According to the Oxford Dictionary, conscience is a person’s moral sense of right and wrong, viewed as acting as a guide to one’s behaviour. However, In Conversation with God, St Jose Maria Escrivia, said that conscience throws light on all of one’s life and that it can be deformed or hardened.
Just as our eye is the lamp of our body, so also is conscience the lamp of our soul. If the conscience is well formed, it lights up the way. That way leads to God and man can make progress because of it. However, In Conversation with God(ICWG) – vol.2 – pt. 13.1, holds that if the conscience is badly formed, it weakens the mind and misguides the activities of the mind to an extent that it could result in misfortunes and this can make the person insensitive to the right cause.
Again just as business ethics is referred to as the standard of morally right and wrong conduct in business, so also is conscience the inner sense of what is right or wrong in one’s conduct or motives. Often times, we hear people say that his / her conscience tells him/ her to do so, so and so. It is interesting the way it sounds when we speak like that. The question however, is, how many of us listen to this conscience of ours when they speak to us? Most of the time, we ignore it particularly, if what it is telling us is contrary to what we want to do. More often than none, we tend to ask such questions as, do you have a conscience at all? That is because we get disappointed when we see unimaginable things or character being displayed by some people that we hold with high esteem.
As individuals, our mind tells us when we have done wrong or right and so, it is expected that we should retract our steps if clearly we have established the fact that we have done something wrong. Funny enough, many of us don’t even admit that we have erred let alone retracing the wrong steps we have taken or correcting our mistakes. Rather than do that, we become indifferent to good or evil and this attitude has become a major threat to the progress of our society today. People have become too self-centered, and only consider what benefits them alone. They do not bother nor care about, how many people our actions or inactions would hurt or even destroy completely. The earlier we start considering the effects of our actions or inactions on people and society at large the better it will be for our society and indeed for the whole world.
It is high time we started taking responsibilities for our evil actions and face the consequences. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter- Isaiah 5: 20-21.
Be that as it may, as a people, we are encouraged to pray particularly, during lent as Christians to awaken our consciences so that they may be sensitive to God’s voice. The Psalmist said that, “If today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts” Because when the heart is hardened, conscience begins to slumber and so, it will no longer point to the right direction that will strengthen man spiritually. It is believed that the right conscience leads man to God. So, we are encouraged to use this period of lent as Christians and also the Ramadan period for the Muslims, to ask God to help us form our conscience really well. In view of this, it is left for us to examine ourselves to see whether we are being thoroughly sincere with God and with those who trust us to direct them aright.
We have just carried out one of our general civic duties a couple of weeks ago. Let us individually and collectively examine our consciences deeply and take a good look at the way we behaved. We will see that we are full of faults that harmed us and others around us. Let us therefore, take a cue from our mistakes and form for ourselves a true and refined conscience which listens to the voice of God in everyday matters. Remember that,
