Part 4
traced in all pagan peoples. Four centuries before Christ, Socrates
was not only saved from making false steps by his inner voice, but
he was also driven to constructive action. Above all, he was led to
the search for truth through inquiry and discussion with all and
sundry. Yet his inner voice was only the instinct of his soul, as
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unclear as it was strong, and just this inner voice gives proof that
the human conscience, when it is not renewed by the spirit of God,
remains clouded in confusion in spite of strenuous efforts to find
the truth. The fact that Socrates called this inner voice a demon
points much more to the dark rays of the other world than to the
bright revelation of truth in the pure and perfect love of God's
righteousness. It is dangerous and misleading to think, as many do,
with the great Christian poet Dante: "A conscience stands beside
me, pure and true, an authority in whom I trust completely and
without reserve."
To regard one's conscience as an infallible authority is always
questionable, to say the least. In and of itself, it cannot ever
become pure and incorruptible, because it continues to have a part
in every degradation of the soul. It is rather like a ship's pilot who
has lost his bearings because he has sailed into unfamiliar waters.
Whether he admits his own helplessness with honesty and shame
or whether he steers the ship this way and that with apparent
confidence, he cannot do what he is meant to do until he has found
his way back to his own familiar waters. The conscience would
naturally always like to steer the right course. But it has lost its
way. It longs for the home port, but thick fog has clouded its
vision. The land has disappeared into the distance as if forever –
the land of clarity. The conscience asks the same alarmed question
again and again: "My poor, erring soul, will you ever find the way
home? How far must you go before you are given a guiding light?"
But just when danger becomes obvious – when immediate disaster
threatens because the head is perplexed and the heart faint, when
visibility is poor, destructive icebergs or rocks loom ahead, or collision
with others whose course is just as erratic seem imminent – just
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when there is utmost need, the conscience becomes disquieted and
is nearest to fulfilling its task. Therefore a bad conscience – a
conscience full of sin, an evil conscience – is all that many people
are aware of. This fact remains, and it must be recognized again
and again in all the confusion today: the witness of the conscience
shows itself most sharply of all in the face of guilt and threatening
destruction.
The heart is like a secret chamber of justice in which the
conscience, as the judge within, challenges all that takes place. A
shadow of God's will remains printed, as it were, in the heart, even
if it is only scarcely visible. The judge within has to pass a verdict in
accordance with these faint lines. He is busy day and night. He seeks
judgment and atonement uninterruptedly. And yet one thing is always
clear – the conscience does not give atonement. We ourselves cannot
still our conscience. Consequently it testifies with unquestionable
authority to the God-fearing of all ages: burnt offerings, sacrifices
of things and even sacrifice of life, make no one perfect.
Splendid ceremonies and symbols of the utmost devotion mean
nothing to a tortured and burning conscience unless the source of
its distress is removed. In spite of the most earnest piety or the
most genuine idealism, the conscience never ceases to condemn sin
in all its heaviness as sin, which of itself it can never expiate. Even
if we sacrifice our very lives for our ideals, the conscience still
speaks to us of sin whenever we do something in the course of our
sacrifice that offends God's truth and purity; that is, his unity and
love.
Only through the knowledge of good and evil can this unremit
ting accusation of sin arise. This knowledge became part of the first
man when he joined forces with sin. Like the child today, he had no
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awareness of a conscience in this sense, that is, in the sense of a
bad conscience. Like every true child, he knew nothing about evil.
In his innocence he was unable to discriminate or choose between
good and evil. For it is only possible to "discern" spiritual powers,
good or evil, by becoming one with them in will and deed.
It is true that the first man, like a child, knew that he had to do
the will of God. Yet he knew as little as any child to what extent
God's will stands in opposition to evil. Without a doubt, he had the
deep urge, as does every childlike soul, to do the will of him who
gave him life and breath. This urge was in no way strengthened
when the utterly new and completely different knowledge of good
and evil came to him as a bad conscience about sin. It could only
hinder and paralyze this basic yearning of life.
Man became a coward and a weakling. His conscience realized
the evil he had done, but he was held captive and powerless. He still
had a little will left, but this will had become sick and paralyzed
through choosing evil. He could of himself no longer do good. His
conscience recognized good, but it did not lead him to God; on the
contrary, it drove him to hide in shame and fear.
How could it be otherwise? A defiled conscience does not have
within it the power to purify itself. The knowledge of evil has
plunged it into derangement and confusion, and it sees no way out.
It cannot achieve its goal until rebellious humankind has returned
to the life that it has deserted – a life in God. God must be served
again with a free will and a clear conscience. Freedom and purity
are to be found nowhere except in God. They are not to be found
among people. Diametrically opposed to things as they are, they
depend on a break with all existing conditions, and a turning to the
life of God's coming kingdom. It is only here that the conscience
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can be released from its association with evil. Only here can
community with God be found – a complete transformation of the
inner and outer life to correspond to the childlike spirit and the
origin of the first man.
God in his loving-kindness will do everything possible to move
the heart to this conversion. In every event, whether in the history
of the great world or in our own small world, God seeks through
his loving-kindness – and through the wrath of his judgment – to
lead us to radical repentance, a repentance that leads to rebirth
and to the kingdom of God. In the composure of prosperous
middle-class life, man has hardened his heart against this message
from God. Consequently, the iron plow of bitter need must now
tear open our consciences. Need and distress must awaken our
consciences so that they might again condemn all evil and search
out all good, learn again to listen to the word of truth, and estab
lish God's future in the present.
Ultimately, the task of the conscience is to represent the truth.
The closer it comes to converting people and all that relates to
them, the more it thirsts for the ultimate truth and the life that
truth brings, a life that changes everything and makes everything
possible. The conscience responds to the truth. The writings of the
apostles and the prophets testify that every genuine proclamation
of the word, every unadulterated revelation of the truth, speaks to
all consciences. The conscience recognizes the objective truth of
the word and the subjective honesty of the confessor for what they
are. Beck's saying "Christianity looks to our consciences for authen
tication" refers first and foremost to the inner testimony of this
objective truth.* But this testimony also includes the authentication
of all God-ordained proclaimers of the gospel as to the sincerity of
*Johann Tobias Beck, –.
