Each one of us is born with a conscience, given to us by God. That conscience is the still quiet voice that we can hear within our being, to which, some ignore it, some try to drown its voice out by drink or drugs, some rebuke it, and some embrace it. As a child, our conscience existed, a conscience in development because we were yet still children, to which, intuitively we recognized that when injustice was done to us by our parents, by our teachers, or by bully's, that we had been wronged, but because of our lack of physical size, or lack of authority, or out of respect or duty towards our parents or teachers, we obeyed their dictates. These dictates forced upon us may not have been all that wrong, yet they were wrong in that they conflicted with our conscience, and thereby we often learned to harness our conscience into the conformity to the world that we lived in. There does come a time, though, when all of us, are responsible for ourselves, our decisions, and our actions, to which the pointing of our finger at some other person as the blame for our wrong deeds, is inherently dishonest. This means, in short, whether we want to recognize it or not, that we now can live our lives in obedience to our conscience as the highest law or we can blend our conscience into societal expectations and norms.
Depending upon your life and depending upon your country, your conscience overall may not be out of sync with much of anything that goes on in your everyday life. On the other hand, your conscience may be challenged by the law, by political forces, by your family, and in those sorts of situations a man with a conscience must make a decision as to whom he will serve. It is these very circumstances that determine whether you are a man of integrity, a man of practicality, or a man that merely goes with the prevailing flow of the times.
It is one thing to have a family dispute that involves your conscience as that often is kept, in one way or another, within the family, as compared to a dispute of conscience that affects your livelihood, your freedom, or your very life. While there isn't necessarily anything wrong with balancing your conscience with the exigencies of a given situation, recognize that each time that you do so, you are denying your true essence in order to maintain a status quo, and a bit of you dies for having done so.
Then, there are times, for some people, to which the civil authorities, or the ecclesial authorities, or perhaps the place of your employment, place you into a situation to which a stand must be made for conscience or for its denial, because there is no in-between and no compromise, possible. The thing to recognize when it comes to authority of any sort over another human being is that that particular authority has little or no legitimate jurisdiction if by obeying its dictates you deny your very conscience.
No society can be considered truly free, if civil authority or its equivalency trumps over any man's legitimate conscience, because the highest authority for mankind is natural law which is immutable and unerring and thereby any authority which is not in tune with natural law is no legitimate authority itself. James Madison wisely stated that: "Conscience is the most sacred of all property…" to which it behooves all of us, to imprint this upon our minds, and to thereby recognize that the defense of our conscience is our foremost duty, to which all other duties must pay homage to.