Steps to God – the conscience and the will
Steps to God
We spoke last time about the conscience and its lack of infallibility, and the influences that affect it: knowledge, environment, guidance, leadership, and traditions. Today we speak about
the conscience and the will¹
The conscience, like any of the human faculties, can weaken and can grow strong. It can be enlightened by the Holy Spirit, by the sayings of the Fathers, by preaching and teaching, and by the spiritual life… and it can also weaken and fall asleep, with self-interest dominating it, and the will dominating it.
How easy it is for the conscience to become disturbed, for its judgments to change, and for its balances to be overturned—like a teacher whose conscience drives him to help a student cheat, or a doctor who, out of pity for a woman, aborts her, or performs an operation to cover up a girl who has lost her virginity, or writes a medical certificate for someone who is not sick in order to help him… or like a mother who covers for her children to save them from their father’s punishment, concealing their mistakes with lies…
What is strange about all these people is that their consciences do not trouble them nor rebuke them. On the contrary, they feel that they have done something good that brings joy to their hearts…
The absence of the conscience’s rebuke for wrongdoing indicates a defect in it. As for its rejoicing in wrongdoing, this indicates an inversion in all its balances!!
The conscience can be shaped according to a person’s principles and ideals, and it changes according to the change of those ideals. Therefore, its judgment is not always sound, and thus people’s consciences differ and vary. What one person sees as right, another sees as evil, and vice versa.
Emotions may interfere in the judgments of consciences and in shaping them.
One who loves a person may lie and exaggerate in praising him while feeling at peace in his heart. He may lie much to save him from a predicament, and his sick conscience encourages him, considering that he is rendering a service to a friend… and thus how easy it is for many to fall into the principle that “the end justifies the means.” Their consciences accept many wrong means on the pretext that the goal is noble!!
The conscience may become sick in its judgments and in its emotions, so it does not rebuke in situations that deserve rebuke, or it reproaches in a very gentle manner in serious matters. Some have said: “The conscience is a just judge, but weak. Its weakness stands in the way of executing its judgments.” But the greatest difficulty is when the conscience is weak and at the same time also unjust!
Therefore, do not rely on your conscience alone. Rather, resort to the arbitration of other sound and impartial consciences, far from the influence of personal interests, environment, and leadership…
Spiritual guidance is one conscience that straightens the path of the penitent’s conscience. As the Scripture says: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the ways of death” (Prov 16:25).
There is a broad conscience that swallows a camel, and a narrow conscience that strains out a gnat.
The broad conscience can find justification for many mistakes. As for the narrow conscience, it is a scrupulous conscience that imagines evil where there is no evil, magnifies the value of mistakes, falls into a guilt complex, sees itself responsible for matters that have absolutely nothing to do with it, and is sometimes overtaken by depression and despair. It thinks that there is no benefit in all its striving, that it is perishing, and that it has fallen into blasphemy against the Holy Spirit!!
As for the sound conscience, it resembles a pharmacist’s scale: excess harms, and deficiency harms. How beautiful is the saying of Scripture: “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous—both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord” (Prov 15:17). So do not consider it a virtue in you to defend a guilty person by trying to prove that he did not sin!! Truth is truth. As for seeking mercy, it does not prevent acknowledging that there is a mistake…
Otherwise, we lose discernment between good and evil, under the pretext of not falling into judgment, or merely out of pity for the wrongdoers!
The conscience, on its path, may collide with many things, the first of which is the will.
If the will inclines toward sin and wants to carry it out, and the conscience tries to prevent it, the will works to silence the conscience or to flee from its voice. A struggle arises between the conscience and the will: either the conscience prevails, or the will prevails and carries out the wrongdoing.
