When Conscience is Suppressed

The last two decades have been an amazing journey for me in my encounter with people from diverse ideological, political, national and ethnic backgrounds. I have identified some key forces that form an obstacle to conscience having a voice in individuals. Lack of understanding or insight is the major obstacle to conscience’s voice, but other hindrances include fear, false pleasure, anger and hatred. Not many are able to realize that awareness is the key to freedom. Without awareness of truth, people violate their consciences and deprive themselves, their families and societies of the fruits of the truth, real peace and comfort. We will experience relief from anything that aims to keep us captive if we educate ourselves concerning what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and if we listen to the voices of our consciences.

Conscience, which the Bible describes as God’s law written in the hearts of all individuals (Romans: 2:14-15), is an amazing agent. It that stands up for truth in our inner beings, but only if it is given a chance. I sometimes hear people say that conscience can be dead in some people. But, conscience can only be silenced if it has no voice at all. Fortunately, it never becomes deaf and its voice never dies. It can surface at any moment when the blocking means disappear and the mind and heart start to function as they were intended. If the conscience was deaf and dead, the Gospel of Jesus Christ would never ask us to address our message of hope to the consciences of people:

But [we] have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. (2 Corinthians 4:2, KJV)

Our continual contact with people in declaring God’s truth is warranted because their consciences are alive and able to hear. Thereby, we hope that one day they will listen to us freely, become courageous enough to remove the limitations on their hearts and minds, allowing their consciences to gain freedom and be vocal for the truth. It is the strong voice of a conscience that breaks through the darkness of ignorance and paves the way for a soul to enthrone the truth in that person’s heart.

The whole concept of the absolute truth would be irrelevant and foolishness to a mind or heart apart from a conscience. But the truth will reveal its full beauty to every soul the moment the conscience is involved in listening, evaluating and decision-making. God has  built conscience into humanity as a witness for Himself so that every person can carry a measuring tool in him/herself  to distinguish truth from falsehood (Romans 2:14-16). A person will not be able to understand the truth and have a proper definition of it without a conscience. Therefore, a willful decision to disassociate conscience is a degradation of one’s mind and heart.

This is what we are face-to-face with in our contemporary societies in the West. Many are representing themselves as beings without a conscience; like a machine which knows no moral imperative and no boundary between truth and falsehood. For them, truth and falsehood are not fixed; everything is regarded as valid. The notion of truth these days is taken to be a part of a fluid, evolutionary and politically correct culture, reinventing itself continually and marching ahead without an absolute identity, anchor point or direction. This changeable and unpredictable post-modern ‘truth’ is not able to define things as they are. Instead, it is a part of a relative culture that promotes fantasy in order to get people involved in establishing and celebrating falsehood. It has become a bridge for opportunists to penetrate and spread ignorance in order to have their way.

Not many are aware that it is this capricious version of truth which has enabled many people to be lazy and unproductive and to establish their own parties with a leadership philosophy that relies on the income of others to finance their laziness. This is what is happening in most western countries where taxes have been progressively soaring higher in order to prop up unproductive leaders and people. The USA, once a productive and good role model in the West, has now become a bad role model where businesses are closing down and leaving, but to which consumers are migrating. The entire non-western world now desires to migrate to the West and benefit from unemployment benefits and other social security allowances without acknowledging that this will inevitably turn into social insecurity by the flood of immigrants. The West, which once prospered via true leadership and a strong positive work ethic will soon suffer the consequences of its relative truth, its situational ethics and its pragmatic relativist leadership.

Real truth cannot be fully workable in a nation unless that nation is deeply connected to God as the absolute source of truth. Godlessness hasn’t been a good choice for the West. Turning one’s back on God is, in the final analysis, turning one’s back on oneself. Many in the West have turned their backs on themselves, suppressed their own consciences and confused themselves with false ideas about almost everything. Godlessness has clouded the minds and hearts of people to such an extent that they do not believe that things surrounding them can be known deeply. Therefore, everything is presented with an underpinning ideological delusion, a postmodernist philosophy which embraces everything that rids people of their capability and capacity to discover the key factors of success for their lives. ‘Success’, in this context, does not make sense when the nation is confused. The West will therefore, in the longer term, ultimately lose the ‘success’ it has created through the years if it does not rescue itself from this contemporary post-modern confusion.

Jesus Christ is the solution for the confused West. The failure of the West must break the heart of every follower of Jesus Christ since great prices were paid for the establishment of truth and freedom in the past. There is a great responsibility on our shoulders as the followers of Jesus Christ to reveal the forgotten truth and rescue the West from the captivity of confusion and ambiguity. The truth can give freedom only to those who are given reasons to free their consciences, their hearts and minds in order to be able to compare, understand and make healthy decisions. How are they able to learn this if Christians are busy with shallow things and not ready to touch minds, hearts and consciences? The Gospel of Jesus Christ is right when it says:

How shall they hear without a preacher? (Romans 10:14c, KJV)

We need to discover every possible and ethical channel for proclaiming the solutions of Christ to our perplexed societies. It is not helpful to speak about problems without  having clear solutions and without  laying the foundation for people to hear and understand constructive remedies for their problems.