GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 6:16
Conscience
A metaphor that is often misattributed to Native Americans holds that conscience is a three-pointed stone in the heart. Each time one violates their conscience, the stone turns, and a point gouges the heart, causing pain. Repeated violations of conscience, however, eventually wear down the points on the stone, so that it no longer gouges the offender, causing them pain. The stone, however, remains.
Some writers portray conscience as an inner voice that tells one what is right or wrong. Other literary metaphors of conscience include that of a moral compass, like a navigational tool that helps steer one toward the “True North” of ethical behavior. In motivational talks, speakers sometimes portray conscience as an “inner boardroom advisor” sitting at the decision-making table, giving counsel that may not be loud, but is often the wisest voice.
In Palestine, descriptions of the ministry of Jesus spread. People repeated his teaching and described the miracles that accompanied his work. Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, spent most of his time at Herodium, a fortified palace complex about 7.5 miles south of Jerusalem, near Bethlehem in the Judean Desert. It was likely here that he heard about Jesus. According to Mark, “But when Herod heard, he said, ‘John, whom I beheaded, has risen!’” (Mark 6:16)
Herod was the first son of Herod the Great’s fifth wife, Malthake, and he narrowly escaped being murdered by his paranoid father, who killed several of his sons. When Herod heard about Jesus, a point on his conscience stone pierced him, because he remembered killing an innocent man—John the Baptist—whom he had met several times. Herod belonged to the sect of the Sadducees, who rejected the idea of an afterlife, judgment, or resurrection. All that went by the wayside when he heard of Jesus, whom he thought to be John the Baptist come back from the dead. Whatever the vices of Herod—and there were many—conscience would not leave him alone. This conscience-inspired judgment of Jesus suggests that the murder of John the Baptist dogged Herod—that’s the nature of conscience then and now.
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