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CHAPTER 1

The Conscience and Its Witness

The conscience is an instinct to protect life Life resists everything that would destroy it or kill it. Life tries to build up its strength. It protects itself instinctively against all the influences of death and everything that is hostile and harmful. It is only in a life that is going to rack and ruin – in one that has already come under the power of death – that the instincts fail and allow poisons to come in and destroy life. Every organism endowed with a soul tries as a united whole to ward off what is harmful to body and soul.

The innermost part of the soul – the spirit – also has an instinct for life. This is the conscience, which as a first sign of inner life has become a watchman at the threshold. It is the quiet, impersonal confidant of the human spirit. "For no one knows what is in a man except the spirit of the man, which is in him."

The conscience is one of the most primeval stirrings of life in the spirit. The spirit, as the profoundest part of our being, has to represent our innermost calling. The most necessary tool for this is the conscience, an instrument that warns, rouses, and commands.

The conscience is the spirit's sensitive organ of response. It has the task of warning the character against degeneration and destruction, because the character is meant to preserve moral order. The conscience has to show the character where it can find healing, strengthening, and the direction in life that it is meant to take. Every time the soul is deeply wounded, the conscience makes us painfully aware of it. It is a warning bell that sounds every time the spiritual life falls sick. Above all, it gives warning of the deadly misery of isolation, when the soul has separated itself from the core of life, from the destiny of its being – when it has separated itself from God. Therefore with all the urgency of love, it demands reconciliation with God and, with that, a uniting with all people. For unity is the hallmark of life. Unity finds fulfillment in God and his kingdom.

The conscience leads to community

The conscience arouses in the individual conscious- ness a longing to come out of all constraint and isolation and to have community with the highest consciousness, the all- embracing consciousness of God. The result will be a unanimous accord and unity of life with all people who believe in God. This urge toward God and his community of life and faith accords with the nature of the human spirit as it was originally. Leibnitz describes God as the only object directly perceived by the soul that can be distinguished from the soul itself. God is in direct contact with the soul and demands absolute love and community.

The conscience is the awakening of a direct consciousness of good and evil – a knowledge of what promotes life and what destroys it. As such, it can never be separated from the spirit's direct conscious- ness of God. It plays a part whenever the certainty of an absolute "thou shalt" or "thou shalt not" penetrates the consciousness. In the absoluteness of "thou shalt," God works directly on us. The urge of the conscience is to stand by our consciousness of God by demanding obedience to God. With every warning it gives, the conscience tries to help our consciousness of God on toward the free and willing obedience of faith.

God wants to determine our life and lay obligations upon it through the conscience. Our consciences have been compared to mountains among which God's thunder echoes a millionfold. The further away the receiving heart is from the one who calls, the weaker will be the echo. The nearer we are when we receive the call of God, the more powerfully will our conscience be struck and impressed. There is always, however, a necessary distance between God's truth and our response. The conscience drives the anxious, hesitating heart nearer and nearer to the thunderous judgment over evil and to the revelation of good, lit up by the lightning. And yet it keeps us at a respectful distance. There will be no echo if there is no distance at all from the mountain wall.

"No one is good," Jesus tells us, "save God alone!" Whoever blasphemously identifies himself with God cannot hear the voice of God. If in our souls there is something of the breath of this one and only, who alone is good, then even in depraved and irreverent souls there will be a live witness. This witness will demand a distance and yet press closer because it judges evil and urges toward the good. It is the conscience of the human spirit. When we do evil, it warns and insists; it smites and punishes. It makes clear to us how far we are from God. But it does still more. Even though there is nothing good about us, this witness lives in our souls to make it possible for us to recognize good as good, to assure us that God is the only source of good, and to urge us on toward this source.

Even where consciousness of guilt seems to have died out, people cannot feel at home in their selfish existence. They are well aware that they lack inner unity and the community that takes shape as a result of it. Even the hardest heart yearns for this. We were created for community. Our conscience fights against things being turned so upside down that life is destroyed by selfish isolation. The conscience protests against every attempt to sever the living cohesion of things. Whenever a thread of life is broken, the conscience shows that it is wounded. Every time a person's inner being is divided and, just as much, every time the community that must come to outward expression is disrupted, the conscience gives a warning that life is being threatened by destruction. The conscience feels any disharmony as something terrifying and deadly because the very nature of the soul demands unity of life.