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their intentions and the harmony between their words and way of
life. The word brings truth and is truth. From those who proclaim
it, the word demands the integrity and reality that befits the truth.
When God's message awakens us, it tries to strike our conscience
in such a way that we can never seek or long for anything but what
God is saying. From now on, we seek the kingdom of God and his
righteousness. In all the things that fall to our lot, God's purpose is
to give us the same task as the first people – we are to cultivate and
preserve what God entrusts to us; we are to penetrate it in spirit,
designate it clearly, and proclaim it. Our conscience must become
free for this life task.
Just as God once gave the first man and woman the peace and
community of the old garden, he gives this task to the believer in
the new garden of his peaceable kingdom, the Christ-church of the
new spirit. It is, therefore, for the task of cultivating the earth for his
rulership that he wants to purify the conscience from its self-willed
and hostile separation. The curse of this separation lies more obviously
before the eyes of people today than any other generation. God's
garden is more remote than ever before. The separation is constantly
increased by frenzied travel. We rush with headlong speed over an
earth deprived of God. At the same time though, God and his
kingdom draw near in secret to win back the garden, here where it
was lost.
The contrast between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of
mammon has seldom come to light so clearly in the history of
humankind as in our time. We are in a similar situation to that of
the Reformation. At that time the radical reformer Jakob Hutter
worked throughout the German territories of Tirol and Moravia,
from 1529 until his martyrdom in 1536. He proclaimed anew the
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entire gospel of God, founding and establishing for thousands the
complete community of the united church based on faith in the
kingdom of Jesus Christ. Among other important letters of the year
1535, he wrote the following one (delivered from Tirol to Moravia
by a fellow reformer), in which he vividly testifies to faith in the
showers of living water from above – faith in the constructive and
strengthening power of the Holy Spirit and the healing mercy of
Christ:
May God shower these blessings upon our hearts and bless his garden so that it may become fruitful with all good works. This garden is the church of the living God. May God fence this gar den for you and make a wall around it, shield it, and protect it so that the fruit may ripen; for the Lord's garden blossoms now! The children of the Lord thrive and grow in godly righteousness and truth like lilies and flowers, as a lovely garden flourishes af ter a gentle May rain. Yes, their hearts burn with the fire of God's love. Their hearts are alight and kindled by the eternal light and fire of God. Therefore they are justly called a garden of the Lord, or a paradise of God. The holy city cannot remain hidden.
The same divine community of peace and the same work of love for
the earth is entrusted in our time to this same church, this same
garden of God, as it was once entrusted to the first man and
woman. The building-up of the same justice that will conquer the
whole world in the final kingdom of Jesus Christ is entrusted into
the church's hands. The lordship of the spirit over soul and body
(and therefore over all that belongs to the earth) shall be revealed
once more in the church as the image of God, as it is given in Jesus
Christ. The gospel of God wants to awaken our consciences for this
task, given to the first man and to the last Adam. Even though we
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are not equal to it, we have to accept this task.
Sickness of soul and spirit has eaten so deeply into our conscience
that it is no longer able to be a clear mirror of good and evil. Least
of all can it give a clear picture of God's image. In spite of the testi
mony it gives again and again, it is stained by evil in the soul. Just
as it is unable to keep itself from being besmirched, the conscience
is also unable to purify itself. Of itself, it is not only incapable of
producing a clear picture, it cannot even reflect in clear outlines
the radiant image of God that shines out so wonderfully in Jesus.
The only way the human conscience can be purified is through
the sacrificed lifeblood of Jesus, the only pure image of God. His
sacrificed soul brings God's life to us, and thus represents the only
stainless human soul. The life of his soul, like ours, was in his blood.
His blood and his body were also bound together in one frame. But
his body was without sin; his blood was pure; his conscience was
undefiled. When he sacrificed his life for us, his blood was free from
any guilt of his own. His blood was free from all impurity, all
ungenuineness, and all covetous desires. It was free from every
guilt, including the heaviest that can lie on our hands: that of
shedding blood. No matter the circumstances, no matter how lofty the
ideals, Jesus would have nothing to do with this gravest of crimes, the
crime against life given by God alone – life that only God is entitled to
take away. No social critic, no criminal court could condemn him. He
commended his spirit into the hands of the Father free from the stain
of this guilt, as of all guilt. His was a living spirit uncorrupted by any
traffic with the powers of darkness or death.
From God he once more sends this quickening spirit down to us.
The souls and consciences of those who receive it will be purified
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from all former guilt, and their lives will be protected from new
offenses. For the life of Christ, the bearer of the Holy Spirit, who
was sacrificed for them, is purity itself – the purity of a love that is
perfect unto death. The blood that was sacrificed for them in death
is mightier than death and more powerful than all its deadly,
poisonous, and divisive powers. It has a life within it that remains
free from all the elements of death and decomposition, which are
hostile to life and to God. Purification through the blood of Christ
means that in his spirit his spotless, surrendered life unfolds its
powers here and now. Therefore it is able to set our consciences
free from all impurity.
Through the complete uniting of his life with ours, his sacrifice
has the power to purify our consciences from all guilt and confusion.
It gives our consciences the highest and purest of tasks. For his
sacrifice created unity: the new unity, and the only unity there is
among us. It created the organic unity of the kingdom and the
church, which does not tolerate a single barrier between the
nations. For it has broken down the strongest barrier between
peoples – the barrier that stood between the Jewish people and
other nations. Whoever tries to erect this barrier again – and
whoever insists on the erection of other walls between people – is
a traitor to the blood of Christ and his sacrifice. All that takes place
as a result of this attitude is bound to show itself as the work of
death, because it is inimical to the spirit of life. All works that
establish self-willed boundaries are and remain dead works.
