1. THREE DIMENSIONS OF CONSCIENCE

2. JOURNAL QUESTION:
What is the strongest muscle in your body? Were you just born with this strong muscle or did you have to train it? Explain…

3. Remember…Timothy O’Connell
He describes three different dimensions of conscience:
Conscience/1—A Characteristic
Conscience/3A Judgment
Conscience/2 A Process

4. Conscience/1—A Characteristic
Our basic awareness of right and wrong and our inclination to do good.
This is a given characteristic of being human
This deals with our natural inclination to know the truth

5. Examples:
“Some, by rejecting conscience, have made a shipwreck of their faith,” (1 Timothy 1:19b)
“They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness.” (Romans 2:15)
After witnessing someone do something terrible, you may ask, “Don’t you have a conscience?”

6. Conscience/2—A Process
What we do to develop our awareness of the truth.
The process of wrestling with/juggling with moral issues that we face
This conscience needs to be educated, formed, informed, examined and transformed
This dimension is where “formation of conscience” happens

7. Examples:
“I don’t know if I should be doing that; I feel like my conscience is telling me differently.”
“I know the right thing to do, but I don’t know if I can do it.”
“I don’t know what you should do. You have to decide what’s right or wrong.”

8. Conscience/3—An Act Making a moral judgment of what is right or wrong
Moves us from perception and reasoning to action
It is a personal judgment; deciding what I have to do
I must always do what I believe to be right and avoid what I believe to be wrong

9. Examples: “I have to follow my conscience.”
“Let your conscience be your guide.”

10. A good way to think about conscience in these three dimensions is to imagine your conscience is a muscle:
THE CONSCIENCE MUSCLE

11. First of all, God gives us this muscle:
Because we’re human, God gives us this special muscle. The understanding that we have this muscle is conscience/1.

12. Secondly, in order to build up this muscle, we must train it and make it stronger:
As we work out the muscle, we are forming it into the best muscle we can. This process of formation is conscience/2.

13. Third, we must use this muscle to do something real and concrete.
After all the training, we must use this muscle to do something. The action that we do with this muscle is the dimension of conscience/3.

14. In sum… Conscience/1 is a CHARACTERISTIC Conscience/2 is a PROCESS
Conscience/3 is a JUDGMENT.