Any separation from God inevitably leads the human spirit to a deadly division within itself and to cold estrangement from others. When the conscience makes us aware of the urge toward God that is hidden within us, a conflict arises between the true calling of the ego and its actual condition. Every time we resist this urge and act against it, our conscience blames no one but us.

Julius Müller calls the conscience, even when it is utterly ruined, the divine bond that ties the created spirit to its origin. That we belong to the people of God, although we are degenerate and depraved members, becomes clear in the conscience. It is the longing for God that rouses opposition to evil. This longing is for community in his kingdom of active love, brought about by him alone. It opposes the divisive power of the kingdom of mammon with its lies, murder, and impurity. The conscience makes us think about ourselves and our depraved condition and, at the same time, about the revelation of the higher truth of our original nature, our true nature. It shows at the same time both our wretchedness and our greatness.

The conscience is an inextinguishable part of human consciousness. As such, it gives the strongest witness that the origin of the human spirit is noble and divine. The conscience never lets us quite forget that this noble race has been called to be an image of God however weather-beaten its coat of arms, however deeply cracked, however overgrown with moss. Even in the most erring offspring of the human race, the memory of this image is never so irretrievably lost that it cannot, through God's intervention, be brought back to the light once more.

For this reason Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ, testifies expressly that even peoples estranged from God have a conscience. Paul is so deeply convinced of the divine origin of all living souls that he sees the works of the Law written in the hearts of the heathen. In everything they experience and undertake, their consciences also give witness through the conflicting thoughts that accuse and excuse them.

After all, the living book of God's creation lies open for all to see; it points constantly to the divine calling for which man was placed in nature. Nature is a continual admonition to humankind, for nowhere has God's creation departed so far from its origin and primeval purpose as in humanity. This is proved by the history of the human conscience.

Without God, the law dictates the conscience Human beings were called to God's love. But when they so soon became murderous and would not let themselves be judged and ruled by God's Spirit, the pure, free Spirit gave up pleading with them. It no longer wanted to plead with them. Violence goes together with a lack of freedom. Therefore God sent them the law and conceded them the death penalty, at first in the form of the appointed blood-for-blood revenge: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth! "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man again shall his blood be shed."

Again, the servile spirit of the people who were meant to be God's people wanted a human king instead of God's rulership, instead of his dominion. God in his wrath had to give them a completely human authority to enforce severe punishment for murder and all wickedness. People today have long since forgotten what they have lost through these historical facts. Yet these measures to check still worse forces of evil must be recognized as necessary as long as people do not want to let God's spirit judge and rule.

The inner acquiescence given by the conscience can be seen in people's attitude to legal authority. For the sake of the conscience, it is still necessary for everyone to be subject to legal authority as the appointed servant of God. For this authority judges and punishes evil as the conscience demands. Yet as soon as the conscience is roused through God's spirit, it demands – even in the face of authority – that we should obey God rather than men, for God's kingdom demands recognition over and above all the kingdoms of this world. However, the prerequisite for this all-inclusive demand of God and his Spirit is fulfilled only when this Spirit who rules in God's kingdom really and truly rules over us, when he can actually plead with us and determine our whole life in an objective way according to God's kingdom.

Through the judgment and power of govern- mental authority, the conscience is punished and sharpened. Through God's kingdom and his Spirit, it is set free and fulfilled. It seeks everywhere the source of the guilt that separates us from the ruler- ship of God. In everything, the conscience wants to become clear in its judgment over the boundary between good and evil, because evil has separated us from God. Evil is its enemy. The conscience sees this enemy everywhere – waiting to the right and to the left, besetting us behind and before. Its most dangerous outpost of all is in our heart. The evil that surrounds and pervades our life is more than our enemy. It is God's enemy.