In spite of its profound weakness, the conscience is in this respect
true to the origin of the soul in God, the source of life – it fights
against all dead works. Through the blood of Christ, the conscience
strives to do away with all works done in our own strength. Such
works can never create life anywhere, for they are undertaken
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without the spirit of Christ and without the power of God. When
works are born out of our own strength, arising from our own
motives and pursuing our own aims, they are dead works. When
they deny the origin of life and God's goal in Christ Jesus, they are
dead works.
The gospels would have us rest from all our own works so that God's
work can begin through his spirit, just as it did in the first church in
Jerusalem. God begins his work now. The Holy Spirit establishes it.
Jesus Christ completes it. In God it is consummated. When the
conscience is purified from all that belongs to evil and death, it sets to
work more zealously than ever before. Now the mystery of faith has
to be kept safe in a clear conscience. Now the new life must set to
work, as God's love and God's work, in deeds of love that are born of a
pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.
The awakened conscience exerts its humble strength more and
more so that all available means and gifts are used for the fulfilling
of God's will – for the work that only God can do. Perfect love longs
to express itself in God's work everywhere so that justice is done to
every human, and so that as many as possible reach an awareness
and fulfillment of their highest destiny.
The conscience expects us to put into action the dignity we have
rewon in God, and to let it bear rich fruit. This new nobility bears
the image of God on its coat of arms. It accepts the responsibility
of working for God's kingdom of justice in the joy of love and the
unity of peace. The conscience purified in Christ, as a conscience
enlivened by the Holy Spirit, seeks the image of God. Only in the
church of Christ and in the kingdom of God can it be truly estab
lished anew.
The image of God appears wherever the spirit of the church's
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master is, for it is the spirit of the king of the kingdom. There the
features of God's character stand out more clearly, more radiantly.
The conscience illuminated by the spirit recognizes that it is its vo
cation to be the image of God. Once that has happened, it has noth
ing to do with any other witness. It has become the finger in
Grünewald's altarpiece, unceasingly pointed toward the figure of
the crucified one.* The image of humankind, which has already
been repainted a hundredfold, has been renewed in the image of
Jesus Christ as the image of God.
*The reference is to Matthias Grünewald's "Isenheim altar" (ca. ), a triptych that portrays, among other scenes, John the Baptist at the crucifixion of Jesus.
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The Conscience and Its Restoration
The conscience is a center of extraordinary delicacy and
sensitivity. It represents the deepest feelings of the human spirit.
Like a supersensitive recording instrument, it is influenced by every
change of weather and liable to be seriously damaged by any shock.
When life becomes more and more superficial, when every door is
thoughtlessly left open to the atmosphere of the times, to its
changing winds and temperatures, the conscience is in danger of
being thrown off balance. But not only then: it can be led astray
just as much by mental and intellectual development. Even an
increase of religious activity can cause serious derangement. The
conscience is an uncertain factor even in the holiest spheres of life.
The conscience is diseased as long as it is not healed by the power
of Jesus' surrendered life. Bound to false ideals, that is, to erroneous
human thinking, the conscience is unreliable and degenerate until
it experiences freedom – and asserts its freedom – in the true and
vital word of God, in the living spirit of Jesus Christ. It is only in
doing the will of God that the spirit is given health. Jesus declared
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this with unmistakable authority; he put it into practice and sealed
it with his death. Any other idea, however strongly represented,
makes the conscience uncertain and ineffective.
The conscience craves for the very essence of truth. It demands
an ultimate, indisputable goal. Strength of conscience, growing
certainty and clarity, is to be found only where peace rules as unity,
justice rules as brotherliness, and joy rules as pure and all-inclusive
love. Every other ideal, no matter how praiseworthy it may seem,
has disastrous and even fatal results if it aims at other goals even
for a short time. The one way leading upward has both solitary
paths and wide, well-traveled highways branching off. Every one
of them leads us further and further away from unity, justice, and
love. They bring us into darkness, uncertainty, and division. Finally
they plunge us into the abyss. The conscience, as a supersensitive
faculty, is all too easily brought into danger on false paths and then
corrupted and destroyed.
The unhealthy state of an erring conscience comes to expression
in annihilating self-accusations and hateful reproaches so violent
that they derange the mind. Dissension and hate undermine the
health and vitality not only of individuals but also of nations. Most
of all, sickness shows itself when the conscience reacts in a very
sensitive way in the wrong place. It is typical of all false ideals and
goals that they rob the conscience of certainty about the essential
thing. They all bind the conscience to secondary issues. They all
serve dissension. They all shake trust in the spirit who unites and
purifies. This is because they all wish to set arbitrary boundaries to
limit the cause they should be representing. On the one hand they
blunt the conscience, and on the other hand they incite it to wild
exaggeration and injustice.
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The conscience starts to go wrong when we lose trust in the
uniqueness and absoluteness of the goal. In the end, confidence and
clarity are given up as lost forever. As long as other points of
attraction compete with the magnetic pole, the needle jerks
unsteadily here and there without any accuracy. This restlessness
gives rise to a wavering judgment, looking for a victim like a bird
of prey. There are cases in which a sick conscience lets no thought
arise and no step be taken without submitting it to serious misgiv
ings and harsh judgments. Such a sickness fills the whole of life with
grievances and dissatisfaction, with self-laceration and injustice.
Only when the conscience that inflicts such suffering on itself
experiences the remission of sins through Christ's spirit can healing
can be given. When accusation comes to an end, impure fires are
extinguished and their unsteady flickering dies out. As soon as the
pure light of loving grace breaks through, hostility and injustice
sink into ashes. The fire of evil dies away in God's air. Those love
much to whom much is forgiven. Those who experience love
forgive much. When the power of all-embracing unity breaks
through, division and destruction vanish, and all their misleading
and subsidiary aims vanish with them.
It is a fact that anyone willing to become healthy again begins by
speaking about his or her malady openly and without reserve.
