Dr Paul Allen

Image via Wikipedia Why do you do what is right, rather than what is wrong? That is hardly a new question. It troubled the minds of the ancients. Some felt that humans are naturally drawn to virtue, but they were hard-pressed to explain why some individuals seemed to resist this impulse. Others argued that society had to make a firm impression upon the young, inculcating a desire for virtue and character that was more external than internal. Fast forward and the Victorians in Britain were convinced that a lack of virtue could be traced to either heredity or deprivation. Assuming the British middle class as normative, the Victorians offered the advice famously advocated by Jiminy Cricket to Pinocchio — “Let your conscience be your guide.” Experience indicates, consistent with what the Bible teaches, that this advice has limited value. The conscience is a human capacity for sure, part of the moral sense that testifies of the  imago Dei , but it is just as  Image via Wikipedi...

Image via Wikipedia The function of the conscience in ethical decision making tends to complicate matters for us.  The commandments of God are eternal, but in order to obey them we must first appropriate them internally.  The “organ” of such internalization has been classically called the conscience. Some describe this nebulous inner voice as the voice of God within.  The conscience is a mysterious part of man’s inner being. Within the conscience, in a secret hidden recess, lies the personality, so hidden that at times it functions without our being immediately aware of it.  When Sigmund Freud brought hypnosis into the place of respectable scientific inquiry, men began to explore the subconscious and examine those intimate caverns of the personality.  Encountering the conscience can be an awesome experience. The uncovering of the inner voice can be, as one psychiatrist notes, like “looking into hell itself.” Yet we tend to think of the c...