A Circumcised Heart

All the Great things are Simple, and Many can be Expressed in a Single Word: Freedom; Justice; Honor; Duty; Mercy; Hope. Winston Churchill.

Read Part I, the Law of the Heart.

Referring now to J. Budziszewski’s masterpiece, The Revenge of Conscience. In response to the question, ‘Why are things getting so much worse so quickly?’, he divides matters of conscience into the following zones:

Relativism: Things aren’t worse; they’re just different. This would be the fall back position for all those with an allergy to any kind of duty.

Mere Moral Realism: “Everything in conscience can be weakened by neglect and erased by culture . . . . [I[f mere moral realists are right, then although the problem of moral decline may begin in volition, it dwells in cognition: it may begin as a defect of will, but ends as a defect of knowledge. We may have started by neglecting what we knew, but we have now gone so far that we really don't know it any more. What is the result? That our contemporary ignorance of right and wrong is genuine. We really don't know the truth, but we are honestly searching for it -- trying to see on a foggy night -- doing the best that we can. In a sense, we are blameless for our deeds, for we don't know any better."

We Conservatives pledge our allegiance to the third zone: Natural Law, i.e., we humans do know better, but if we can't be bothered with standards, moral decline ensues, and can do so at an alarming rate. Making grand proclamations about the sanctity of the individual to justify smoking dope is not only an evasion of truth, it runs the risk of actually destroying you, and the shriller your protestations, the harder your own conscience condemns you.

Okay, the good professor doesn't say that exactly (though he gets there, eventually, by extension). Here's what he actually said:

[Mere Moral Realism] sounds persuasive, yet it is precisely what the older tradition, the natural law tradition, denies. We do know better; we are not doing the best we can. The problem of moral decline is volitional, not cognitive; it has little to do with knowledge. By and large we do know right from wrong, but wish we didn’t. We only make believe we are searching for truth-so that we can do wrong, condone wrong, or suppress our remorse for having done wrong in the past.

According to this formulation, conscience is not some vexatious barrier. It is an active, living force — something that has an apparent volition of its own:

Conscience is not a passive barrier but an active force; though it can hold us back, it can also drive us on. Moreover, conscience comes not from without but from within: though culture can trim the fringes, the core cannot be changed. The reason things get worse so fast must somehow lie not in the weakness of conscience but in its strength, not in its shapelessness but in its shape.

Budziszewski gives an illustration of Natural Law from the play Antigone, by Sophocles:

In one of the tragedies of Sophocles, the woman Antigone seeks to give her dead brother a proper burial, but is forbidden by the king because her brother was an enemy of the state. She replies to the tyrant that there is another law higher than the state’s, and that she will follow it because of its divine authority. Not even the king may require anyone to violate it. Moreover, it requires not only forbearance from evil but active pursuit of the good: in this case, doing the honors for her brother.

What he’s arguing here is that we each have an innate moral code, a code which displays a remarkable uniformity across distances of time and space. I know of no argument to effectively counter C.S. Lewis’ assertions in Mere Christianity:

If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own. Some of the evidence for this I have put together in the appendix of another book called The Abolition of Man; but for our present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to-whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that youought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.

But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining “It’s not fair” before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter, but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong- in other words, if there is no Law of Nature-what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else?

It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong.

Budziszewski uses three examples — abortion, promiscuity, euthanasia - to illustrate his central premise: the more radical our attempts to evade the commands of conscience, the harsher the recoil. Our conscience condemns us no matter how fast we run. Indeed, the faster we run, the louder the snap of condemnation. By virtue of this mechanism, we are, in fact, declining at a faster rate socially, which is why I dare to take on Libertarians, or anyone who stands ready with a pattern of excuses. On the other hand, this post is not about Libertarians, or any particular group. It is about the most precious part of YOU: your conscience. St. Paul drove this point home with deadly precision in the second book of Romans, which I reproduce here in its entirety. Read it! See if it does not present you with incontrovertible proof that your actual convenant with the Creator is your conscience.

Thank you for being patient enough to read this far! Tomorrow I shall finish my commentary on Budziszewski — and fulfill my promise to tell you how Andrew Jackson, a Crow Warrior, Teddy Roosevelt and George Washington Carver were all cut from the same cloth: CONSERVATIVE. For now, I leave you with St. Paul:

¹Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.

²But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things.

³And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?

⁴Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?

⁵But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God;

⁶Who will render to every man according to his deeds:

⁷To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:

⁸But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath,

⁹Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile;

¹⁰But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile:

¹¹For there is no respect of persons with God.

¹²For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law;

¹³(For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.

¹⁴For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:

¹⁵Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)

¹⁶In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.

¹⁷Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God,

¹⁸And knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law;

¹⁹And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness,

²⁰An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law.

²¹Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?

²²Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?

²³Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God?

²⁴For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written.

²⁵For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision.

²⁶Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?

²⁷And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfil the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law?

²⁸For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:

²⁹But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.