One of my core ideas is that the conscience is a universal and supernatural presence that constantly dictates relevant law to us whether we want to hear it at the time or not. We are really such complex creatures!
Sometimes I get the comment when talking about this that there are people who don’t have a conscience or who have killed off their conscience. I dispute that. I have been saying that a key component of our identity as being made in the image of God is that we have a conscience, a constant reminder concerning what is right and what is wrong. I think there is a different way to understand these people other than saying they don’t have a conscience.
Perhaps they have a very strong sense of conscience, but they find pleasure in going against it. Why would someone interpret a bad conscience as pleasure? If you want to assert your own autonomy, if you want to assert that you are very much your own god, that you are choosing your own way and calling your own shots, you have to find a way to assert your own power. I think that the conscience actually represent a signpost in the case for people who are really hellbent on asserting their own power, that they can do something which is NOT from God. Their conscience represents a doorway to being their own god. So contrary to such people having no conscience, perhaps they actually have a heightened sense of conscience, but they are using the revelation differently than most. They are using it to declare their power and independence in the most direct way possible. They actually find an almost erotic pleasure in going against their very active and very present conscience.
So I maintain that everyone has an innate sense of the law, but they react to it in different ways.
I see this every day. Cutting off the nose to spite the face, shaking the fist at God, to prove he will bow the knee to no one but himself. All springing from the belief that God didn’t come to his rescue as a child, which is usually the root of this sort of rebellion. So sad.