The Epidemic of a Seared Conscience
By Pastor Mike Spaulding
Many Americans have been propagandized to the extent that they now form an entire subclass – the perpetually offended.
What are the signs? One of the most glaring signs of this new genre of the walking infantile is the belief, often expressed by aggressive and even violent behavior, that anyone or thing that offends them ought not to be allowed to exist.
People that think this way apparently believe that the universe operates according to their ideology. They have no real justification for believing this way. They can’t point to any standard of moral reasoning, logical analysis, or time-tested system of thought that supports their viewpoint.
They further demonstrate their ignorance by believing everyone would be better off believing like they do. Remarkable, they think they are the modern equivalent of the knights of old, riding in to rescue the damsels in distress, in this case culture, civility, and the American way. The truth that these individuals cannot grasp is something much different.
Here is a case in point: Two University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students were recently arrested and charged with assault. What led to their arrests? They were arrested after they physically and violently attacked a pro-life activist who was on the campus with Created Equal, a group that uses dialogue to attempt to persuade people that abortion is the murder of unborn human beings.
One of the strategies that Created Equal uses is the prominent display of actual pictures of the dismembered bodies of babies, the result of “choice” as abortion is euphemistically called by those attempting to disguise the barbaric truth of what abortion is and does to the preborn human.
Pictures of babies who have suffered the cruelest fate imaginable are a powerful reminder of the truth of what abortion really is. Pictures leave no room for debate about abortion being “women’s reproductive healthcare” as the brainwashed like to call it. Abortion ends the life of the baby and therefore trying to obfuscate this truth by calling it “reproductive healthcare” is idiocy.
The university students mentioned above were shocked when law enforcement officers arrested them. They could not believe that their noble cause of violently opposing and assaulting pro-life individuals resulted in arrest. One of the students said, “I cannot believe this is happening,” referring to her arrest.
Another example of the same mindset demonstrated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is the now infamous behavior of a Pennsylvania state lawmaker. This lawmaker, the self-proclaimed champion of a women’s right to abort her child, thought he was valiant and courageous for belittling and intimidating an elderly woman outside an abortion clinic.
What was the crime that set him over the edge? This grandmother was walking in front of the murder mill while praying silently. For this gross offense he took it upon himself to video the woman, demanding her name and address, offering a money reward to anyone who would identify her and where she lived so that he and others that think like he does could go harass her at her home.
In the least he demonstrated that he has no business making decisions that affect citizens of the state of Pennsylvania in his capacity as a state representative. More troubling than that however, is the fact that he thought it perfectly normal to call for a mass turnout of like-minded baby murderers to intimidate an individual for having the temerity to be at a place where women murder their children and pray that they would change their minds.
Then there is the recent case of the morally bankrupt young women celebrating the act of murdering babies by dancing through a graveyard of crosses representing aborted babies. This publicity stunt was noteworthy for the callousness with which these young women were exulting child murder. Here is one report of this incident as detailed in The Daily Caller:
Planned Parenthood supporters at the University of Texas at San Antonio protested at a Students for Life symbolic cemetery for the unborn.
The incident occurred on April 9 as Students for Life commemorated aborted babies through a cemetery display, the pro-life nonprofit group revealed in a press release Wednesday. Students for Life set up pink crosses and talked to students about pro-life options as part of a spring Planned Parenthood Truth Tour throughout college campuses.
Young women from the university’s Students United for Planned Parenthood group interrupted the memorial activity. The protesters strode through the assembled crosses, shouted and waved signs, according to video footage.
“Look, there’s mine right there,” one Planned Parenthood supporter shouted in the video, pointing at a cross and pretending an aborted baby lay beneath it. A student shouted across the cemetery that she loves having sex and aborting babies. “My number one kink,” she can be heard saying in the video, as noted by Students For Life.
“I love advocating for abortion! My uterus loves advocating for abortion,” another girl shouted, waving her sign. “When I say Planned, you say Parenthood. When I say aborted, you say fetuses!”
“It’s a fetus graveyard!” another protester said.
Many Turned Over to the Darkness They Crave
What has happened to a great number of men and women in America is that their conscience has become seared. Their mind is in a state of depreciating ability to grasp morality personally and interpersonally. They have become incapable of moral reasoning and logical analysis that lead to guilt or shame related to their thinking and behavior. They are being turned over to the darkness they crave and prostitute themselves to and on behalf of.
Depending on the severity of the behavior, psychologists call this psychopathic or sociopathic behavior. The difference between the two is that a psychopath has no conscience remaining. The psychopath’s conscience is completely seared and devoid of any emotion of shame or guilt associated with their behavior. Ironically, Hollywood glamorizes this behavior, giving tacit approval to the violent and murderous results of psychopathic people.
The sociopath has a small amount of conscience remaining. This person might still feel a twinge of guilt but not enough to stop their evil behavior. Both the psychopath and sociopath are dangerous to others with which they interact and especially those with whom they disagree.
Courtrooms across this nation are filled with cases involving the egregious behavior of people with little to no functioning conscience.