Those who frankly expose the accusations and inhibitions of their
conscience have already begun to recover. They recognize the
power of their censured urges as a reality, they bring to light the
morbid repression of these urges and make known their self-
laceration and hostility and all the injustice that goes with it. To
conceal these exhausting struggles is to sap the energy of life, as
the Jewish psalms testify with superlative clarity. By disentangling
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conflicting forces in a matter-of-fact way and exposing all the aims
and motives behind them, anyone can knock the bottom out of this
exhausting conflict.
Yet here too, disclosing the harm is only the first step. The next
important step will be to show the corrupted and repressed urges
the way to healing and the sphere of action that God intends for
them. The conscience must find God's land, in which joy in life –
which is God's will – takes the place of the despondency and de
spair to which all human unrest is doomed.
For this reason, any attempt at pastoral help is bound to be inad
equate and futile as long as the conscience is not entirely freed
from soul-killing accusations and self-accusations, from the sweat
of its own desperate efforts. Nothing that is reaped from the ac
cursed soil of self-appointed efforts or goals can stand before the
conscience or before the final judgment seat. The conscience must
be freed from our selfish spirit, from our self-will, our own goals,
our own works. All of life's energies must be directed toward the
one and only task in life that is truly active and positive: carrying
out God's creative will and working toward the goal of his new cre
ation. Even though the conscience is not clearly aware of it because
of its seriously sick and degenerate state, subconsciously it does
have this one goal before it.
In times past, there was a tendency to call even the healthiest
reactions of the conscience a sign of sickness that should be
ignored. But that must be repudiated most decisively. The
conscience must never be silenced or despised. Instead, it must be
led to splendid health by being freed from false aims and directed
toward the kingdom of God. This never means that the conscience
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is silenced or despised – rather, it gains positive recognition
through being filled with new clarity and new content. This freeing
and fulfillment leads to lively activity in all areas of life embraced
by the conscience. It is truest of all for public responsibility and
vocational activity: in these areas, plain for everyone to see,
completely new ways and unheard-of possibilities will be opened
up by the conscience that is bound to Christ and his kingdom.
One and the same thing is true for all areas of life filled with new
meaning and attained to new purpose; they are freed from selfish
ness, violence, deceit, and immorality. Human existence as a whole
is at stake. It must be won completely or given up as lost. Many are
so bewildered by the utter confusion of life today they cannot
summon enough strength and clarity of conscience to have a
decisive effect on even one area of their character. They are and
continue to be at a loss.
Even in circles that had long shown a certain sureness of moral
instinct, shady business practices gained ground during and after
the war in more than half the German nation. Any effective
defense the conscience might have had against the powers of hell
had been destroyed – by political murder (lightly interpreted as
self-defense) and by thoughtless readiness for a repetition of war
and civil war.
Whoever can read the signs of the times will hardly be surprised
to find that there is scarcely any real uneasiness about the injustice
of mammon and property – an injustice that in fact kills every bit
of love and the whole of life. In the obvious confusion of
conscience, it is not surprising to find a lack of restraint over covet
ous desires and a brazen unfaithfulness that is growing beyond all
bounds. The masses are in motion. The human race is gravitating
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around a turning point. In all probability this critical and turbulent
state will lead to destruction. Ominous signs gather on all sides.
The greatest danger in all the different areas that are corrupt
today is this: spiritual leaders explain the ever-increasing confusion
in such bedazzling ways that no one feels uneasy.
Nowadays what is most abnormal has become the norm, or at
least put into currency as an ordinary necessity of life for almost
everyone. The present-day confusion of conscience with regard to
sex must be mentioned here as a typical example, one that is
characteristic of all areas of life. In the circles influenced by
Sigmund Freud, people attempt to draw all kinds of sexual perversions
out of the slumbering subconscious mind regardless of whether
they are committed on themselves, on the opposite sex, or on the
same sex. They regret that these perversions have been repressed
into the subconscious by the conscience.
Followers of Freud probe into the earliest experiences of childhood
and into the most spiritual relationships, trying to prove that even
such pure feelings as those between parents and children are based
on and defined by erotic drives. And what Freud himself saw as a
general principle applying to scientific research has been used by some
of his followers for practical orientation and guiding principles in
personal conduct. This is bound to have harmful effects.
People try to bring into the clear light of consciousness images
that can only be recognized as morbid. They intentionally try to
bring these images back into channels from which they had been
diverted by a healthy reaction of the conscience. In all this, there is
a marked tendency to attribute all emotional disturbances to
repressed sexual desires – desires that were actually hardly
noticeable or that were long since inwardly overcome. What is
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most dangerous of all (and even seductive) is that these impulses
that have been driven into the subconscious and forgotten there
are supposed to be cured by being brought back again as
consciously willed images. It amounts to an attack on the
conscience – an attack that distorts everything. It is impossible to
imagine a worse attack – one that leads people more astray. The
would-be cure leads to a sickness and poisoning that grows
progressively more widespread and more serious.
And yet even these circles had to admit that "culture" and "true
humanity" are possible only through a repression of sexuality,
which can never have a cramping effect when it takes place
through the pure spirit. Even these circles must recognize the
repression of impulses by the conscience as the necessary link
between sexuality and spirit. Without this link, the spirit would be
cut off from our life.
On the other hand, the word "repression" is enough to deprecate
the whole activity of the conscience and throw suspicion on it. It is
wrongly understood, however: this dangerous word does not apply
to a healthy conscience. Yet it is not without significance. There
would indeed be a fatal repression, a morbid suppression of vital
impulses, if the active conscience were not able to point to a
responsible way in which all the powers of body and soul could be
led to a positive and creative task.
Here lies the real reason why this dangerous misconception is so
widespread in our sick age. In the concept of the family almost
universally accepted today, the responsibilities and tasks of family
life no longer correspond to God's creative will. What is true of
parents is true of children. Countless young people and just as much
their parents lack that sense of inner responsibility in their mutual
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relationships which puts the whole of life into the hands of God's
faithful spirit.
