Sunday,
May 9, 1999
Rev. James
A.Todhunter
"CREATING CONSCIENCE"
PSALM 66:8-20;
I PETER 3:13-22.
What is conscience? Where does it come from? How is it formed? The tragic deaths in Littleton, Colorado have raised these questions for me. On this Mother’s Day Sunday, when we traditionally honor the role of mothers and the importance of parenting and family, it seems timely to reflect on the complicated process of what is called character formation.
The concept of conscience was not invented by Christians or Jews. It is a notion from classical antiquity, which Christians eventually adopted. Jesus never refers to conscience, but Paul and subsequent writers do. Conscience can be understood as the internal, authoritative voice of warning against doing something wrong, or the pangs of inward punishment when we have actually done wrong. Psychologists tell us that we feel the inner voice of conscience when we have successfully internalized a clear sense of right and wrong conveyed to us by family and society. We could say that the Ten Commandments typify our Judeo-Christian code of behavior and that those Commandments represent the religious elaboration of a basic sense of right and wrong that we learn at home. "Thou shalt not kill" (strictly speaking "Thou shalt not commit murder") is a rule consistent with family teaching, religious morality, and the secular laws of the land. For the murderous youths in Littleton, somehow, mysteriously perhaps, that basic commandment was not operative.
Why? A hard question. But somehow the answer has to do with human nature itself. Freud and others pointed out the obvious in this matter. If we need taboos, rules and conscience, not only to protect society from the few who actually murder, but also to defend ourselves from urges or impulses within. If there is a commandment not to murder, it must follow that there is a murderous urge within us. Here, people of faith need to be clear about human nature. Yes, I profoundly believe that we are created good and in the image of God. God does not create what is bad. We do need a doctrine of original goodness to balance a doctrine of original sin. But that doesn’t mean we throw out the doctrine of original sin as irrelevant. As Reinhold Niebuhr said, there is evident proof of original sin in the bloodstained face of human history. Where evil comes from and how it becomes lodged in the human soul is an enigma as old as the story of Cain and Abel. But I believe that a true Christian anthropology must accept the reality that each of us carries within us destructive urges and the capacity for mayhem. These urges are generally kept unconscious, through repression, sublimation, and denial. If they are totally denied, they can erupt and surprise us. But on the other hand, if we are to survive as families and communities, they cannot be allowed to totally break free. In the lengthy debates and soul searching following the shootings in Colorado, there has been much discussion on who is the blame, that is, in determining the external factors contributing to the tragedy. Were those factors, for example, neglectful parents, the lack of a connected neighborhood community, aloof school officials, teasing and abuse from fellow students, a wider culture of violence, too many guns, the internet, and video games of extraordinary bloodiness? I believe all of these may all be contributing factors and need to be addressed, especially our absolutely idiotic, inexcusable American obsession with and tolerance of guns. But at the same time, I believe we dare not overlook the reality that in Littleton we witnessed the human heart of darkness unleashed. The power of conscience to restrain the murderous urges we each carry within us was either just too weak or virtually non-existent.
In our spiritual traditions, conscience functions, to begin with, as this voice of warning. It is the voice of God’s judgment, internalized within us. Luther, in particular, believed that the pangs of conscience were the ever-present reminders of the gap between what the law requires and our falling short. For him, conscience always meant bad conscience; but happily that bad conscience could have the effect of making us aware of our need for God’s grace, which is always abundant.
So, to begin with, the role of family and church is to teach right and wrong, as our tradition brings us; impart to the young, in a careful and considered way, the importance of the commandments, rules of conduct, and so forth. We need to do this both because it puts us in touch with our need of God’s grace (for we all fall short), but also it is necessary to recognize and restrain the ever-present and enduring violent animal instincts of our nature. To me, evil comes, not from the fact that such urges are there, but that we do not appreciate their power, nor know how to live with them.
But next, I believe it must be said that the meaning of conscience goes beyond this. Conscience is more than an internal firewall protecting us and society from the human heart of darkness. For in our religious tradition there is also an understanding of conscience as good and positive. And it is on that aspect of conscience that I want to dwell now.
I would define this understanding of conscience as the capacity of the whole person, the entire human "self" as it were, to engage in moral and spiritual discernment. The commandments provide the framework, the structure that makes life together possible. When the Commandments become internalized they become the power of conscience. A strong conscience becomes a voice within our hearts saying, "Murder is wrong." We simply know that within, even as we recognize our capacity for violence. Our Christian tradition always has taught that the voice of conscience must be formed, listened to, and heeded. But even as conscience is inviolable, it is not infallible. My conscience is the voice of the best that is within me, but it is not necessarily always the voice of God.
