“Be master of your will and a slave to your conscience.”
–Lieb Lazerow
Those words represent some of the best advice ever given. If we could all develop the willpower to follow the dictates of our conscience, our lives and the lives of all those we touch would be transformed to a degree almost beyond imagination. Few of us are capable of mastering our will to that extent, and many of us tend to ignore our conscience when it communicates messages that we don’t like. But we are all capable of developing a stronger obedience to our conscience and a greater control over our will.
Our conscience and our will are often in conflict. Our will tells us what we want to do, and our conscience tells us what we ought to do. Each of us must make the choice as to which signal we will follow. Most of us either become more responsive to the urges of our conscience or less responsive as we travel life’s pathway. Either our conscience becomes stronger or it becomes weaker as life goes on. If we allow our conscience to serve as a basic guide in making decisions on a consistent basis, it will become stronger and stronger as life goes on. However, if we tend to ignore our conscience when it conflicts with our will, it will gradually weaken over time to the point where it will play almost no role in our decision making.
A father once described how the conscience works to his small son by comparing it to a little wheel somewhere inside our body that has very sharp points on it. When we resist following our conscience, the little wheel turns and causes us pain. However, if we disobey our conscience on a frequent basis, the little wheel turns so many times that the sharp points wear down and the pain become less severe each time we ignore our conscience. And if we violate our conscience enough times, the points on the little wheel become so smooth that we feel no pain at all when we violate our principles.
The collective conscience of a nation is made up of the individual consciences of all citizens. The moral values we demand of our elected officials are determined by the moral values of the individuals who make up the voting population. When we look at the history of the United States, many of us are dismayed that it took an organized movement of individuals following the dictates of their own consciences for women to get the legal right to vote, and a major civil rights movement, including strong legislation, to protect the rights of minorities.
Our conscience is such a valuable tool to us in navigating life’s journey that ignoring it to the point that it no longer does its job is akin to a seaman destroying his compass. Shouldn’t we be vigilant in our efforts to follow our conscience instead of our individual wills so that our conscience will remain a strong force in our lives until the day we die?
Think about it.
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Copyright 2026
Allen W. Smith
