PARENTHOOD
a divine stewardship

THE ORIGIN, POSITION, AND FUNCTION OF THE CONSCIENCE

In simple words, the conscience comes from God. People who know God should know that before the fall of Adam, man lived before God and had no need of the conscience.... The need of the conscience arose as a result of the fall, when man left the face of God. In the beginning man lived before God, who can be likened to the sun. Originally man received light directly from the face of God. Although candlelight is weak, it is not without function; when the sun has set, the candlelight starts to function. It is the same with the function of the conscience. When man was living before God and had the light of God, the conscience was not used and the function of the conscience was not expressed because man had no need of it before God. We see from human history that man fell not long after he was created. He fell from light into darkness. After the fall there was a distance, a barrier, between God and man. At that point the Bible shows us that God took the definite step to activate the function of man's conscience....

The position of the conscience is to represent, or we can say, stand in the place of, God inside of man.... Since man fell and left the face of God, God was forced to use the conscience as His representative in enlightening man. Human history can be divided into several dispensations. The first dispensation is called the dispensation of innocence; it is the time when man received direct ruling from God. After the fall the second dispensation, the dispensation of conscience, began. At that time man had both sin and a conscience within him. Although man had fallen into the darkness of sin, God still preserved a conscience, a lamp, for man. The conscience of man was still able to enlighten man and manifest its function....

THE FALL OF MAN

Man's fall was not a partial fall but a complete fall, and a continual fall. Man did not stay under the ruling of the conscience but he continued to fall. How did man fall further? We see from human history that man's fall into sin was progressive. First, man fell into the conscience, and it was the conscience which enlightened and ruled over man. Yet man was not able to stand firm under the ruling of the conscience, and so from there he fell again. After the first step of man's fall, man had the conscience within him which represented God to rule over man. Yet man ignored his conscience in everything he did and fell again. At this time the dispensation of law began, and man started to be penalized if he disobeyed the laws of the nation. At this juncture man had fallen to the uttermost.

Man is really strange: The more he is ruled by man, the further he falls. For instance, a person who is always supervised by his parents will do improper things once his parents are not supervising him. A student will also do something against the rules when he is not under school regulations. If there were no police in a nation or a society, the whole nation would be full of crime.... This proves that man is utterly fallen....

In the fall, man fell from the face of God to the conscience and from the conscience to the law. We all, more or less, also have this kind of experience. When we were young, our parents charged us not to steal any candy. If we did, our heart would beat very heavily. When we stole some candy a second time, our heart beat less heavily. When we stole candy a third time, our heart beat even less. Then the fourth time we stole candy, our heart did not beat any heavier than normal because our conscience did not have any more feeling.... At that point it seemed that to steal candy was nothing; the only thing we feared was being caught by our parents....

Moreover, immoral relationships between males and females are also the same. The first time when people do something immoral, they do have some feeling in their conscience; the second time they have less feeling; the third time they have even less feeling; by the fourth time they do not have any feeling at all. The fifth time they fear very little; they fear only the laws of the nation, or they fear being seen by man. This is the fall of man from the feeling of the conscience to the ruling of man....

Most lawless people fear the penalty of the laws of the nation. Our Lord is saving us from living in this way. After our salvation if we still do things against our family's rules, against school regulations, or against the laws in society, then I am afraid that we are not truly saved, or that if we are saved, we do not look like Christians. God saves us out of the lowest point of the fall. An unsaved person makes a mess in his family, in society, and in the nation; this is the fall of man. A saved person does not require the control of his parents at home because he is already an obedient child; he does not require the supervision of the school because he is already a regulated student; he also does not require the governing of society or the nation because he is already a good man, a law-abiding citizen. He abides by the laws not because he fears the laws, but because he is living by his conscience. In the fall, man fell from the face of God to the conscience and from the conscience to human rule. Human rule is the lowest point of man's fall, the place where God's salvation reaches man.

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