My conscience will always be shaped by the values of my family, my church, my community, and my nation. But all of these come under God’s judgment, and there is no guarantee that they will always reflect God’s will. I believe there were people of good conscience on both sides of the battle lines in the Civil War. But both could not be right. During the debates and demonstrations that led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act, there were southern senators who did not flee the capitol, but sat in their offices receiving the full brunt of the civil rights movement. It may be hard for us to conceive of it in retrospect, but they felt they were acting in obedience to their conscience. Financier J. P. Morgan amassed great wealth and power with a clear and strong conscience he regarded as Christian. A man in my first church who had fought bravely in World War II was, years later, still obsessed with what he saw written on the belt buckle of a dead German soldier: Gott Mit Uns.
The voice of conscience is central to our moral and ethical lives. But a deeper, spiritual understanding of conscience goes beyond an internal obedience to what are perceived to be external and immutable rules. Conscience, spiritually defined, becomes that ongoing process, that struggle to discern right and wrong in a complicated world. That process includes our internal voices, but also includes listening to others, prayer and discernment in community, information, study and reflection on what we can learn from science and other religions. For example, the Word of God does not simply come to you from the preacher in the pulpit or your own study of the scriptures. The word comes from studying the Bible together, struggling with the hard issues in community, hearing one another’s spiritual journeys, putting my conscience (broadly understood) in conversation with yours and trusting that God’s intentions for us will become clear. Understood this way, conscience can be defined as the totality of my self, drawing on all the internal and external resources available to me, and placing this process in dialogue with yours.
Last week I was talking with an old friend who is a psychotherapist about the shootings in Littleton. "As a therapist," I asked, "do you have any thoughts about what must have been going on in the minds of those two teens?" He pondered the question a moment and then replied, "I don’t know. I would say that they just had no regard for human life." My immediate reaction was to conclude that he had simply stated the obvious. No kidding. To say that mass murderers have no regard for human life is something of a tautology. But the more I thought about it, there was a kind of simple power in what he was saying, including the mystery of sin and salvation. For the truth is that it is impossible for us to consciously harm anyone we regard as a human being. Yes, in fact, most murders take place among family members. Passionate rage can unleash violence. And the people we hate the most are often those closest to us. But mass violence requires us to de-humanize others - if we see them as the evil enemy, as dangerous to us, or simply as non-beings, then we can kill them without stirring conscience. The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, once said:
We bring young men and women into the armed forces to be warriors...in a warrior culture. They are not social workers. They are warriors. What is a warrior? Someone who can coldly intend to isolate the enemy and kill it.
American soldiers, as we all know, have historically been capable to tremendous acts of self-sacrifice and generosity, particularly for the victims of war and even a vanquished enemy. I believe General Powell himself, in his actions and temperament, models such nobility. Nevertheless, he makes it very clear that before we can kill, we must dehumanize the enemy, as anyone who has been in basic training fully understands.
What allows us to dehumanize others so that we may murder? Here, the faith community needs to respond. Quite simply, I believe that to be capable of systematic violence toward others, one must somehow cease to be human oneself. That is, either one has not grown into a full sense of humanity or one’s humanity itself been destroyed. Jesus of Nazareth teaches that the one immutable law is the law of love. The Prophet Jeremiah says that the old laws were written on stone, but the new law of love can only be written on the human heart. Commandments can only point in the direction of love, serve as guides, but not ends in themselves. It is the experience of being loved and loving in return that defines our humanity. In this sense, our tradition teaches that the goal of faith is first to form human conscience, but then to have that conscience transformed, baptized, by the presence of a loving God in our hearts. My internal conscience is not necessarily the voice of God. But the conversation that takes place within me is between the voice of my conscience, which is the best of me, and the Spirit of a living God, who has come and dwelt within me. That conversation can lead to the conversion, the transformation of my conscience, so that my mind may truly be the mind of Christ. My full humanity, my "self," is the totality of that process.
In other words, as at the time of creation itself, the totality of my being is that I am created from the dust and into me has been blown the breath of God. That is who I am what it means to be a human, living soul.
What are we called to do as a church, in light of the bloodstained faces of our own times? We are called to do what the church has always been called to do. Sometimes we have done it well, sometimes poorly; but to do it with confidence and the assurance that it really is worth doing: to care for and instruct the young, to strengthen families (families of all shapes and sizes and configurations); to seek justice and to be a community whose goal is not so much to change the world, as to show the world what is possible. And to seek out and proclaim the deeper, hidden meaning of our lives and human history. That is enough. AMEN.
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