CONFORMED TO THE PATTERN

“Be not conformed to the pattern of this world,

but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”

The main character in the movie, A BEAUTIFUL MIND, was obsessive in how his mind found patterns. One wonders how this may be like any of us cope with the world as we find it - patterns emerge or on imposed in such a way as to mediate our encounter with reality. Some patterns are merely ideal with little or no correspondence with the real. Others correspond so well that we ascribe to them TRUTH.

Conscience keeps us connected to what is real - or should do so if it is well-formed and clear. Conscience that has poor correspondence between the ideal and real can make folly seem to be wise. Thus have many become fools.

CONSCIENCE AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Christian Ethics can be understood through the Great Commandment, the Ten Commandments, and the Beatitudes. The "the kingdom of God" is the realm of right relationship, first with God, from which follows relationship with any other person. One's conscience is significant for discerning right relationship, which is why it is so important that one's conscience be well-formed as well as clear. A mature person takes care to examine one's conscience, questioning both formation and clarity.

The word "conscience" is derived from the Greek syneidesis. I find it significant that eidesis is the root of our words for "ideal", "idea", and "idol." One's idea of reality presents a false ideal if that idea contradicts what has been revealed by God, who created all that is real. Such a false ideal is then an idol. When one's conscience is formed by false ideas, this idolatry leads one away from right relationship with God and others. Without a true God-image, one cannot go on to imagine how one ought to live - the conscience is too malformed to be trustworthy.

Christianity claims that one may clear one's conscience through confessional repentance, submitting one's imagination to the Word of God revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ who perfectly expressed right relationship with God. With the clear conscience that comes from such Christian confession, one may move on to practice right relationship in how one lives thereafter.

Consider Hebrews 9:9 (describing how there are religious practices that are not enough to clear one's conscience) and Hebrews 9:14 (describing how Christ is able to "cleanse our conscience"). Consider also Hebrews 5:14, which shows how Christian maturity is proven by practice.

The kingdom of God is found in the Body of Christ of which we prove we are a part as we live a life of love toward God and others. As long as we are alive, we can choose this way of love, initiated by God's ultimate act of love in giving Christ Jesus to suffer and die on the cross, then be resurrected to new life which is ours to share.

PHILOSOPHIC LEGACY OF JP2

The following is adapted from an interview with Mexican philosopher Rodrigo Guerra López, regarded as one of the major experts on Karol Wojtyla's thought. In this interview (found at http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=2041), Guerra López speaks about Wojtyla's intellectual legacy.

One of Karol Wojtyla's most original contributions

in the area of morality consists

in the rereading he does of Kant's ethics in several articles

and

in the book Love and Responsibility.

In these texts we are able to appreciate how Wojtyla holds that

there is a concrete and primary categorical imperative

for the conscience of every human being:

The person must be affirmed for himself!

He must never be treated as a mere means!

This idea has been explicitly formulated

in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor.

Another philosophical contribution is the way Wojtyla expresses that

action gives a special moment of knowledge of the truth

in his book entitled Person and Act [The Acting Person].

BECOMING WHO WE ARE MEANT TO BE

Life is a struggle to become who God means for us to be. Faith is the means by which we realize that we struggle with God. Without faith, we cannot please God because we cannot know God. Faith is no mere idea; faith is how our belief plays out in reality. Ideal belief is tested by real life. The truth of what we believe becomes manifest in what we choose to do. In our struggle to live, we may struggle with or against God. If we live to please God, than God is with us in our struggle. The life of Christ set the pattern for pleasing God - willing to do what pleases God, and wanting others to be with us in doing so. The struggle of life always includes others in the struggle; how we help or hinder that struggle matters.

THE RULE OF NOW AND THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE

Now is the moment in which we freely choose to act. What we do is informed by what we know. We have some knowledge of what came before now, given by our own experience or by the experience of others (knowing with others = CON-SCIENCE = communal knowledge, knowing with one's community). We have no knowledge of what will come after, although we may imagine that we do know what to expect given what we or others claim to know.

Every act we choose to do is subject to the judgment of our conscience. It is by our conscience that we know whether some act is good or bad. It is wise to follow one's conscience and foolish to do otherwise. Wisdom would then require that we be careful in the formation of conscience. Ignoring what we know will provoke our conscience to make us aware of our act of ignorance.

Acting contrary to one's conscience will confuse one's identity; one who acts in such a way must actively ignore this contradiction of conscience in order to present oneself otherwise to another person - this is hypocrisy. Community cannot continue if hypocrisy is left unchecked. Rather than sharing common knowledge, the community will suffer debililative ignorance. The lies that follow from ignoring one's conscience will ultimately dissolve the bonds of community are formed by true relationship. Rather than allowing truth to form the conscience of those in community, hypocrisy let's guile be the ground for given knowledge.

Without truth, one cannot live freely. The deformed conscience that comes from hypocritical community lets lies be the rule which will only keep those under such rule in bondage.

FORMED BY FORGIVENESS

God gives life, forming each person in the womb of one's mother. Each person, however, is born in sin, deformed from the failure of our first father, Adam. Reformed by baptism in the name of the crucified Christ who rose to live again, we can begin to become mature as Christ is formed in us by faithfully following his Way of Truth through life. Moving on in maturity from the experienced love of eros on to the shared love of philos and the learned love of storgos, we die to self to become alive in Christ so that we can love like Christ Himself loved us, fully expressing the love of God in his ultimate act of agape, death on the cross. Secure now in being loved oneself by God, we live by the resurrection power of Christ to love others as we have been loved ourselves. Always intending to act justly, we continually love mercy in imitating the forgiveness of God before whom we humbly walk. Doing the truth in love, we find justice fulfilled in forgiveness.

Each choice we make follows from this absolute commitment to being like Christ, ordering all we do towards God. Every relationship with every person we encounter is an opportunity to make manifest the love of God. Being bound by the bodily reality of concupiscence, we find we fail in our following, our conscience standing as witness to such failure.

Yet God's grace does not fail, being given freely as we repent, renewing our baptismal commitment to be faithful followers of the Way. No longer in hiding because of our failure, we are ready to reveal who we are to others, unashamed of what our lives may show. By God's grace, every aspect of our lives make known to others the loving truth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

FAITHFUL FANTASY: THE CONSCIENCE POLICING THOUGHT

One's conscience judges one's thoughts as well as one's actions. This is why one is morally responsible for one's fantasy. To dwell on impure things is not good. Such is unfaithful fantasy. The faithfully mature person learns to guard one's thoughts, taking care to dismiss rather than entertain impurity. It is the transforming work of God's grace that helps one do this.