How to Form a Good Moral Conscience

The virtue of Prudence is the cardinal virtue of identifying authentic human good and making a plan to attain it. Among other things, this virtue helps us to develop our moral conscience. A big part of growing as a Christian is embracing the goodness that God has planned for us. In order to embrace this goodness, we need to make sure that we are tuned in to God and His truth. There are three stages of prudence

1. Examining your own life, growing in wisdom of what is right and wrong, forming your conscience (this is all one stage but we’ll treat it in two parts).

2. Making a practical judgment of what is the best possible good.

3. Exercising your judgment to attain the good through planned, positive action.

Understanding the Moral Conscience

The first step in forming our moral sense is to have a proper understanding of what the conscience is. Cultural misunderstandings range from the “little angel on your shoulder” as if it were totally a matter of outside counsel, to a “profoundly personal judgment of what’s right and wrong for you as if it were totally a matter of personal opinion. The true definition (as usual) embraces both of these extremes. The moral conscience is a function of the intellect that applies the moral law (objective truth) to our specific situation so that we can choose the best possible good in a given situation. Properly forming your moral sense is a matter of:

1. Learning the objective truth about what is right and wrong
2. Engaging the intellect in moral reasoning.
3. Internalizing the moral reasoning so your moral choices are just part of who you are.

The moral conscience is not just a “little voice” inside our heads. It’s a skill that must be learned and developed.

How Conscience Can Be Malformed

The best way to know how to form your conscience well is to recognize how it can become malformed. We can then look at how to avoid these pitfalls and in that way learn how to build it right.

1. Misinformed Conscience: The first way we can be malformed is if we don’t have the knowledge we need to know what is truly good and right. So we can never stop learning our faith and what God has planned for us.

2. Legalistic Conscience: The next two malformations are two ends of the same extreme. If you fall into legalism, you follow what God teaches is right and wrong, but you lose sight of the purpose behind the moral law. You follow the law without ever learning to love. As you form your conscience, always keep in mind that God’s main goal for you is to teach you how to love.

3. Lax Conscience: The opposite of legalism is a lax conscience. A lax conscience has the knowledge of what is right and good, but doesn’t have the willpower to choose the good. Like legalism, sloth is rooted in a lack of love. And even though prudence is primarily an intellectual virtue, you need to build your self-discipline as well. Self-denial and sacrifice are great tools to break the bonds of laziness.

4. Conditioned Conscience: A conditioned conscience has gotten used to doing evil little by little until it becomes comfortable with even very great evils. If you have a habitual grave sin, you are the proud owner of a conditioned conscience. We avoid having a conditioned conscience by taking Jesus’ words seriously when he tells us, “If your right arm causes you to sin, cut it off.” No, we don’t take him literally – we take him seriously. Jesus is telling us to avoid sin at all costs. We should work consciously to avoid sin – making holiness our number one goal. We should also avoid the near occasion of sin – temptation – and work hard to replace our sinful tendencies with virtue.

Forming Your Conscience

So how do you form your moral conscience? Keep learning, focus on love, grow in self-discipline and be intentional about avoiding sin and growing in goodness. There’s your plan – that’s the virtue of prudence. Now how would you like some help doing all of that? From the Abbey can help you continue to learn your faith. We also have programs to help you grow in specific virtues to deepen your faith and help you grow in the moral life. Please see the opportunity I chose for you below.

Brought to you by Jeffrey S. Arrowood at From the Abbey, dedicated to helping you rediscover the JOY of learning and living your faith so you can grow in intimacy with God.