OUR CONSCIENCE VERSUS OUR SIN NATURE

Although we are born in original sin, we are also born knowing God. Each of us, created "in His image" and for His purpose, has an inner programming, put there by God, to seek His influence in our lives. This programming, as deeply ingrained in us as though it were embedded in our DNA, impels us to discover and submit to His inner leading in all things, or else live meaningless, deluded, and ultimately wasted lives. Conscience is literally the presence of God in us, the friction between the way we are and the way we could be. Our conscience causes us inner conflict when we're doing the wrong thing. We experience this correcting and illuminating presence - which is actually our greatest friend - as pain when we deviate from its urgings.

If we tumble into the grip of dark forces we don't understand and then start to defend our obsessions and compulsions, we inevitably come to regard our conscience as an enemy. And although we may be somewhat successful in drowning out that inner warning bell, what happens when this conscience factor appearing in another person gets too close to us for comfort? We feel threatened. Therefore, we feel compelled to silence the "voice of conscience"- not just the one inside of us, but the one in other people, which tends to revive our own conscience with which we're at war. This means we can't tolerate dissent. Thus, many of us ignorantly come to regard conscience as a problem, even an enemy, and strive to eliminate it any way we can. The most loving stance for others to take is not to serve as enablers of self-destructive and immoral compulsions, but to stand in patient but firm opposition. In other words, we need to side with the afflicted person's conscience. Until we're ready to let the life of pride and sin inside us wither and die, we find it nearly impossible to "listen to the right side."

An innocent young child has a "bright light" quality that feels mysteriously threatening to those in the grip of corruption. To the person led by her sin nature, it's deeply satisfying to her to lead an innocent one astray. Doing so serves to anesthetize her own conscience and assuage her inner conflict by destroying the innocence of another person, since that innocence tends to make her aware of her own corruption.

Remember, our conflicts contain the seeds of redemption - that is, as long as we know we have a problem, there's hope for a change. But if we deny there's a problem, we are robbed of the chance to find healing. A generation ago, we understood there is such a thing as sin, and that sin is a serious matter and to be avoided. Now there is no societal consciousness of sin - only limitless "freedom," and "choice." Beguiled by our scientific and technological advances into believing we are enlightened, in reality as we move further and further away from our Judeo-Christian spiritual roots, we actually understand less and less about ourselves. We defend our own corruption at great peril.

All due to a blindness that dominates our age - a blindness that obscures that which every child knows naturally: we all have a "good side" (conscience) as well as a "bad side" (sin nature). If we pay heed to the wrong side, terrible consequences follow. In our nation that has strayed far from God, many have forgotten the simple, intuitive understanding of right and wrong that we grasped effortlessly when we were innocent children, but which we were later intimidated or seduced into doubting and abandoning. We mock and deny the "old truths" that, unbeknownst to us, still form the very substance of everything valuable we possess today. In our culture, the prevailing mind-set is, increasingly, to mock and demonize those who rebuke our growing infatuation with our lower nature. We've forgotten that we're here to serve a much higher purpose than just fulfilling our own desires.

excerpts from David Kupelian's EXCELLENT book entitled HOW EVIL WORKS