Large numbers of our contemporaries suffer no pangs of
conscience when the soul's deepest need for faithfulness is
destroyed. They are affected just as little when the smallest souls
that want to be called into life are prevented or annihilated. Little
souls wait in vain to be called out of eternity. Living human souls
wait in vain to be called by constancy and faithfulness. There seems
to be an ever smaller circle of people in whom the conscience
protests clearly and sharply against contempt for the creative
spirit, just as it protests against any profanation of the longing for
unity, faithfulness, and constancy.
This inner protest is also a stirring challenge to us to shape our
love life responsibly and faithfully. Anyone wanting to call it
"repression" casts suspicion on creation itself. In actual fact, this
activity of the conscience provides us with our only safeguard
against the fall that threatens us, a fall that would make us lower
than the animals, lower than the beasts of prey. A comparison could
be made with a war-veteran who is emotionally disturbed, or with
the morbid excitement in a smoldering riot or civil war: in both
cases, the conscience has to repress the passions that urge people
to shoot others in the streets of their home town. In the same way,
it is a healthy sign when a person represses uncreative and
life-thwarting urges toward his or her own body, sex, or life
companion. It may be that in one or the other area of our life we
are not given the opportunity for responsible and constructive
action. Then we should be thankful that "repression" – a term so
often misused – has led to the complete forgetting and wiping-out
of sterile or murderous desires.
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The enlightened person will see to it that the sultry, natural
urges of his unthinking subconscious mind are not allowed to
influence the thoughts of his soul. He will condemn sinful urges as
irresponsible. No one can regard a sense of responsibility as morbid
suppression. Every clear spirit must feel that it is a sign of a healthy
mind when the conscience wards off each degenerate impulse or
sterile activity through feelings of dislike and embarrassment,
shame and disgust, or horror and fear. A conscience working like
this is a psychic mechanism on its way to recovery; it helps us
overcome everything that would destroy the holiest powers of life.
It is a question of what these powers are meant for. In the
conscience regaining health, the creative spirit awakens an aware
ness that all life-energies are intended for the greatest and noblest
tasks, tasks that we cannot allow to be hindered or desecrated.
The sensual person, on the other hand, crushes underfoot all
threats of conscience. Without any feeling of shame or disgust, he
or she wants to become one with every orgasmic deity, wanting
undisturbed to say to each passing moment of desire, "I am lust
itself." Such lust is devoid of spirit and meaning. It is altogether
lacking in purpose and moral content. Such a person is not a victor
but a miserable slave to the lecherous god. The pagan satyr is a
symbol of the violation of all noble-mindedness. It desecrates the
human spirit, and it is the enemy of the divine spirit. When this
grinning pagan god who threatens everything holy is banished to
hell, the creative spirit does not in any way spurn the body or its
psychophysical powers. The pagan god is dead, and all he can do is
to embrace death.
To be sure, this pagan god is not the only enemy of the creative
will for life. In his presence, the conscience is stifled; but also in the
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"grumbler" against God's will, in the sanctimonious hypocrite, the
conscience is trained to a morbid aversion to life. Such would-be
Christians want to reject all the urges of the living senses as alarming
and embarrassing. They ought to call themselves Buddhists rather
than Christians.
The attitude of Christ is utterly different: his life and death
remain devoted to the earth. His will is that God's kingdom comes
on earth! It is important that the conscience is so restored to health
that the natural urges go in the direction meant for them. Then
they will unfold without further harm in a way that corresponds to
the will of creation. This healing can take place only in faith in the
coming kingdom: faith in a power that is present here and now.
Weighty reasons can be brought forward to support the opinion
that this healing has become an impossibility for people of today. It
takes an absolute transformation of the whole of public life to
develop these vital powers in the one and only living direction. To
many however, this seems impossible in our present times; it has
become too remote for their small faith.
Moral philosophers may demand that the sexual life is purified
by insisting on purity before and during marriage. But even the
best of them become insincere and unjust if they do not make clear
the actual basis for the fulfillment of such high demands. Even
destruction of the life that is waiting to come into being – a
Massacre of the Innocents intensified a thousandfold today –
remains unassailable without faith in the kingdom of God. The
supposedly high culture of our days will continue to practice this
massacre as long as social disorder and injustice prevail. Infant murder
cannot be overcome as long as private life and public life are
allowed to maintain their status quo.
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Whoever fights against self-centered acquisitiveness and against
the deceit in unjust social distinctions must fight them in a realistic
way – a way that demonstrates a different form of life as a possi
bility that actually exists. If this is not done, purity in marriage and
an end of murder cannot be demanded either. Not even for families
with the soundest morals can anyone wish the blessing of many
children, corresponding to the creative powers of God's nature.
Christian marriage cannot be demanded outside the whole context of
life that is called the kingdom of God and the church of Jesus Christ.
Only marriage fulfills the demands of the sexual conscience,
through the will to have children. It is a fulfillment in the picture it
gives of the unity of God with his people (Eph. 5), an example of
the rule of the spirit of unity, and as a community of life and
community of goods. It symbolizes the rule of the spirit over body
and soul. In all these ways, marriage is a picture of the church. The
place for marriage is nowhere but in the church. Only where the
unity of the church, filled with the spirit, creates community in
material things through inspired and united work, can these
demands be made of marriage. Only in the church can these
demands be fulfilled at the right time and given their true value.
The unity and purity in marriage taught by Jesus and his apostles
are unique. They have nothing to do with the old nature. They
belong to the new church order, which as brotherly justice lets the
spirit of love rule supreme. Unity and purity in marriage do not
belong to the unredeemed. They can be realized only in the new
church of the spirit of Jesus Christ. They belong to the kingdom of
God. They are symbol and sacrament of that kingdom.