Murder, lying, impurity, and property – this is the nature of evil. Jesus called the evil spirit "the

murderer from the beginning" and "the father of lies," and called its subordinates impure spirits. Finally, he has confronted us with a decision: "You cannot serve God and mammon." God's rule is incompatible with killing, lying, sexual immorality, and, most of all, with the rule of property. Therefore God's kingdom is diametrically opposed to the evil powers of death and sin. This is true not only for the personal life of each individual but also for all powers of human authority, which want to fight evil and yet are rooted in the mammon of property: they cannot cut themselves loose from lying and impurity – they are driven even to mass murder.

Detecting the enemy, however, achieves nothing more than reconnaissance before a battle. Even progress in the battle, even the annihilation of the enemy, does not signify that the victory is consummated.

Only positive reconstruction gives triumph its value. Therefore the conscience longs for vigorous work at what is truly good in order to be able to celebrate the victory over evil.

When God rules, the conscience brings joy The life of Jesus had nothing to do with killing and harming others, it had nothing to do with untruthful- ness and impurity, and it had nothing to do with any influence of mammon or property. Jesus went even further: he smote this hostile power in its home territory. His death shattered every weapon of the enemy. But he did still more. He brought the kingdom of God down to the earth, he roused body and soul from death, he himself rose as the Living One, and through his Spirit he laid the foundation for the final kingdom – a kingdom of complete unity for every- thing in heaven and on earth. He broke down the barriers between nations, and he created the unity of the body of his church as his second incarnation. This new unity and bodily reality of Jesus lives here on the earth in the human race.

We are called to this way as soon as we accept Christ's call. When through Christ and the Spirit we believe in the unity of God as the one and only good, when we live in faith through his strength, we lay aside everything that is opposed to perfect love. We fight it to the death on every front. We live as believers in the church of full community and are ambassadors of God's kingdom, representing Jesus Christ and commissioned by him. In this fight for the recognition of God's kingdom, in representing the final kingdom in opposition to all governmental authorities and powers of the kingdoms of this age, the conscience is the quiet ally of the Holy Spirit.

The conscience is that faculty of sensitivity in our inner being which responds with pleasure to every good deed and with displeasure to every evil deed. It exposes evil as alien and hostile to our nature as it originally was and as it is finally meant to be. Therefore, no supposedly superior point of view and no knowledge that sets itself up as progressive can ever reconcile the conscience to evil. As soon as God's Spirit takes possession of the human spirit to make a common witness, the conscience develops a most resolute firmness. It revolts with a revulsion that becomes almost unbearable every time love is wounded, every time love's obligations are neglected, every time love's justice is clouded, every time love's truth is betrayed, and every time God's kingdom is misrepresented.

Whenever human self-preservation seeks an advantage, a pleasure, or an influence that is contrary to the pure, absolute, and all-embracing love of Jesus Christ, the conscience – being now an instrument of the Holy Spirit – raises its voice in sharp protest in the name of the sovereign God and his absolute rule. With just as much intensity, it joyfully furthers every fulfillment of justice and social obligation, every unselfish act of devoted love, and every brotherly uniting in full community.

The impulse of joyful agreement and inner satisfaction in our conscience when we have acted rightly in the works of love (at least as far as motive and aim are concerned) implies an assessment of values. In the same way, when evil and godlessness gain the upper hand in our life, the conscience experiences terrifying qualms of shame, disquiet, and silent self-accusation. These challenge us to evaluate our own actions.

The conscience is constantly at work evaluating and passing judgment. It evaluates by feeling. It feels joy in what is good, for what is good is also just. It has joy in love, for love is also pure and genuine unity and community. It feels pain and revulsion against evil, for evil is also injustice. It feels pain about everything that is against love: that is, everything that destroys community, everything that is selfish, impure, hypo- critical, and false.

The conscience wants to be the divine voice within us. It strives to show us what we are like (although we should be different), what we are not like (although we ought to know how we should be), what human society is like without community, and what the nations are like without the unity of the kingdom of God. The more the heart is touched by God's nature and his holiness, the more clearly does the conscience that is bound to Christ say what the church of God is, and the more clearly does it also show how, from the basis of the church, the believer should represent absolute love in a unity that brings peace and in a justice that results in community.

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Excerpted from "The Conscience Volume 2"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Plough Publishing House.
Excerpted by permission of Plough Publishing House.
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