"Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it" (Luke 11:28)

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DOCTRINE FOR THE YOUNG

CONSCIENCE

by the Rt. Rev. Louis B. King

What is it?

Does your conscience bother you? Did “the little voice of conscience” call out to you telling you not to do something that you knew was disorderly or wrong?

We often hear or use these expressions. But what do they mean? The Heavenly Doctrine for the New Church tells us that our conscience is formed from the heavenly loves and truths that the Lord gives to us. So we can say that “Conscience…is the Lord’s presence in a person” (Arcana Coelestia 4299).

When we are babies the angels are near us, and they surround us with their love of the Lord’s truth. The presence of angels makes babies happy, because the angels are filling the children’s minds with delight. These delights are stored up in the interior memories of infants and little children. In the Heavenly Doctrine they are called “re¬mains.”

The remains, or affections, which have been stored up by angels, provide a fertile ground in which truths from the Word can be planted. As truths from the Word are planted in their minds, the affections which the angels stored up there are felt by children as delight in the truths they have learned.

When truths grow up in the mind and are loved by children we have the beginning of conscience. It is like a place into which the Lord’s love and wisdom can flow. Conscience is really a new understanding of the truth and a new love of it, which grow up in a person’s mind.

Some people think that conscience is pain. But the Heavenly Doctrine assures us that conscience is not pain, but a willingness to act according to things of religion and faith: “[T]hose who enjoy con¬science are in the tranquility of peace and in internal blessedness when they act according to it, and suffer a certain uneasiness when they act contrary to it” (True Christian Religion 666).

Who needs it?

Do you need conscience? Do I? The Word of the Lord tells us that we all incline toward evils of every kind from birth. We are not born good. If the Lord did not give us a conscience by means of His Word, we would become more and more selfish, day by day, from the day of our birth until the day of our death. Our love of self makes us want to con¬centrate on our own happiness, to acquire the things that will make us happy, even if it means taking from others and making them unhappy. Conscience, on the other hand, leads us to stop and think that we should not be selfish and self-centered, but that it is right to think about others and to work for their happi¬ness.

Temptation is the struggle between our selfish loves and the new heavenly loves, which the Lord builds up in us through His Word and which are called conscience. Without temptations, or struggles to do what is right, we could not enter heaven. And unless we have a conscience, that necessary struggle will not happen. Listen to what the Word teaches about conscience. “No one can undergo any spiritual temptation or trial unless he has conscience” (Arcana Coelestia 4299). “When the restraints of conscience are relaxed there is no way by which the Lord may enter and operate; for the Lord’s influx in a person is by means of charity into his conscience” (Arcana Coelestia 1835).

How do we get it?

Where does conscience come from? Do we have it instinctively, or auto¬matically? How do we get it? The Heavenly Doctrine tells us a true conscience is formed in a person by truths from the Lord’s Word. He receives these in his mind, and his remains cause him to love those truths. When truths are so loved, a person lives according to them, and such a life is a life of con¬science or true religion. In Psalm 51:10 we read, “Cre¬ate in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a firm spirit within me.” This is a prayer for a new life in the will and a new thought in the understanding.

Does it last?

If a person develops a true conscience, how long will it last? The Heavenly Doctrine tells us that what a person loves he will become in the other life. So, if a person loves what is beautiful, good, and strong, he will appear beautiful, good and strong in the other life. He will live with those who, like himself, have developed true conscience. We are told that “All who in the world have lived in a state of good and have acted under the influence of conscience, appear to themselves, when let into a state of their interiors, like persons who become wide-awake after sleep, and like persons who pass out of the shade into the light” (Heaven and Hell 506). While a person is living on earth, conscience is like a vessel in his mind into which heaven can flow to delight and lead him. When such a person dies and enters the other world, his conscience comes forth, and he is led to his heavenly home according to the quality of the conscience he had made his own.


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