In this lecture, His Holiness Pope Shenouda III discusses how a person behaves in life based on internal and external forces, and affirms that the conscience is the guide and judge that intervenes before the deed, during it, and after it to decide whether the deed is right or corrupt. The ideal situation is for mind and conscience to walk the same path, but reality is that conscience may be just yet weak or sleeping or disturbed, so the soul needs a guide or an external power.

Causes of a sleeping or weakened conscience
The conscience sleeps or weakens because of profit, desires and lusts, or envy and jealousy, or hardness of heart, or ignorance, or the influence of companions and environment, or as a result of corrupt doctrines and philosophies that mislead people. Likewise various temptations — money, position, pleasure — can put the conscience to sleep and make it justify evil.

Consequences of a sleeping or confused conscience
When conscience sleeps a person walks in the steps of sin without feeling, and may reach crimes or tragedies as in the examples of Scripture. The deceived conscience may justify means in the name of good and invent justificatory philosophies (like “the end justifies the means”) and so the person falls into errors thinking he does good.

How to awaken and strengthen conscience
Conscience needs awareness and correct knowledge — revelation, the law, the teaching of prophets and apostles, and the church’s prayer, a spiritual sermon, confession, a good guide, and the grace of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes fear and punishment are merciful means from God to awaken conscience and save people from destruction.

Biblical and historical examples
The speaker cites Joseph the Righteous who knew evil by his conscience, Saul whose conscience slept because of jealousy of David, David whose conscience slept because of lust then was awakened by the prophet Nathan, Ahab and his plots, and the cases of Moses, Daniel, Paul, Peter, and John the Baptist as situations that show the ways conscience works or awakens or weakens.

Spiritual and educational dimension (Coptic Orthodox faithful perspective)
The goal is that a person possess a righteous conscience before God, a conscience educated with wisdom and not partial, led by love of God and grace not by instincts or interests. The church and the saints and prayers and spiritual sacraments exist to cultivate the conscience and protect it from being overcome by pleasures and ignorance.

Practical conclusion
One must fix stable values, educate conscience with correct knowledge, prayers, confession, and parental/spiritual discipline; so that conscience does not sleep or be led to evil, and thus the person lives rightly before God and people.

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