In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck reasons, “It don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.”

On the same subject, Twain wrote in 1876, “All the consciences I have ever heard of were nagging, badgering, fault-finding, execrable savages! Yes; and always in a sweat about some poor little insignificant trifle or other—destruction catch the lot of them, I say! I would trade mine for the small-pox and seven kinds of consumption, and be glad of the chance.”

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Wednesday over the Internet I heard a great live study by Pastor John Verstegen (San Juan Capistrano, Calif.), on the Bible’s assessment of the human conscience.

Basically, every human is born with a conscience, or a built-in system of norms and standards in their inner man to tell them right from wrong. Whether the conscience continues to function properly as designed by God is wholly dependent on the information it’s fed. All unsaved people have a “defiled conscience,” as the Apostle Paul defines it.

The conscience either “accuses or excuses” and what happens over time for the people who continuously violate their system of norms and standards is they learn to excuse sin. The thinking becomes, “Well, everybody else is doing it so what difference does it make?”

As Paul writes in Titus 1: 15-16, “Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.
[16] They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.”

Verstegen explains, “Because individuals are unsaved and operate in the ‘vanity of their mind’ on the basis of false doctrine—the satanic doctrine of this world—what happens over time is they then change that system in their inner man and their conscience goes along with it.

“Sometimes you ask the question how a person could do such a heinous sin and so forth. It’s because, over time, they have been taught that those things are acceptable and they justify it. That’s what Paul says in Romans 2.

“Think about the wars going on right now and these suicide bombers who are blowing themselves and other people up. Why would someone do such a thing when it’s clearly wrong to murder? Well, because they’ve been taught that in certain circumstances it’s okay to murder and that they’re doing it for their god who approves of that type of thing, etc. They’ve been taught to hate, for example, America, the West, Christians, anybody opposed to their cause.

“So they adjust and change that system of norms and standards they were born with and replace it with a wrong system. Even though their conscience initially questioned, ‘Well, is this right?’ it’s now said to be defiled.

“If you look again at Titus 1:15, the (unsaved) profess that they know God—and they sure do, don’t they?!—but in works they deny Him, ‘being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.’ The good works of the unsaved man are absolute reprobate in the eyes of God. They might be good works in the eyes of men, but in the eyes of God they’re absolute reprobate.

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When a person gets saved and starts inputting sound doctrine into their inner man, they can begin to re-educate their altered conscience and correct it, discarding the bad, but it’s not an instant thing and requires dispensational study of the Bible.

As my pastor, Richard Jordan, relays in an old Bible study I have on tape, “I was reading an article just the other day where this fellow was taking about how when you get saved the Holy Spirit re-orients and redirects your thinking. As I’m reading this, my concept of what the guy’s saying is that when you got saved somehow God just went ‘woodeeleeoop’ and miraculously squeezed into your mind (His thinking).

“In the dispensation of grace, of course, God the Holy Spirit works indirectly through His Word when you believe it. It’s in the Pentecostal program—and in Israel’s new covenant program—where He works directly, putting His Spirit in the man and causing him to keep His statutes and His judgments.

“On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit overtook them and caused them—it made them speak in tongues. They didn’t seek it, they weren’t looking for it, they weren’t trying to do it, they weren’t even expecting it. He just came and caused them to respond and it was a direct empowering.

“But in the dispensation of grace, God offers it to you as a gift and you have to appropriate it by faith. You don’t sit around and think, ‘Oh, now is God redirecting the way I think?’ The way He does it is He renews your mind as you take in the Word of God. As the words of God reeducate you, it changes the way you think from human viewpoint to divine viewpoint.”

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Because a newly saved person’s conscience is said to be “weak,” needing to be fortified through a steady diet of biblical truth, as Paul tells us in I Cor. 8, it can be in a mixed state of confusion.

“On the one hand, it’s recognizing, ‘Hey, this is right and that’s wrong,’ but like this guy here (in I Corinthians 8), he still thinks an idol is something (real),” explains Verstegen. “So because his conscience previously bore witness to that thing and sacrificed to idols, now that he’s a Believer—and has a little bit of sound doctrine in his inner man—his conscience is kind of thinking, ‘Wait a minute, I belong to Christ now so this idol is nothing.’

