Re: [TruthTalk] the conscience

[Knpraise]

Some thoughts on the conscience?   

I am beginning a process that will allow a research paper on the conscience.  As an avocation, I am still involved in pastoring --  as a pastoral counselor.  The biblical message has high regard for the conscience of man while modern psychology does not.  As a consequence, there is little or no secular research regarding the conscience.   

I am thinking that if we could understand just how the conscience is reestablished, we might have a tool of divine proportions that will assist in youth-at-risk interventions.    

I need ideas about the conscience and how those ideas relate to the biblical message.    If any of you are aware of research, especially Christian based research, relating to matters of the conscience, point me in that direction.    I, of course, will have little problem coming up with biblical references  --- so I do not scripture; rather, I will need interpretation or applications that are related to specific scripture.   

The conscience works with guilt and an internal moral code and only 'convicts" or is triggered when we violate that code . it works to keep us true to ourselves.   It never convicts, i.e.,  when we forget or fail  to do something that wrong or evil.   

In my life, it is interesting to observe my battle against cussing.    I am quite accomplished in this area of endeavor.   When I made  the decision to stop that practice (I am journeyman finish carpenter) I   (a)   told no one of my decision and (b) within three or four days of abstinence, felt the pangs of guilt on the first occasion of failure.   That guilt trigger was not because of social pressure because no one knew I had quit.   My conscience had been revived in this regard within hours of my decision and practice.   I just mention this to get some juices flowing out there in TT land.   


In Grace


John Smithson