The Conscience

 On the radio today (11/21/2022) Dennis Prager was pointing out that the conscience is easily overruled and suppressed as wicked people have no problem sleeping well, and not worrying about feeling guilty for misdeeds of the recent past, ones that they will repeat tomorrow, and long into the future.

He points out that the conscience naturally exists in the soul (my words) as God's wee, quiet voice instructing us, reproving us on how to live and redirect our lives. But the conscience is weak, and our natures are unruly and sin-oriented. The conscience is easily over-powered and pushed down into our subconscious until it is, in effect, deadened or silenced. The person's character is then so evil and bad, that from habit and free will, they sin with pleasure and pride and force of habit.

Prager advises that the moral and godly adult is one who exercises his conscience, and makes it strong and central to his character development, and central to all his decision-making.

Prager is right of course. I also worry that what all this signifies in practice for each moral agent can be tricky to interpret and implement. Unlike Prager, I do not regard self-esteem development as sinful and demonically prideful. 

If the individual does not love or esteem himself, he is angry, upset, bitter, resentful and in tremendous need to lash out and destroy and tear down others, and even Being itself. I would suggest that a person of high-self-esteem is one that loves God first, the Good Spirits second, then himself, then his loved ones and then other human beings farther out from the center of his life.

To love himself and to take care of himself is to discipline himself, and this includes a highly developed and strong conscience that he interacts with constantly and follows as in need of being coherent with the choices that he makes.

Where he sins, and disobeys his conscience and God's promptings, he should criticize himself, apologize to God and make amends.

His guilt should be proportionate to what he did wrong, but he must not lock in on endless self-attacking where he can never repent enough for what he did wrong. Endless self-attacking will lead to self-loathing or low self-esteem, and then he will hate himself and seek revenge on others and the world, and that is what evil is and does.