All of the examples above demonstrate varying states of the inability to reason morally. America is well down the path of being wrested from its moral foundations by psychopaths and sociopaths whose faculties have been impaired by evil. What can be done to correct this development? We must first understand what we are dealing with.
The late J.I. Packer, in Rediscovering Holiness, said concerning conscience that:
“An educated, sensitive conscience is God’s monitor. It alerts us to the moral quality of what we do or plan to do, forbids lawlessness and irresponsibility, and makes us feel guilt, shame, and fear of the future retribution that it tells us we deserve, when we have allowed ourselves to deny its restraints…Satan’s strategy is to corrupt, desensitize, and if possible kill our consciences. The relativism, materialism, narcissism, secularism, and hedonism of today’s Western world help him mightily toward his goal. His task is made yet simpler by the way in which the world’s moral weaknesses have been taken into the contemporary church.
Packer identified the real crux of the issue. Conscience is a God-given warning system that has been deliberately turned off today in a large number of Americans. An alarm cannot warn of danger if it is not connected to a power source.
Slowly and over time the innate ability of Americans to determine right from wrong has been strategically and with malice corrupted. The constant drive to remove and even erase Christianity from the public mind and memory has borne the rottenest of fruit culturally speaking.
Is the Church Emulating the Culture?
How can a culture sustain moral uprightness from generation to generation when even the Church, that instrument of God meant to inform and when necessary, correct culture, begins to emulate the culture?
When a society becomes seared in conscience, when a critical mass of people begin to think and advocate for evil under the guise of good, and exchange light for darkness, their minds become seared as with a branding iron and the resultant scar tissue renders them incapable of returning to correct thinking and behavior absent a radical surgery.
The Church is meant to be God’s scalpel, guided by His hand to make perfect incisions to remove the cancer of evil, the scar tissue of a seared conscience, and in so doing, restore right thinking and behavior to all individuals.
When the Church refuses to do that mass deception is allowed to congeal, and that environment creates hostility toward the truth of man’s precarious condition and toward the only solution to his dilemma.
The answer to this predicament is not for the Church to go with the flow, to seek the path of least resistance, to affirm inclusiveness as that term is meant today and throw open the doors to culture.
The Only Answer is Full-On Biblical Revival
The only answer that will turn America around is a full-on biblical revival that must start in the pulpits of America and sweep through the local bodies of Christ spread out over this nation.
That kind of revival cannot be contained, and it will spill over into local school boards, city councils, college campuses, businesses, state representatives, and finally our national leadership.
When God’s people once again bow their knee to Him alone, then revival will come, minds will be freed from the bondage of the demonic slavery imposed upon them from God-hating miscreants who have secretly snuck into our churches, communities, and governments at every level.
True biblical revival will transform hearts, heal minds, and lead to tangible action by those delivered from their bondage. True biblical revival will come on the heels of true repentance, a faith that demonstrates a changed heart, mind, and life trajectory.
We read in John 1:19 that:
There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.
This means that only through faith in Christ will people become free from a seared conscience and the inevitable consequence of that state.
Christian, rise up and take your place in the army of God, and march forward in victory, for our God has given us this land. Occupy until He returns!
Dr. Mike Spaulding (www.drmikelive.com, www.drmikespaulding.com) was ordained to the ministry in 1998. Since then he has planted two Calvary Chapel churches – Calvary Christian Fellowship in St. Mary’s, Ohio, in 1998, and Calvary Chapel of Lima, Ohio, in 2005, where he currently serves as pastor. He holds a B.A. in Organizational Management, and a M.T.S., and a Ph.D. in apologetics. He is the author of #MTPGA (Make the Pulpit Great Again): 12 Things Christians Can Do Right Now, Random Thoughts from a Disciple of Jesus Christ: Commentary on America’s “Hot Button” Issues, andMatthew: A Commentary for the Remnant Body of Jesus Christ, Volume 1. He is a contributing author to The Evangelical Dictionary of World Religions, and Daily Devotions with Calvary Chapel Pastors. He has written for several apologetics’ ministries including Got Questions? (www.gotquestions.org) and the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (www.carm.org). He’s a frequent conference speaker and has appeared on broadcasts including Worldview Weekend Radio with Brannon Howse, The Hagmann and Hagmann Report, Caravan to Midnight and Ark Midnight with John B. Wells, Spiritual Encounters with Caspar McCloud, Five in Ten on Skywatch TV with Derek Gilbert, I Am Liberty Radio with James Walton, and The Prophecy Brothers. He’s host of Soaring Eagle Radio (www.soaringeagleradio.com), Dr. Mike Live (www.drmikelive.com), and cohosts The Kingdom War Room with Dr. Michael Lake. His teaching ministry is featured on the radio program “The Transforming Word,” heard on radio stations throughout the Midwest United States. He has been married to his lovely wife Kathy for over 35 years and together they have four daughters and five grandchildren. He can be reached atpastormike@cclohio.org. Follow him on Twitter at @ccpastormike.