It is to God's love and to the fruits of all the gifts of God's love
that the conscience leads us. Through the invasion of the spirit into
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every area of life and his rulership there, God's love leads us to this
unity of the spirit. God's will is that we put this love into practice
with all the strength of our body, soul, and spirit. God is love. Who
ever abides in love, abides in God. God abides in them. A life lived
in love is lived in God. It is on the earth that the love of the father
of Jesus Christ is bestowed so that love shall reign supreme here, so
that what love dictates shall be done in everything here on earth.
Only in this way will God's name be truly hallowed.
God is unchangeable. His name is "I am that I am." His heart
embraces everything and remains the same for everyone. It was
revealed in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is today and forever the same
as he was in all his words and deeds. He is here and now the same as
he will reveal himself to be in his kingdom. His words of love point
to the same way for all things. What he said for the future members of
his kingdom holds good for all his disciples at all times.
Everything he said for his disciples' instruction belongs together,
just as the sap belongs to the tree, the savor to the salt, and the
flame to the candle. They belong together.
For this reason, what Jesus said about marriage must not be
isolated from any other saying in the Sermon on the Mount. In
marriage, Jesus represented the will to love as the will to unity. But
he represented it just as much in not having property, not bearing
arms, not insisting on rights, being free from a judging spirit, being
forgiving, and loving one's enemies. Poverty born of love is a
protection from a bad conscience because it guards against
injustice. Perfect love strides on to voluntary poverty because it
cannot keep for itself anything that a neighbor needs. Perfect love
does away with weapons because it has given up self-preservation
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and has nothing to do with revenge. It remains steadfast and for
conscience' sake bears evil and injustice. It keeps in mind the
Sermon on the Mount and knows that this attitude is God's greatest
gift because it reveals his heart. The love that conquers everything
is revealed by a firmness that is not upheld by weapons.
Love gives up everything it owns. Like the elders of the early
church, those who guard the mystery of faith in a pure conscience
remain free from involvement in any legal or hostile action. Christ's
justice conducts no lawsuits. It does not carry on a middleman's
business or any business that is to the disadvantage of another. It
foregoes all its own advantage, it sacrifices every privilege, and it
never defends a right. Christ's justice never sits on a jury, never
deprives anyone of freedom, and never passes a death sentence. It
knows no enemies and fights no one. It does not go to war with any
nation or kill any human being. And yet when this justice is at
work, it is justice in its most active form, peace in its most energetic
form, and constructiveness in its most effective form. The sum
total of all we are commanded to do is to love: to love with a pure
heart, a clear conscience, and a genuine faith. In order for perfect
love to flow freely, Jesus showed the conscience the way of
responsible community in God. This is the essential nature of his
kingdom and his church.
The way of Jesus is love, agape. His love tolerates no unclarity.
This kind of love is unique. It gives a very definite direction. It is a
way, and this way is very clearly marked out. In the experience of
God's love, Jesus Christ leads us up to the purest and loftiest peaks
of willpower, clear recognition, and strength of heart that is joy.
He does not do this for our sake. His will is that we pass on the
streams of this power of love that is poured into our hearts. These
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streams are meant to flood the earth. They are meant to conquer
the land, reveal God's heart, and establish God's glory.
God's glory is his heart. His heart is love. It devotes itself to
everyone in the joy of giving. God's glory is love. Love is his justice.
When our seeking for the kingdom of God and his justice is single
and undivided, we are filled with such a love for all that everything
we want for ourselves we want for everyone. That is the only
justice, the only righteousness, when we give our lives for love.
The highest goal of this pure and unadulterated love is the
kingdom of God. This love alone fulfills the longing of our conscience.
All other objects of our thoughts and inclinations prove to be
either weak representations of the pure service of God's kingdom
or distorted caricatures of it, a hostile antithesis. Nothing is
conceivable to the purified conscience without the thoughts of
perfect love. Unity is its first and last thought.
From first to last, life is called to unity with God, expressed as
the unity of the church, the unity created by his spirit of love. In
this community of love, the conscience gains a strength that goes
beyond the rejection of what is wicked and evil. It becomes the
driving power behind joyful, constructive work. The conscience
fettered to Christ is bound to the king and lord of the coming order
of God. Therefore it demands and creates everywhere the one form
of life that strives to correspond to the order of the kingdom of
God down to the last detail. In Christ, we are concerned in all areas
of life with the greatest and highest that can be entrusted to us:
the eminence of God, the rule of his heart.
However, the apostles of this Messiah-king also know of an
enfeebled state of conscience, in which the conscience is influenced
from another side and chained to dead objects: a conscience bound
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to idols. Even a believing conscience can be critically weakened by
the influence of other spirits, hostile to the spirit proceeding from
God. Other kings –whether cultural icons or popular idols, heroes
or political leaders – arise to bind us and lead us away from Christ.
The conscience is always weak when bound by an influence
different from that of Jesus Christ. It wavers and goes astray. It is
wrong in its judgments. It makes demands that have every appear
ance of decisiveness and manliness and yet arise out of weakness:
they do not represent things as they actually are, they give no real
help, they use weapons that are injurious to life, they contradict
the truth of God's word and the spirit of Jesus Christ. They are dead
and lead to death.
A conscience that pays allegiance to the wrong leader is bound to
transgress constantly against the will to life characteristic of
Christ's rulership. This fact is most painfully clear in all who combine
the name "Christ" with an alien name and goal. In this futile under
taking, Christianity today –more than ever before – is deprived of
the spirit of the one they still want to confess. The pure spirit does
not allow itself to be mixed with any other spirits. His kingdom
does not tolerate any rival power structure.
What do idols and the house of God have in common? Has good
ness anything to do with wickedness? Can the one join forces with
the other in the same undertaking? Does light associate with
darkness? When has the kingdom of God made an alliance with a
state built on human power? Did Jesus ever mix other watchwords
with his prophetic message? How can the word of Jesus tolerate
rival human commands? When has God shared his sovereignty with
human rulers? Can the city of God go hand in hand with Babel? Can
one equate Christ and Belial, God and the Devil?