The conscience is merely a voice that directs the will toward good and keeps it away from evil, but it does not have the power to compel it…
It is enough that it be merely a voice, crying continually in the mind and heart of a person: this matter is wrong, thus bearing witness to the truth…
John the Baptist did not compel Herod to do good; he was merely a voice crying in his face that it was not lawful for him to take his brother’s wife. Herod did not listen to the Baptist, but that great prophet remained a conscience for the whole people, crying out in the face of the corrupt king: it is not lawful for you.
The will may try to silence the conscience under the pretext of its psychological peace!
It does not want the conscience to be a cause of disturbing its inner calm, causing it to lose its peace and burden its psyche; therefore, it silences it.
This sick will is concerned with the comfort of the soul, not the comfort of the spirit. The spirit finds rest in obedience to the Lord and in purity of heart, and welcomes rebuke in this, unlike the soul which is troubled by rebuke…
The will may flee from the conscience and not give it an opportunity…
It flees from self-examination and from the rebuke of conscience by constant busyness. If the voice of conscience comes to it from an external source—whether a father, a friend, or a teacher—it tries to change the course of the conversation to another topic, because the voice of conscience troubles it, so it flees from it.
The conscience may find that there is no room for it, so it becomes submissive and silent… and over time it becomes accustomed to silence and does not interfere in the works of the will…
The will remains alone in the field, doing whatever it wishes, devoting itself to its desires, and giving no opportunity to the conscience… so it becomes an absent conscience, or a hidden conscience, or a sleeping conscience, and its guiding work is suspended.
Many means help the conscience to remain silent: various forms of amusement and entertainment, the dominance of the pleasure of sin, constant busyness, the futility of rebuke, the despair of the conscience regarding the possibility of action, or the continual promise of postponing repentance. Thus it appears to the conscience that there is no benefit, the will triumphs over the conscience, and it remains in sin—because the conscience is merely a guide and does not compel the will to accept its counsel.
The conscience is like traffic signals on the road: they may light up red for the driver to stop, but they do not compel him to stop!
How easy it is for a driver to violate the red traffic light and continue on his way, receive a ticket, and not care…
The conscience is merely a guide; execution is in the hand of the will.
So if the will deviates and silences the conscience, does the person perish?
Here the will of God intervenes and sends His grace to save the person from his will…
As long as the human conscience is weak and the deviated will is dominant, there must be an external power that intervenes to save him. Here enters the work of the Holy Spirit of God, and here appear the fruits of the prayers of the angels and the saints, and grace works to awaken the heedless person and soften his hardened heart…
An example of this is what happened to Mary of Egypt, who was in the depths of sin, not thinking at all of repentance, but longing for new sins in which many would fall.
But grace drew her in the city of Jerusalem, and she quickly responded to the work of grace and repented, and even became a great saint, worthy to be blessed by Abba Zosima…
Grace may intervene alone, through a visitation of the Holy Spirit of God, or it may intervene based on a prayer seeking God’s help.
The prayer may be from the sinner himself, crying out to God saying: “Turn me, and I shall be turned” (Jer 31:18). Or it may be from his loved ones around him, praying for his salvation. Or it may be from the spirits of the holy angels or the spirits of those who have departed.
Thus, the matter requires prayers from us so that divine help may intervene.
People are not saved by sermons alone. Sermons may move the conscience, yet the will may not move toward good!
We are in need of hearts that are poured out before God in prayer, so that He may work in sinners and draw them to His way.
For the Apostle says: “For to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice” (Rom 7:18–19).
There is a beautiful phrase in the book of the prophet Zechariah about Joshua, who was standing in filthy garments, and Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him. Then one of the hosts of the Lord came and said to Satan: “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?” (Zech 3:2). And the Lord saved Joshua.
With the intervention of grace, the human being remains free as well… he may respond to grace, or not respond. He may open to the Lord who knocks at his door. He may accept the work of the Spirit, or grieve the Spirit, or quench the Spirit’s fervor, or resist the Spirit!!
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An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in Al-Keraza Magazine – Ninth Year – Issue Thirty-Seven – 15-9-1978
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