The God of the Signs - The Sign of Conscience
[Editor's note: This is part of a series by Corban Klug, author of A Light in the Darkness. This series will be published in its entirety here at Every Square Inch.]
How the Voice of Creation Teaches the Heart to Believe
Thus far I have argued that the Signs of Beauty, Order and Consciousness, visible to all men in the Book of Creation, gesture at four divine truths delineated in more detail by the Book of Scripture: the essential, original goodness of the created order; the inescapable objectivity of the manner in which such goodness is defined; the absolute governance of order over chaos; and the existence of a Mind that instantiated such goodness and order. The fourth Sign of Creation, the Sign of Conscience, takes this cornucopia of fairly lofty propositions and transforms it into an edict whose import is profoundly personal. For clarity’s sake, I begin with a definition: Conscience is that restraining element of human psychology that a Doberman lacks when loosed to ravage an intruder. Its instinctive temperance is what separates the terrorizing designs of the perfectly ordinary lion from the average human who, if granted opportunity for reflection, thinks twice before pulling the trigger on another human, even an enemy. Much like the reason inherent in Consciousness, the burden of Conscience is a unique feature of the human experience. Yet Conscience is not merely reason, for where for the directive inherent in reason is the discovery of truth, the directive inherent in Conscience is the discernment of right behavior. Conscience is like an internal compass aligned to the magnetic field of divine wisdom that surrounds and intersects the created order. Although the magnetic force of wisdom that guides Conscience is generally weak when compared with the destructive force of sin allied with human freedom, Conscience declares, nevertheless, that, as Jay Budziszewski puts it, there are some things we simply can’t not know.
This is the principal and most elementary lesson taught by the Sign of Conscience, one that, while denied intellectually by men and women seeking to justify their own dissolute deportment, is practically assumed by all persons in ordering their human relationships. At the most severe level, there is no room for argument. No matter the exigencies of the moment, it is never right to torture a baby, rape a woman, or murder a mother and her unborn child. At a more commonplace level, it is simply inexcusable for a husband to cheat on his wife with another woman, for a thief to steal what is clearly the rightful property of another, for a drunken father to verbally abuse his child, for a judge to take bribes, for an attorney actively to assist his client in concealing evidence of a crime, or for a marketing agent to defraud the public by disseminating lies about a product to generate business. The basic truth imparted by Conscience is that there is a right order to human behavior that exists apart from man, just as there is a right order to mathematics and music which cannot be contravened without resulting contradictions and cacophony.
From this primate recognition of moral law, the second lesson of Conscience inexorably follows. At the same time that Conscience prescribes nonnegotiable boundaries upon the proper range of human behavior, it convicts the heart of man when he transgresses such boundaries. As Paul wrote of men outside the Jewish race and unschooled in Scripture (precisely those persons for whom the Signs of Creation are the only possible path to God), “when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written upon their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them (Rom. 2:15).” Thus, the Sign of Conscience, more than merely setting forth an objective limit upon human propriety, actually compels guilt over wrongdoing and pleads for the provision of some form of external atonement, two elements present, however bizarrely manifested, in every ancient religion of which I am aware.
Finally, beyond offering insight into the moral order and evoking remorse in the face of transgression, the Sign of Conscience, acting in concert with the Signs of Beauty and Order, adumbrates, with a delicate brush, the necessity of coming divine Judgment. The logic is this: If the Sign of Beauty describes that which is worthy and good, as a matter of natural design, and the Sign of Order demonstrates that such good is meant to be preserved, then any act which disfigures Beauty and undermines Order must be reversed if the ideal balance of Beauty and Order are to be restored. Now, to be clear, there is nothing in the Sign of Conscience that, by some metaphysical necessity, requires that all grievances of Beauty and Order be redressed by divine judgment. However, Conscience does insist, and quite zealously, that justice ought to be meted out when Beauty and Order are violated so as (a) to punish the evildoer and (b) to return the world to its proper harmony. As such, systems of human justice, which seek to uphold some standard of Beauty and restore a semblance of Order to a community torn by strife and violence, are the organic and inevitable outgrowth of Conscience.
Nevertheless, as all thinking persons recognize, every judicial system, even if governed by persons of unimpeachable rectitude and transcendent compassion, is by its very nature limited in the remedies it can offer society’s victims. A murdered man cannot be revived by a jury verdict or the swipe of a gavel. A child’s innocence cannot be reconstructed by the act of putting his molester behind bars. The marital wreckage created by wanton and adulterous lust cannot be unwritten by societal censure or an act of human vengeance. Thus, Conscience in its highest, most developed sense, cries out to Heaven for a final reckoning, a day upon which acts of goodness will be recompensed and acts of evil judged with finality. How fascinating that this is the very point Paul makes in the second chapter of Romans immediately before elucidating the notion of Gentile conscience: “[God] will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality (Rom. 2:6-11).”
Next time: The Sign of Death and Rebirth
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