perfect law and indicate what I should do.
• “The point is, will I obey? I have to make an effort to keep my conscience so sensitive that I walk without offense. I should be living in such perfect sympathy with God’s Son that in every circumstance the spirit of my mind is renewed.
• “The one thing that keeps the conscience sensitive to Him is the habit of being open to God on the inside.
• “When there is any debate, quit. There is no debate possible when conscience speaks.”

Christian Personal Ethics, C.F.H. Henry, Eerdmans, 1957, p. 509ff

Throughout his administration, Abraham Lincoln was a president under fire, especially during the scarring years of the Civil War. And though he knew he would make errors of office, he resolved never to compromise his integrity. So strong was this resolve that he once said, “I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.”

Today In The Word, August, 1989, p. 21

Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a “necessary evil,” it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil. - Sidney J. Harris

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Conscience is that faculty in me which attaches itself to the highest that I know, and tells me what the highest I know demands that I do. It is the eye of the soul which looks out either toward God or toward what it regards as the highest authority. If I am in the habit of steadily facing toward God, my conscience will always introduce God’s perfect law and indicate what I should do. The point is, will I obey? I have to make an effort to keep my conscience so sensitive that I walk without offense. I should be living in such perfect sympathy with God’s Son that in every circumstance the spirit of my mind is renewed.

The one thing that keeps the conscience sensitive to Him is the habit of being open to God on the inside. When there is any debate, quit. There is no debate possible when conscience speaks. - Oswald Chambers

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When Sgt. Ray Baarz of the Midvale, Utah, police department opened his wallet the other day, he noticed his driver’s license had expired. Embarrassed at having caught himself red-handed, he had no alternative. He calmly and deliberately pulled out his ticket book and wrote himself a citation. Then Baarz took the ticket to the city judge who fined him five dollars. “How could I give a ticket to anyone else for an expired license in the future if I didn’t cite myself?” Baarz asked.

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As someone else has said, “She won’t listen to her conscience. She doesn’t want to take advice from a total stranger.”

Bob Goddard, St. Louis Globe-Democrat

The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience. Leo Tolstoy

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Conscience tells us that we ought to do right, but it does not tell us what right is—that we are taught by God’s word. H.C. Trumbull

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The trouble with the advice, “Follow your conscience” is that most people follow it like someone following a wheelbarrow—they direct it wherever they want it to go, and then follow behind.

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Did you know that ever since 1811 (when someone who had defrauded the government anonymously sent $5 to Washington D.C.) the U.S. Treasury has operated a Conscience Fund? Since that time almost $3.5 million has been received from guilt-ridden citizens.

Swindoll, The Quest For Character, Multnomah, p. 70

Few executives can afford the luxury of a conscience. A business that defined right and wrong in terms that would satisfy a well-developed contemporary conscience could not survive. When the directors and managers enter the board room to debate policy, they park their private consciences outside. If they didn't they would fail in their responsibility to the company that pays them. The crucial question in board rooms today is not, "Are we morally obligated to do it"? but rather "What will happen if we don't do it"? or "How will this affect the rate of return on our investment"? No company employs a vice president in charge of ethical standards, and sooner or later the conscientious executive is likely to come up against a stone wall of corporate indifference to private moral values. In the real world of today's business, he is almost surely a troubled man.

Dan Miller, Chicago Daily News, July 29, 1970

The early morning crash of a Brink's armored truck on a Miami highway in January held up a mirror to our nation's cultural decline. While the driver and a fellow Brink's officer lay bruised and bleeding, a festive atmosphere broke loose outside the truck as thousands of dollars blew n the breeze.

Motorists stopped in rush hour traffic, then scooped up cash before resuming their commutes to the office. Thousands of crisp bills and shiny coins rained down an overpass onto a Miami neighborhood. Below, mothers with babies grabbed coins and piled them into strollers. An elderly woman filled a box. A young school girl dumped her book bag and loaded it with coins and bills.

Onlookers and participants had plenty of justifications and rationalizations.

"Which is more moral,? asked one resident of the impoverished neighborhood, 'to return the money and leave your children improvised-or maybe send them to college and enrich the family for generations"'

"We deserve a little something,? said another.

"The Lord was willing for it to happen here,? one man commented. 'there's a lot of poverty. It was a miracle.'

Police estimated that more than 100 people helped themselves to money during the melee. Middle class on their way to work made off with thousands.

Was this a shocking event? It shouldn't have been. What happened in Miami was born out of a cultural drift that has left us unsure of absolute right and wrong or at least unwilling to live by such a code. We reward rule-breakers and ridicule those who extol morality. Life's ultimate reward is money and having it is the end to our worries.

Ralph Reed said that the 1996 presidential election was about the character of the American people. Maybe the Miami incident says more about that character than we care to consider.

There were some heroes on that day in Miami. Several people came forward and turned money over to authorities.

"I have children, and I needed to set a good example,? said Faye McFadden, a mother who earns $5.00 an hour at a department store. "It was important for me to do what I felt was right.'

Herbert Tarvin, 11, came forward after his teacher at St. Francis Xavier Elementary School lectured students about making the right decision. He went to police with 85 cents.

"I knew it was wrong for me to keep anything,? Herbert told a television reporter, "and I knew if I kept it I would have been stealing.'

Manny Rodriguez, a firefighter who recovered a bag containing $330,000 in cash, summed things up pretty well.

"People were almost killed in that truck and people are calling it a blessing from God. That wasn't a blessing; it was a test. The rich, the poor, the middle class-everybody should have a conscience.?

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