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Yet it does no good to hit out at a conscience that is sick and
feeble. Even an erring conscience deserves consideration and re
spect. There must be some influence that frees it from all vacillat
ing emotions and from all the ties of the Antigod, without striking
it dead to the ground. Surely it is the radiant light that overcomes
all gloom and shadows. Faced with the rising sun, night is power
less. The spirit of life is victorious over the spirit of murder. No
other authority can bring peace. It is the spirit of life, as the spirit
of light, who sets the conscience free. This spirit conquers without
destroying. God's rule takes command over the heart. The spirit of
his rulership transforms hearts and nations. It is the church of Jesus
Christ here and now that shapes an order of communal life with
the same character as his future. The church's will to unity and her
spirit of love transform everything. But they never kill anything
that has life.
The conscience is at peace only when it is in perfect accord with
God's will. In the conscience of a believing and loving person, the
will to truth dwells as the spirit of Jesus. In this dark hour of world
history, it is of crucial importance that this news, this answer, is
carried to the four corners of the earth. Then the conscience will
become free from all legalistic ties, from every influence of the
spirit of the age, from every human opiate, and from all demonic
magic. The distress in this hour demands a supreme strength – a
strength found only in the healing brought down to mortally sick
humanity by God's kingdom of life and love. This mission goes out
to every nation. The task is clear. The message runs: "Let yourselves
be united in God!"
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Only community with God and Christ's redemption gives
healing. Without God's justice, the conscience remains evil. Only
through faith in God has a good conscience any stability. The unity
of the church gives this faith the most definite confirmation. All
stimulation from outside, all flames of human enthusiasm that leap
from one person to another, leave the anxious question behind
whether it was really God who gripped us. There is only one
criterion to apply to this alarming question: the agreement of all
believers, the unanimity of their judgment, and the full accord of
their consciences in the tasks set before them. The unity between
the church and the words and lives of the apostles and their
prophecy is proof that the voice speaking in human hearts is God's
voice. The conscience is robbed of all certainty if the believers do
not come to unity among themselves and to unity with the life and
spirit of the early church. Certainty about the message leads to a
uniting of believers and uniting with God.
Only from within can the conscience reach this certainty.
Community in all things is inmost certainty. The state of the
conscience varies according to the degree of community with God
and the acceptance of his will. The closer the community with God,
the more does the conscience thrive. Only in this way is unanimity
achieved. The more deeply Christ dwells in our hearts the more
sharply, delicately, and carefully does the conscience insist that
truth means unity.
At first, what the kingdom of God demands appears not only too
sharp and strict but downright impossible. But the perfect will of
God gains recognition more and more as the will to joy, the only
thing that is good and living. The more God's will gains ground, the
closer the conscience comes to unity with God and his church.
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Therefore we can say that when a conscience is healed it is in fact
sharpened, purified, and clarified for the unity of complete
community. To be sure, the conscience loses its clarity to the same
degree as we refuse to serve the will to unity. And finally: the
conscience can never acknowledge a community supposedly in God
and a unity of the church that is not constantly proved in deeds,
that does not show a fitting attitude and way of life. For basically
the conscience is always intent on action. God is action.
Through the unity of the church led by the Spirit, a right way of
life shows that it is in reality a community in God. When the
attitude of the believers is purified and unified through the Holy
Spirit, unanimity and unity of life come into being. In Christ, their
attitude to life becomes one with their way of life. With its
renewed sensitivity, the conscience strives toward this immediate
goal, upholding the influence of the spirit of Jesus with unmistakable
certainty and perseverance.
As the moral function of the human spirit, the conscience has to
say yes to everything prompted and inspired by the spirit of God in
the human spirit. It has to take a prophet's place in the human
spirit – the place of one who is the mouth of God and has to repeat
and pass on what God says. The conscience that is on the way to
recovery calls out, "God says it; God wills it; therefore it will come
to pass." As the keenest instrument of the human spirit, the
conscience has to represent in the liveliest way the uniting of the
human and the divine spirit. God's holy spirit wants to unite with
the human spirit to witness to the truth together. Our spirit's
conscience will be clear and healthy to the same degree that our
faith has accepted the spirit of Jesus Christ.
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When our conscience is on the way to recovery, the only attitude
that will keep our inmost spirit pure and give it strength is the atti
tude that Jesus had. Keeping a good conscience depends entirely
on keeping the holy faith. The redeeming and healing grace of God
nurtures a purified and healed conscience in us. As a gift of this
grace, faith denies godlessness in every thought, desire, and action.
It denies all the worldly lusts that belong to godlessness and are
harmful to life. Only in this way can we justly and with deliberation
affirm the life of Jesus and accept it. We can do it only in community
with God, that is, in community with his Holy Spirit.
Faith and a good conscience are so closely bound together that
rejection of the one means shipwreck to the other. For this reason,
baptism of faith testifies to the bond of a good conscience with
God. The conscience is made good by faith. Without faith, it goes
astray. It becomes a bad conscience. Therefore the apostles of Jesus
Christ say about those who do not have faith that they are tainted
in mind and conscience alike. This is inevitable because without
faith the conscience has no anchor. And the opposite is just as true:
if we ignore the compass of the Christ-directed conscience, the ship
of faith will be dashed without warning on the next reef.
If we want to fight the good fight to the end, it is just as important
to protect our faith as it is to protect our conscience. Faith in the
freely given love of Jesus Christ needs to be treasured. A good
conscience needs to be protected with the utmost watchfulness.
True faith demands a tender and delicate conscience as a fruit of
the spirit. Faith gives birth to a death-defying and victorious
decisiveness against all evil. Faith is served by a sound conscience.
Faith demands deeds of love. It is, in fact, love of God, love of
Christ, and love of the Holy Spirit. When we take pains to keep our
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conscience free of offense at all times, then we are given growth
and activity in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, then our
inner life becomes anchored in God and in all the powers of his
spirit. Only love is without offense.
