Scary: Serial Killers’, Government Leaders’ Death of Conscience
con·science: an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior.
John 14:26: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”
1 Timothy 1:5: “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”
“A good conscience is a continual Christmas.” Benjamin Franklin
In our faith tradition the conscience is our moral compass, a spiritual GPS if you will, placed there by the Almighty, and activated by the Holy Spirit. The “still small voice” or “inner feeling” telling us one path is right, and the other, wrong, guides us into the light. When our conscience “bothers” us, we know our path is errant, that it is time to confess our sin, turn from it, find forgiveness and be cleansed.
Fallen man enters the fellowship of the Spirit when the conscience is pricked to repentance. This is what makes civilization possible. When the conscience is operating properly, people become aware of their shortcomings, and instead of residing in the place of selfishness, they rise above their self-focus, considering others better than themselves, one of the central teachings of Jesus. Repentance brings humility, restores relationship, making civilization possible.
The good conscience is the place of liberation, the continual Christmas. The bad conscience is the staging ground for repentance, renewal and revival. What happens when the conscience is so seared it is rendered useless? Obviously, none of the good can emerge, and all of the bad is unleashed.
For many years in our country we have seen increasing numbers of people who do not appear to have any conscience, either good or bad. They neither experience the continual Christmas, nor are they seen responding to the conviction of a bad conscience leading them to renewal. They make everyone suffer from the death of conscience.
The most recent example is the murderer in Isla Vista. He premeditated mass murder using various weapons, going so far as to announce his plans. The most chilling aspect of watching his pre-mayhem video is beholding the complete lack of conscience. He actually celebrated the prospect of murdering innocent people. Displaying the cold heart of the killer, this person was like so many serial killers, an individual spreading death and misery without any sense of mercy or remorse: a hollow person with no conscience, one possessing a dark soul, overwhelmed by deepest evil.
All the shooters in recent memory are like the Isla Vista killer, whether at Fort Hood, or in Tucson, or at high schools, theaters, and colleges around the country: they all killed without mercy and without the slightest twinge of conscience.
All this is alarming and bad enough in itself, but when the death of conscience is displayed in people who are supposed to lead by example, we have entered a whole new realm of extraordinary danger. When masses of people follow leaders who actually embrace evil, showing no conscience, the time of ultimate darkness has arrived, as it did in Germany in the 30s.
Our disease is sin, borne of evil, an evil resident in the human heart. The only cure is the cleansing power of the God of love. The godless land soon succumbs to the resulting plague, an epidemic brought by the death of conscience.
Consider Barack Obama. He displays no remorse, shows no mercy, takes no responsibility, blames others, and proceeds in wrongdoing over and over, never apologizing, or changing course, a man numbed to conviction. His words and behaviors do not correspond, revealing a lack of integrity. Multiple failures resulting in the loss of life are no source of embarrassment or shame. He appears the hollow man, emotionless, almost machine-like.
When the chief executive personifies the death of conscience, witnessed in so many others in government, the epidemic has become pandemic, especially in view of 55 million unborn babies murdered, without a second thought.
Image: Courtesy of: http://mrski-apecon-2008.wikispaces.com/jae+doh
