Social Conscience Is Driven By Public Acts

John 8:9. A social conscience is a set of customs and norms that are acceptable to a given society. Society's conscience changes over time and is usually driven by public acts and laws. For example, during a U.S. television awards show Britney Spears and Madonna kissed each other on stage. This event had an immediate effect on the social conscience of the country. After this public event, the social conscience changed where it was now acceptable for two women to kiss in public.

In Jesus' day, Jesus' actions changed the common conscience of the day. For example in the Gospel of John with the adulteress who was about to be stoned, Jesus' intervention with the stoning changed the social conscience of the people that day. Their conscience called for the stoning of the woman, but Jesus' actions changed everything. Jesus altered the people's social conscience just by asking them to cast a stone at the adultress only if they were without sin. This one question from Jesus changed their social conscience almost immediately where it was now unacceptable to the people to stone the woman. They could not stone the woman, and they walked away (John 8:7-9, "So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst").

JOHN 8 BIBLE SCRIPTURE John 8:9, "And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst."