I believe that my conscience is more than “my internal guidance system.” I believe the human conscience is the inner light that Jesus gives to all human beings–the voice of God in our heart. As children conscience is strong, but as we get older and lose more and more innocence, it’s light grows dimmer and it’s sound duller. We learn to ignore it and eventually to harden it. It never completely goes away but can become extremely faint. Modern churches seldom teach their members about their conscience or train them to listen to it and follow it. Thus, churches are full of Christians who are thinking, doing, watching, reading, and saying all sorts of wrongful things, and they do so without conviction because they’ve been trained that grace excuses them from the need to hear and obey their conscience (and the Bible) and gives them permission to follow their own desires and opinions instead. This leads to crippling self-deception and lukewarmness.

Because of this, I believe that throughout our history, American Christians have overlooked, ignored, enabled, and/or cooperated with much divergence between American values and Christian convictions. That divergence has included: Excessive national pride, glorifying militarism, taking land from native Americans by force, breaking treaties with them, racial prejudice, widespread and legalized human trafficking, forcing segregation and second-class citizenship on millions of people because of their skin color, the government’s refusal to criminalize more than 4,000 race-based, public lynchings, denying people the right to fair and equal legal protection and/or trial because of their color, etc.