“Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron.” – 1Timothy 4:2
The conscience can be damaged by not properly responding to it. If a person persists in violating their conscience, it will grow decrepit, bother them less and less, become less effective, and may soon cease to deter them at all. A person does what dishonors God and their conscience condemns them. The Holy Spirit urges them to make it right. They ignore both their conscience and The Holy Spirit. Finally their mind forgets the incident and their conscience is damaged. This is the process by which people live hypocritical lives of self-deception.
Occasionally, we will catch something in the peripheral vision of our conscience. We know that we should look at it, but something inside says that if we do, we will have to make some changes, and the price of change is too high. So we refuse to turn and look at it face on, and instead think about something else. Our refusal to deal with it indicates that our conscience is in the process of becoming damaged.
Maybe The Holy Spirit will force us to look at it in the future, and maybe not. But each time we ignore His prompting we are desensitizing our conscience, making it a little bit harder to respond biblically the next time.
