The Seared Conscience

“Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron”

1 Timothy 4:2

“Trust your conscience”, your grandparents used to tell you – As if your conscience always tells the truth. “What does your conscience tell you to do?” your parents ask you when you ask them a difficult question about the course of action you should take; as if conscience is a sentient being that can answer you, instead of a mere emotion. The conscience is a  minor feeling that rests in your gut. 

What if your conscience has been damaged? Should you trust it then? Should you listen to it then? What if your conscience is not functioning and is temporarily, if not permanently, broken? Should we listen to the emotional dribble of a voice in our head which has been marred by scorching hot metal? No. This is classic dogma propagated by people in the church too weak and afraid to challenge the traditions that have been passed down through generations. 

Your father taught you about conscience, just as his father, and his father before him, yet they were all dead wrong.

They all taught you lessons contrary to scripture. They failed to teach you about the reality of perverted consciences, of evil, vile and disgusting consciences. Preachers do not talk about seared consciences. 

Some consciences are seared over ages of repetitive sin until nothing but a fragment of what once was a good conscience is left in the mind. The voice of this conscience is frail and fragile, and it can have no more influence over a man. 

However, even more frightening than this are those who were born with a seared conscience. From birth they possess a dysfunctional moral compass. These people are classically known as psychopaths or sociopaths. To deny the existence of these individuals is to deny reality. 

Maybe it was something in their genetic code. Perhaps the same way that diseases and mutations occur from the genes of an individual, so also a seared conscience generates from the very DNA of a man. 

These individuals do exist in the Church today, and they have no idea what to do because they are taught that conscience is mandatory.

And those are just the individuals who feel guilty about their broken conscience, which itself seems to imply that there is some form of a conscience present. But do not confuse guilt with conscience. Those with damaged consciences have no internal, emotional guide, no Christian example, no role model of who to act like because the weak people perpetuate the myth of the obligatory conscience. This is a disgrace.

Defiled consciences (Titus 1:15-16), evil consciences (Heb 10:22), irrelevant consciences (Acts 23:1) and seared consciences are real entities. And guess what? You can receive salvation even if you possess one of these conscience types.

“Impossible!”, cries the traditionalist, “You must have the conscience to act morally”. 

Wrong, you must simply know which actions are moral and which are not in order to act morally. Morality is not an emotion. It is an evaluation of the rightness or wrongness of an action based on logic. An evaluation that can be performed with or without that emotion known as ‘conscience’. 

Mantra

Action is more important than any feeling I may feel.

Application

Again, purge your mind of the idea that conscience is necessary. It is simply another emotion that is a tool for growth, but not a requirement. Reject traditional conservatism that propagates the necessity of conscience. The irony of this is that the genre of Christianity so renowned for rejecting the emotionalism of liberals still preaches the necessity of the emotion of conscience. 

Reject the liberalism that wallows in all emotions and deifies conscience as the gateway to change and righteousness. It is possible to ‘abstain from every form of evil’ (1 Thessalonians 5:22) without feeling positive or negative emotions about the experience. Obliterate all ideas of the requirement of conscience from your mind.

Again, all that matters is action. 

What actions are you taking? 

What are you doing? 

Are you growing in skill? 

Are you progressing in knowledge? 

How can you prove to yourself that you are making progress?

These are the important questions. The answers to these questions are the answers that matter, not whether or not you are feeling like doing the right thing or not. Take action. Make progress. Do not get bogged down by the emotions of the weak beta male pew warmer. Be a Man.

This is your task: Work again on rejecting the dogma of the necessity of conscience. 

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.