Happy Riches answers request by anonymous
When people speak of having a conscience, one thing that is evident, depending upon the culture in which a person is raised, different consciences can be formed. Observation of people from various cultures informs us that those foreign to our own culture are not accepting of certain behavior—for instance: beekeepers consider nudity absolutely immoral.
We can compare the development of a conscience to language. People in Japan do not speak Chinese—even if the two languages sound the same when a native English speaker encounters speakers of those two languages for the first time.
As happens with a language, a conscience can develop differently because of culture. For different cultures have taboos that are not prohibited in other cultures. In Africa, South America, Papua New Guinea, Australia and the Pacific Islands, for native women to run around topless is deemed acceptable. In other parts of the world, China, Japan, Europe, India and the Middle East, such behavior was unbecoming, and a topless woman in public was considered taboo at one time—in many of the countries within those regions the same taboo exists today.
If your conscience says that it right to run around with no clothes, what do you think? I will run around with no clothes because this is a nudist camp and everybody is doing it. I am too ashamed to take my clothes off and show my nakedness in public. Some say that a conscience would convict the person of social impropriety when running around showing off their nakedness. Others say that this is superfluous and has nothing to do with a conscience, because a conscience is about doing unto others what you would like them to do to you.
Our conscience informs us what is right and what is wrong. A seared conscience has no sensitivity. Sociopaths and psychopaths have seared consciences or poorly developed ones.
In the book of Revelation, Lord Jesus Christ, the first born of God’s Creation (Revelation 3:14) is talking to what many believe is the church of this present age, where people seem to think that they are rich and can do whatever they like without recourse to conscience. What is interesting is people are told to buy clothes to cover the shame of their nakedness.
- I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. (Revelation 3:18)
Now it may seem rather odd that back in the first century AD, people understood how to use salve (ointment) to make blind people see. (If that were the case, humans have really gotten dumber over the centuries, which explains why IQs are no longer over 1000, but tend to be under 200 these days.—The Ignorance Quotient tells us a lot, when we think about it.)
Apparently, when we sear our conscience, we do not understand that we need salve to anoint our eyes that we may see, also.
- The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light; but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness. (Luke 11:34)
In all probability, when speaking to the Laodicean Church, the salve to heal the eyes, could have been a reference to the need to have one’s conscience healed from being scarred and deadened to what is proper conduct among human beings. Therefore, if your conscience is telling you to do what is right in respect to proper conduct, why go against it and attempt to do what is unnatural. It is like a desert dweller at the oasis asking, Do I use the right hand or the left hand?
When it comes to behavior: we ought to know what is natural conforms with nature and what is unnatural is contrary to nature.
Is it not better to do what is right?
Why go against the natural order? As any surfer knows, it is easier to ride out with the rip than struggle against the waves.
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