The Conscience

Conscience is a faculty of the human spirit—subtle, luminous, discerning good from evil.

This faculty discerns good from evil more clearly than the mind.

It is harder to deceive the conscience than the mind.

Even with a mind that has been deceived and fortified by a sin-loving will, conscience long continues to struggle.

Conscience is the natural law.[1]

Conscience guided humanity before the written Law. Fallen humanity gradually adopted false conceptions of God, of good and evil, and the falsely-named reason communicated its error to the conscience. The written Law became a necessity for guidance toward the true knowledge of God and toward a life pleasing to God.

The teaching of Christ, sealed by holy baptism, heals the conscience from the duplicity with which sin had infected it (Heb. 10:22). The right action of conscience, restored to us, is maintained and elevated by following the teaching of Christ.

The healthy state and right action of conscience are possible only within the bosom of the Orthodox Church, because every erroneous thought that is adopted has an influence on the conscience: it leads the conscience away from its right action.

Willful sins darken, dull, stifle, and lull the conscience to sleep.

Every sin not cleansed by repentance leaves a harmful impression on the conscience.

A continual and willful life of sin as it were kills the conscience.

To kill the conscience completely is impossible. It will accompany a person to the fearful judgment of Christ: there it will accuse the one who disregarded it.

According to the explanation of the holy Fathers, the “adversary” of man mentioned in the Gospel is the conscience (Mt. 5:25[1]).

Indeed: it is an adversary! For it resists every unlawful undertaking of ours.

Keep peace with this adversary on your way to heaven, during your earthly life, so that it may not become your accuser at the time when your eternal lot is being decided.

Scripture says: “A faithful witness delivers the soul from evil” (Prov. 14:25). The faithful witness is an unblemished conscience: it will deliver the soul that heeds its counsel from sins before the coming of death, and from eternal torment after death.

As the blade of a knife is sharpened on a stone, so the conscience is sharpened by Christ: it is enlightened by the study and honed by the fulfillment of the Gospel’s commandments.

A conscience enlightened and honed by the Gospel shows a person his sins in detail and clearly—even the most minute.

Do not do violence to your adversary—your conscience! Otherwise you will lose your spiritual freedom: sin will take you captive and bind you. The Prophet grieves on God’s behalf over those who trample the conscience and plot against themselves: “Ephraim has prevailed over his adversary, he has trampled upon judgment, for he has begun to walk after vanity” (Hos. 5:11).

The edge of the conscience is very tender; it must be guarded and guarded carefully. It is guarded when a person fulfills all the demands of the conscience, and washes with the tears of repentance every violation of any demand, whether through weakness or through being carried away.

Do not think of any sin that it is of little importance: every sin is a violation of the Law of God, a contradiction of God’s will, a trampling of the conscience. From trifles, from what appear to be negligible transgressions, we pass by degrees to great falls.

What does it matter? — is this sin really so great? — what kind of sin is this anyway? — this is not a sin! — so reasons the one who is careless of his own salvation, when he resolves to taste of the sinful food forbidden by the Law of God. Basing himself on such wholly groundless reasoning, he unceasingly tramples the conscience.

Its edge is dulled, its light grows dim; darkness and the coldness of negligence and insensibility spread through the soul.

Insensibility at last becomes the habitual state of the soul. Often the soul is satisfied with it; often it mistakes it for a state pleasing to God, for the peace of conscience—while in reality it is the loss of the sense of one’s own sinfulness, the loss of the sense of gracious, spiritual life, the lulling to sleep and the blindness of the conscience.[2]

In such a state, amid such terrible darkening and insensibility, various sins freely enter the soul and make their lair within it. Sins, taking deep root in the soul, turn into habits as powerful as nature itself, and sometimes more powerful than nature. Sinful habits are called passions. A person does not notice it—yet he has been imperceptibly bound on every side by sin, is in its captivity, in its bondage.

One who, by constantly disregarding the reminders of conscience, has allowed himself to fall into the bondage of sin, will only with the greatest difficulty, and with the assistance of special help from God, be able to break the chains of this bondage and conquer the passions that have become as it were a natural property.

Most beloved brother! Guard your conscience with all possible attentiveness and diligence.

Guard your conscience toward God: fulfill all God’s commandments, both those visible to all and those visible to no one—seen and known only by God alone and by your conscience.

Guard your conscience toward your neighbour: do not be content with the mere outward propriety of your conduct toward your neighbours! Seek from yourself that your very conscience be satisfied with this conduct. It will be satisfied when not only your deeds, but also your heart, are set in the relation to your neighbour that the Gospel commands.

Guard your conscience toward things, avoiding excess, luxury, and negligence, remembering that all the things you use are God’s creation, gifts of God to man.

Guard your conscience toward yourself. Do not forget that you are the image and likeness of God, and that you are obliged to present this image, in purity and holiness, to God Himself.

Woe, woe! if the Lord does not recognise His own image and finds in it no resemblance to Himself. He will pronounce the dread sentence: “I do not know you” (Mt. 25:12). The defiled image will be cast into the unquenchable flame of Gehenna.

Infinite joy will embrace that soul upon which the Lord, looking, recognises in it a likeness to Himself, sees in it that beauty which He, in His infinite goodness, bestowed upon it at its creation, restored and increased at the redemption, and which He commanded to be preserved in unblemished wholeness by withdrawal from every sin and by the keeping of all the Gospel’s commandments.

The tireless, impartial guardian and reminder of such withdrawal and keeping is the conscience. Amen.