Yet we should not make the mistake of thinking that when our
conscience steadily gains health and purity in love, we become
sinless! Sinfulness remains characteristic of our nature. But the
grace of his blood – the grace of the sacrificed life of Jesus –
continually purifies our conscience through the Holy Spirit. Again
and again, grace purifies it from all dead works and all offensive
actions, from everything that violates the justice and love that go
hand in hand with faith. The spirit of Jesus Christ leads believers to
a life that steadily increases in clarity. And yet the believer
continues to be bound to all others by a common guilt.
Nevertheless, however clearly it shows itself to be common to
all, the guilt has been wiped out. People have the freedom to do
good and to further it, to avoid evil and to fight it. Step by step,
there is an advance toward the kingdom of God. In the life of Jesus,
sacrificed for us and brought near to us, God has freely given us the
gift that takes one burden after another from our conscience. It
makes us free, without making us sinless. We become – not gods –
but those who allow the kingdom of God to come to them.
We can accept God's will in our life only when we are freed from
the curse of a bad conscience. We can be one with God's holiness
only when our hearts are unburdened, sprinkled, and consecrated.
The heart is in a condition to come before God and become united
with him only by being in touch with the sacrificed life of Christ in
the closest and most intimate way, by being met by Christ himself
and united with him as he was and is and will be. Therefore there is
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no entry into the holy of holies except through the blood of Jesus:
Christ's stainless life, his dedicated soul, his sacrificed body, his
quickening spirit, they all unite us with God – the whole Christ with
all the power of his life and death.
Jesus is the way to God. There is no other God than the one who
is the God and father of Jesus. Wherever we may seek him, we find
him in Jesus. Unless we are freed in Jesus from all our burdens, we
try in vain to draw near to the Father of all as he is brought near to
us by the son. We have no access to God without forgiveness of sin.
Jesus gives it to us by sacrificing his life – by sacrificing his body,
his soul, and his blood.
Through Jesus, Satan, the accuser of our brothers, is silenced. The
conscience also is no longer allowed to accuse. Even the most
murderous accusations that human blood can raise are stilled. The
blood of Abel has been erased. The better blood of the new brother
speaks louder than his. The blood of humankind has found a new
representative and leader; by him, the better one, it is absolved and
liberated. Murdered like Abel, he nevertheless speaks for his
murderers instead of against them. He, the guiltless one, has
become one of them, because he is the only one who has become
truly theirs. If he, the Son of Man, is for them, no one can condemn
them. From now on, no accusation has the power to prevent them
from approaching God.
The conscience that used to be our enemy becomes in Christ our
friend. Before it was in Christ, it had to condemn our life; now it
says yes to the new life given in Christ. Freed from all impurity
through community with Christ, the spirit accepts the assurance
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and certainty given in Jesus Christ. So the conscience, as a Christ-
conscience, becomes a representative of God. It becomes the voice
of the one who is sent, representing our covenant with God. In the
inner land of our soul, the conscience begins to do its task. In the
church, our covenant with God comes into force. In the task of
mission, the embassy steps forward to appear before the world.
It is the church that in baptism confirms the covenant of a good
conscience with God. The believers are united by the bond of faith,
and baptism is the banner and battle flag of this unity of faith in
the face of the whole world. There is no such thing as baptism
without the church. The water of baptism is the pure water of the
spirit of unity, just as the wine of the Lord's Supper proclaims the
unity of the pure blood. Nor without the church is there any such
thing as a meal celebrating unity of conscience. The common meal
of love and thanksgiving confesses and proclaims the new
covenant: the sure victory of unity given through the life and
blood of Christ. The bread and the wine in remembrance of Jesus
Christ are living symbols of the unity that has made many grains
and many grapes into one whole. Only on the basis of the church
can community be built up in the unanimity of all consciences. Only
from the church can there be sent into the world a mission that is
authenticated before all men in their consciences. From the church,
unity will be proclaimed as God's freedom. Where her spirit is,
there is freedom.
It was to the unity of the church, that is to the unity of the
apostles, that Jesus gave his spirit with full authority to represent
his kingdom. Their authority to loose and to bind, that is to forgive
and leave unforgiven, makes it possible for all to be completely
freed so that they can enter the kingdom of God. No conscience
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can live without forgiveness of sins. No one can see the kingdom of
God without it. United in faith and in life, the church of God is
entrusted with the power to forgive sins, valid before all
consciences; as her charge and prerogative for this day and age, she
is given the life of Jesus and his future rule.
False prophecy forgives without authority. Such forgiveness is
null and void because it changes nothing in life: peace is proclaimed
where there is no peace. Freedom is proclaimed where everything
remains unfree. What is unjust is called just. The joyless are
comforted with counterfeit joy and stolen happiness. Unity and
community are betrayed. In the atmosphere of false prophecy, the
conscience becomes dull and blunt and loses its commission. False
prophecy robs the conscience of every reason to go to the attack.
Yet where the truth of the spirit of God proclaims forgiveness
and peace, the conscience will be roused to action more and more.
It advances to the attack: where there was no peace, peace must be
made; where everything was in chains, freedom must dawn; where
injustice ruled, justice must take its place; where love and joy had
grown cold, the joy of love breaks through; and where each one
lived for himself, community comes into being. An all-out campaign
against evil is launched: no area of life can escape being attacked.
Resistance breaks down. The conscience of the world wakes up. The
conscience of the church is on the march.
The prerequisite for this missionary attack is the effective working
of consciences in the heart of the church. All growth in the gifts of
God, every task given by his truth, and every deepening of community
with him sharpens the conscience and intensifies its activity. In the
presence of Jesus, we get to know ourselves more and more clearly
and judge ourselves more and more firmly. The longer we go the
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way of the church, the more we know ourselves dependent on
forgiving grace. That in the church the conscience gains equally in
tenderness and in strength is a proof of the working of God in our
midst. The conscience condemns and puts away not only everything
that offends against love and community – however small or