What tree did Adam eat from? Certainly not an apple tree! God gave Adam permission to eat from any tree in the garden but one. “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat,” God cautioned, “for when you do, you shall die.” The serpent tricked Eve into eating from that tree, telling her, “God knows your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Indeed her eyes and Adam’s eyes were opened and they became aware of conscience, that awareness or knowledge we humans have, unlike other animals, of right and wrong; the faculty to decide on the morality of our actions, ideally with a compulsion to do what is right.
To form our conscience, we have to first learn to distinguish the good from the bad and develop sensitivity to human values, which we gain from the world around us, including family, peers, church, culture, and society. Ideally, this results in an informed conscience, which varies from person to person, depending on one’s sensitivity to certain values.
Alas, not every conscience is well informed. If I grow up in a bigoted family and a bigoted culture, it would be difficult for me to see beyond these bigotries and realize that my conscience is not fully informed. The formation of one’s conscience is a life long undertaking that can prompt us to continually reevaluate certain moral values.
A person may be convinced that his or her actions are good when in fact they are not. In a world of moral ambiguity, this will not be uncommon. Consider what happened in Germany during the 1930’s. An erroneous conscience, however, is not to be confused with a lax conscience, which exerts no effort in striving to know the truth of what is right and what is wrong. The lax conscience allows a person to become complacent. A healthy conscience that enables us to discern right and wrong is based not on hunch, opinion or cultural conditioning but on transcendent values such as love, justice, integrity, human dignity and compassion.
Now that their eyes were opened, they were filled with guilt, so Adam and Eve hid from God to escape responsibility for what they had done. Along with conscience, they became aware of shame, the emotion we experience when we have done something wrong. To this day, the devil continues to dupe us with luring temptations to sin and become ashamed for what we did or failed to do.
Feeling guilty doesn’t always mean that we have done something wrong or evil. A common example would be feeling guilty for missing Sunday Mass even though one was sick in bed. On the other hand, some people don’t feel guilty about holding certain racial or sexual views even though the values they are adhering to are morally wrong.
Despite the scribes’ ludicrous claim, Satan cannot drive out Satan. To drive out Satan, we need a well-informed conscience, which enables us to see the wisdom behind the moral teachings of our church that our culture often ignores.
The devil works overtime, persuading us to downplay the harm or the consequences of passing over certain moral values such as abortion, capital punishment, racism, consensual sex outside of marriage, and a host of other social issues. To paraphrase Shakespeare, “What’s in a name? That which we call sin by any other name would still be sin!” As we all know, sin is an offense against the will of God. Even if we put the blame on someone else like Adam did, committing a sin is still our doing.
When we sin, a healthy conscience prompts us to feel guilty and like Adam, we want to hide from God but there is no reason to do so. As we sung moments ago, “With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.” God loves us unconditionally and is willing to forgive but first we have to seek God’s forgiveness. The unforgiveable sin that Jesus speaks of occurs when we refuse to seek forgiveness.
Guilt makes us mindful that we have hurt someone; this prompts us to run back to the merciful arms of our forgiving God and seek to be reconciled with God and those whom we have hurt. Guilt can also motivate us to work at not sinning. A great deal of the sinfulness of our society has to do with the fact that we do not first consider the damage and harm we do whenever we sin.
Don’t limit conscience to how you feel after committing a certain act. Consider conscience as a tool that God has given you for reflection before you act. It is the quintessence of human morality that we should do what we believe to be right and avoid what we believe to be wrong.
To have a well-informed conscience, we can and we must grow in the knowledge and understanding of the Ten Commandments, our faith traditions, doctrines, beliefs, practices, and moral principles. Even the Church knows that, changing its views in certain areas, such as slavery and capital punishment, over time.
To decide between what is good and evil is perhaps the oldest struggle in human history yet making an honest effort to do so with a well-informed conscience is to do the will of God. And whoever does the will of God is recognized by Jesus as his brother and sister.