How to Cure a Bad Conscience…

“The voice of conscience,” said Madame de Stael, “is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.” ¹ “Conscience,” said Francis Bowen, “is a divine voice in the human soul…” ²

In a sense conscience is a voice within and yet something also from outside. George Crabbe referred to conscience as “man’s most faithful friend!” ³ _ a friend that “warns us as a friend before it punishes as a judge.” ⁴

Some have though they could conquer conscience by ignoring it, by wearing it down, by acting as if it weren’t there. The persistent offender loses the finer sensitivities of life; he loses a sense of acceptance to himself, and to others also _ and the peace he might have had. Those who choose to live as if they had no conscience in some way or other always pay a price. Conscience is like a nerve system. It we deaden it, it doesn’t tell us the truth, and if we don’t know the truth we are in trouble.

There are some things a person simply cannot do and still remain as he was. Every deliberate and determined act against conscience somehow changes a person inside. The law of compensation still moves in matters of conscience, as in all else, and despite all talk about changing principles, commandments, morality and immorality, man cannot act contrary to the inner responses, cannot ignore the whisperings from the Divine Source, without the consequences that follow when we deny the better things we know.

We cannot ignore conscience without coarsening ourselves, and we well would listen to it as a friend before it becomes a tormentor. The only way to cure a bad conscience is to stop doing what we know we shouldn’t do, and start doing what we should do.