What is your moral compass?

Your compass is your conscience. Your sense of right and wrong. Your ability to make choices, and your ability to live with your choices without making excuses for yourself, or assigning blame.

Nevil Shute, one of the finest novelists of the twentieth century, wrote a book called Round the Bend. In the book, his protagonist recounts a fable about Moses and Mohammed. This fable has haunted me since I first read it at the age of twelve.

The fable begins with Moses and his journey up the mountain, where he is asked by God to have his people pray fifty times a day. This request is quickly seen as unrealistic, what with the golden calf and all, so God relents and simply asks that his people keep the Sabbath holy. A few thousand years later, Mohammed has his own version of that conversation on the mountain, where he is asked by God to have his people pray fifty time a day. As he returns from his journey, Mohammed meets Moses, and after discussing God’s request, Mohammed is convinced by Moses to return to God and ask for an easier burden. Again, God relents, and this time requires that his people only pray five time a day. At this point in the fable, the storyteller turns to his audience and asks, “But what if we did pray fifty times a day? What if every time we completed a task, we simply prayed, ‘Have I done well?’ If we did,” concludes the storyteller, “We could easily fulfill God’s request for fifty prayers each day.”

Well, I tried it. I was twelve years old; I’d just finished reading the story; my mother asked me to clean the kitchen; and I decided to try it. I washed one dish, then I prayed, “Have I done well?” An amazing thing happened. I felt an answer. I clearly knew that I had done well. After washing each dish, I prayed again. Each time I prayed, I knew instantly whether I had done well, or whether I hadn’t. And by the time I finished cleaning that kitchen, it gleamed.

We all have the gift of conscience; we just forget to listen to it.