A conscience can become defiled or contaminated. It will adjust in the direction that it is exercised. A person can begin a pattern of sin with a feeling of horror and sharp remorse. If the sin is continued, the conscience adjusts its feelings until the intensity becomes less and the person becomes the slave of what was formerly viewed with great remorse. The heart and therefore the conscience will adjust to the place where it becomes so hardened that repentance is impossible. A person in this state is becoming inured to sin and no longer cares. The word inured means to accustom or to accept something undesirable. God's references in the Old Testament to Israel being stiffnecked or having hardness of heart describe the same condition as having one's conscience hardened. To those under the New Covenant, hardening of the conscience is far more dangerous and is the ultimate in departing from God. The primary feature of the New Covenant is the change in the people's heart from one that is hard, defiled, contaminated, resistant to truth, and stone-like to one that is soft, sensitive, pliable, merciful, kind, generous, concerned, humble, and God-centered rather than self-centered. This change is conversion, which includes the softening of a heart and the removal of obduracy toward God and the way of God. A conscience, whether converted or unconverted, will progress in the direction that it is exercised. It will intensify toward evil or toward good depending on the way it is exercised. If it is exercised in the wrong direction, the conscience will become hardened. When a person has committed the unpardonable sin, that person is past feeling and cannot repent. Conversion is an educational process in the right things. If a person is not being educated in the right things, the conscience will adjust to the wrong things. Through the process of conversion, it is the responsibility of each person to make effort to put off the old man by changing conduct because the conscience will follow in the direction of the conduct. As a person grows in conversion, the conscience becomes ever more sensitive about right and wrong and ever more tender. If a person is not growing, that person will become inured and hardened and will move in the other direction because the conscience will adjust in that direction.

The conscience functions according to one's education and experience and will adjust in the direction it is exercised through both the intellect and conduct. As the Worldwide Church of God began to accept that it does not matter whether one keeps Sunday or the Sabbath, the conscience of the membership gradually adjusted over about seven years so that things formerly held as most sacred no longer troubled them. The leaven of false doctrine corrupted virtually the whole membership and turned them into different people with entirely different spiritual, moral, and ethical standards. Their conscience adjusted so that they could announce the most corrupt things and it hardly caused a ripple. These people started out knowing better but followed the leadership of people they should not have followed. They went along with these people exercising their liberty, and little by little the conscience adjusted so that now they find it virtually impossible to tell the difference between what is truly right and truly wrong in the eyes of God. The degeneracy is carried way beyond issues of questionable spiritual value. The conscience finally adjusts to where one does not care even that Jesus Christ is the Savior, and one tramples upon the blood of Jesus Christ. That is the way the unpardonable sin occurs. A good conscience is often the result of a poor memory or ignorance. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. In order not to be neglectful, one must be thinking, comparing, and willing to ask questions to clarify understanding through the experience of others. Practice produces insight, wisdom, and discernment so that one is able to think through situations and then choose the right course of action. Make sure where one stands. If an action might be wrong, do not do it. Be perceptive. Put righteousness into practice to keep oneself from feeling condemned. Those things will cause the conscience to adjust in the right direction. As this becomes a part of one's character, discernment, insight, and wisdom will lead one to being free to do what is right.

Human conscience can be killed or put into such a deep sleep that it cannot bother a person. A person works on conscience by offering successive excuses until conscience is worn down and says nothing. Conscience becomes a sure guide to right conduct only when the light of God's Word shines upon it. Apart from that light conscience functions like a trained circus dog that responds to signals by standing up, rolling over, or playing dead. The ten brothers of Joseph had suppressed the memory of their great wickedness in selling Joseph into slavery. Their consciences were asleep rather than dead because the mere mention of Egypt caused them to look guiltily at one another. God awakened their nearly dead consciences through the anxiety of deprivation brought by famine. The brothers were forced to travel to Egypt despite their dread of meeting Joseph. God then applied the sting of tough treatment through the harsh words of Joseph. Those words punctured the brothers' defenses and began to reach their consciences. God next used solitude through three days of imprisonment. Solitude awakened and intensified the brothers' guilt, refreshed their memories of Joseph's anguished pleas, and caused them to reason spiritually that every sin receives a reckoning in God's moral universe. The brothers openly confessed their sin for the first time. A good conscience must be formed by the will of God. The law given to Israel sensitized the conscience to discern God's judgment against sin. The brothers had been taught the will of God by Jacob yet had hardened their consciences until God applied deprivation, tough treatment, and solitude. Conscience is the judgment of the mind respecting right and wrong. Its design is to approve or condemn a person's own actions and to motivate virtuous deeds while giving discomfort for evil actions. Conscience may be enlightened or unenlightened and its use may be perverted by false opinions. Its authority does not communicate new truth but expresses judgment that imparts pleasure or inflicts pain. Conscience is an important part of the spirit in man yet is not an absolute trustworthy indicator of what is right. One's conscience can be good and clear but can also be guilty, corrupt, weak, and seared.