Beyond Conscience
In 1946, after completing two years of military service, I started work on an A.A. degree at North Park College. Moral issues, important for the GIs because of WWII, were often discussed. Other really pressing issues we debated were dancing, movies, and dating etiquette. I remember formulating my early ethic in terms of "Let your conscience be your guide."
When someone asked what role a conversion experience played in one's moral decisions, I modified my maxim to: "Let your Christian conscience be your guide." Given that revision, I could bring in Scriptural references to support my moral reasonings. Later, in reading Immanuel Kant, I identified with his saying: "Two things fill me with awe, the moral law within and the starry heavens above." I agreed with him that humans are born with a sense of oughtness — I took "oughtness" as another name for conscience. Kant contends that the sense of oughtness is empty of any speciTic content. "Do your duty for dugs sake," but no particulars are given. I'd try to fill that empty form with relevant Scriptural directives.
After some graduate work at the University of Michigan, North Park Theological Seminary, and Northwestern University, I taught courses in the great ethical traditions — both philosophical and Christian — for many years. In most of these traditions, especially the formalists, conscience has a role as an inner agency which provides knowledge of right and wrong. The word "conscience" often appeared in the literature. Even the great anti-moralist, Friedrich Nietzsche, talked about a bad conscience.
In the 60s, a course with Prof. Carroll Wise in Pastoral Care and Counseling at Garrett Theological Seminary, inspired me to read further and to begin teaching in the area of psychology of religion. I came to see the need for some new thinking about the idea of conscience — to see it more as a part of early childhood development.
I remember well an occasion, some 20 years ago now, when my wife, Muriel, and I had a discussion that centered on the nature of the conscience. She introduced the possibility that conscience is not actually necessary in one's view of the human moral experience. I retorted quickly and firmly, "Why, Mur, you've got to have conscience — every religion and every theology gives conscience a central place. It has to be!" There was no discussion.
But my seminary-type thinking had been seriously challenged. Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, Laurence Kohlberg, and others, also played a role in my rethinking of the process by which humans develop morally. Freud, who stands as the Father figure back of many other psychoanalysts, contends that the conscience (super-ego) develops from our earliest childhood experiences. It forms as children internalize the prohibitions and prescriptions of their parents, or parent surrogates — their models. What we 'hear" from our consciences are the voices of our mothers, fathers, as sell as our siblings, teachers, scout leaders, peers, et al. Erikson, in The Life Cycle Completed, refers to conscience as "...an inner, higher-than-thou voice that makes you 'mind.' "
Thus, when one is confronted by a moral dilemma, and uses conscience as a guide, he or she is really asking: "What would my parents want or expect me to do?" Shame and guilt, associated with infantile experiences, can follow, even for an adult, when the inner "voice" goes unheeded This is the psychological understanding of conscience.
I did a brief study recently of the Biblical treatment of the idea With my new NavPress software, (yes, the "Model A" has been replaced with a fast, new computer) I've found one reference to conscience in the Hebrew Scripture and 25 references in the New Testament What is startling, especially, is Paul's non-developmental use of the Greek word, syneídesis, i.e. conscience. In Romans 2:14-15, e,g., he writes that Gentiles have the entire Jewish law written on the consciences. "They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness...." 'Therefore, they, we, are as guilty before God as the Jews. In other passages, one finds that the conscience is a separate, inner moral structure which adults ought trust for moral guidance. It is designed and implanted by God to guide conduct, provide moral censure and approval, etc. Coming to the "age of accountability," the youth has the conscience to assess, disturb, bring remorse, regret, and sometimes, though rarely, provide good feelings of satisfaction and pride.
Clearly, there are two quite different viewpoints here: The psychological one which appraises conscience as part of the child's maturation; the other, the Biblical or theological one, which portrays conscience as a sovereign inner agency given from above, an accurate and trustworthy moral compass.
God in creation has provided humans with an inner consciousness, the possibility of being self-aware. This self-referential phenomenon, present from the first, does not develop until later. Consciousness in the early years is under the control, as it were, of a powerful little "judge," whose voice speaks the parental do's and don'ts, standing in the center. We refer to consciousness in its underdeveloped state by a related word, "conscience." Becoming an authentic person means to take over the authority of that little "judge" and become competent to make our own self-conscious ethical decisions.
Conscience, understood as parental guide lines, certainly has value during childhood to limit, restrict, and discipline — hopefully to bring out a sense of autonomy, empathy, and responsibility in the growing child. As adults, we have to sort out these do's and don'ts of childhood, keeping some and discarding others, to come to authentic, personal adult consciousness. Sadly, when childhood morality continues to guide a grown-up, a scrupulous, dependent, legalistic person emerges. Blending Christian belief with a still-functioning childhood super-ego simply gives Divine authority and backing to the parental dictates.
Erikson stresses that an individual must at some point find his or her identity separate from that of the parents. Thus, a whole different base is needed for responsible decision-making. Authority of the parents (dead or alive), along with that of the Pope, a church leader, or anyone else, must never be substituted for one's own personal integrity.
The moral imperative is to become conscious of oneself as a moral agent, to learn to think through moral dilemmas for oneself, to determine relevant factors and reasons, to deliberate with other moral agents, and so on. Maturity is the process of becoming self-conscious, fully human, standing on one's own two feet, free from the sphere of parental control. Conscience does not allow for responsible decision-making in new situations that have come about with the emergence of unprecedented and amazing medical technology.
What is required, for example, to make the awful decision about whether to continue life supports for a loved one, or to call for assistance from the likes of a Dr. Kervorkian? It would be so simple if we could just look up the answer in a Church resolution or hear it directly from Our Leader. That would certainly save us from thinking.
What must occur, in the absence of a word from on high, is something like this. The moral agent, or agents, at the center of this demanding life and death issue, if they possess adult emotions and mature attributes, will be able to do some deep, empathetic thinking about the situation: What is the loved one's wish? Who was given the Power of Attorney for the loved one's health care? What firm evidence is there that the medical condition is terminal and irreversible? What possible conflicts of interest are involved? What are the reasons pro and con? On and on, until the options and a path become clear. Even so, as Aristotle said many years ago, ethics is not an exact science.
Finally, rather than hying to let your conscience, even your Christian conscience, be your guide, I'd say let your adult emotions, your achieved inner virtues enriched by the Christian virtues and enlightened by Scriptural exhortations, and your deep thinking, guide you as you face difficult and complex moral dilemmas.