“Now, what’s interesting is that a weak conscience can become defiled again. It can go back to what it was before the guy got saved. That’s the real issue here (in I Cor. 8).

“In other words, in this guy’s conscience he still has his superstitious thinking that an idol is something, and hence when he goes and eats that meat that’s offered to that idol, his ‘conscience being weak is defiled.’ So what has happened is he’s actually hindered the edification going on in his soul because of wrong thinking. He doesn’t have sound doctrine in his soul.

That’s why in the same passage Paul tells the more mature, edified Believers, “You’ve got to make decisions based upon where that guy is spiritually.” Specifically, he advises, “But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumblingblock to them that are weak.
[10] For if any man see thee which hast knowledge sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols;
[11] And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?
[12] But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ.
[13] Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.”

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The other thing that is true for an errant Believer is that his conscience can become “seared with a hot iron,” as Paul puts it in I Tim. 2:4.

Verstegen explains, “You ever burnt yourself? When you sear something it’s lost its sensitivity to pain because you’ve actually burned the nerve endings and that’s why you can’t feel it anymore. You actually fried it. It’s a conscience that has been so affected it doesn’t bear proper witness anymore because it’s totally lost its sensitivity to bear proper witness to what’s right and wrong. In the context here (in I Timothy), this actually is talking about a Believer; somebody who was in the truth but then departed from the faith and their conscience has become seared.”

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Paul reminds the Corinthians in I Cor. 12:2, “Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led.”

Jordan explains, “You know it’s very important that you understand that idolatry is more than just a man taking something and bowing down to it. There is a spirit in this world that leads men to worship idols. My friend, there is a satanic, demonic spirit that works in unsaved people and operates in them and it leads them around and it led these Corinthians to worship idols. Of that satanic spirit, Paul says in Eph. 2:2, ‘Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience’

“That’s the prince of the invisible realm. It has to do with Satan and his combined host of subordinate demonic cohorts and their activities in the world. And you listen to me; the very creative genius of unsaved people is satanically inspired. They’re led by this spirit and Satan’s object is to blind men’s minds to the gospel, keep them lost, and divert their worship from God Almighty unto himself and his cohorts who inspire the making of idols, whether they are phallic symbols or little Buddhas, or whether they’re big church buildings with Baal poles on top.

“It can be like in Exodus 32 with the golden calf. Its religious kind of stuff a lot of times, but a lot of time its other stuff too. It’s anything that diverts a man’s attention—his worship and his honor and what he concentrates on—away from Almighty God unto the god of this world. In the case of the Ephesians, they were religious. They went to church all the time and they prayed and they had a personal relationship with their god and they did all the rest.”

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Psalm 135 summarizes, “The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not; They have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths. They that make them are like unto them: so is every one that trusteth in them.”

“That’s saying, ‘Look at what they are—they’re elegant, they’re nice-looking, they’re silver and gold, they’re fancy to look at but they’re dumb,’ ” says Jordan. “They got mouths and can’t talk. Eyes and can’t see. Ears and can’t hear. They don’t have any breath in them. They’re dead and lifeless and there’s no activity and those that make them ‘are like unto them: so is everyone that trusteth in them.’

“What they are is just a block of wood that somebody carved out and made a statue out of and everyone falls down and worships the thing. You ought to read along in chapter 42 to 44 in Isaiah and see Isaiah ridicule them. He says, ‘You take that thing, and you cut the tree down, and you take all the chips and all the extra part that you don’t need, and you put it in your stove and cook your breakfast with that. You flap your jacks and you eat your pancakes off the part you don’t use and then you take this other part and carve it out and make an idol and go over there and the silly thing can’t even move itself across the room. When you come and vacuum, you got to pick it up and move it.’

“I mean, it’s totally helpless and yet what do they do? Bow down and worship the thing. ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed art thou,’ and all that kind of business. You bow down and worship that fool thing and Isaiah and Psalmist say you know what you are? You’re a blockhead just like it is: ‘They that worship them are just like they are—dumb idols.’ ”