Do you think you will meet your long-gone pets after you die? Do you hope you will?

I do, at least in the case of Trouble. He was an orange tuxedo cat, handsome as a movie star, loving as a baby, tolerant beyond belief of children who wouldn’t stop carrying him around like a sack of flour.

In the case of Butterscotch, not so much. She was a muddy calico who, when I held her, wished quite obviously for the ordeal to be over. She grew jealous when we brought a new kitten into the house, and showed her displeasure with her urine.

When I finally had enough, I put an ad in the paper. “Calico. Needs to be outdoors.”  A young girl responded, saying she wanted to give a gift to her foster mother who loved calicos. I probably should’ve checked this story out with the foster mother but, no, I hurried to their farm, dropped Butterscotch off and slinked away.

Naturally, I’m less eager to meet her in the life beyond.

This is because I’m suffering pangs of conscience. According to The Revenge of Conscience by J. Budziszewski, there is simply no way around that sense of right and wrong that is written on our hearts. Deny it and it does an end-around, smacking us on a side where we’re not looking.

Budziszewski puts it more eloquently: “If the law written on the heart can be repressed, then we cannot count on it to restrain us from doing wrong; that much is obvious. . . .

[R]epressing it hurls into further wrong. Holding conscience down does not deprive it of its force; it merely distorts and redirects that force.

“Knowledge of guilt always produces certain objective needs, which make their own demands for satisfaction irrespective of the state of the feelings. These needs include confession, atonement, reconciliation and justification.”

Uh-hmm, and didn’t I just prove his theory by confessing my abandonment of Butterscotch?

What does distorting and redirecting conscience look like? Well, consider reconciliation:

“The need for reconciliation arises from the fact that guilt cuts us off from God and man. Without repentance, intimacy must be simulated precisely by sharing with others in the guilty act. . . . Andrew Solomon says that he, his brothers, and his father are united by the “weird legacy” of their implication in his mother’s death, and quotes a nurse who participated in her own mother’s death as telling him, “I know some people will have trouble with my saying this but it was the most intimate time I’ve ever had with anyone.” . . . Violation of a basic human bond is so terrible that the burdened conscience must instantly establish an abnormal one to compensate; the very gravity of the transgression invests the new bond with a sense of profound significance.”

I love books like Revenge because they explain the reasons behind right and wrong, beyond simply saying “God said so.”  They show how X leads to Y. They even demonstrate how virtues like prudence, love and tolerance can be spoiled, turning them into vices.bacon topped grilled cheese

On the other hand, Revenge can be an uncomfortable book. Think you’ve boxed up your moral dilemmas and stored them in the far corner of the basement? Don’t be so sure. As Budziszewski tells us, the conscience can’t be avoided.

As for dinner, I attempted to ignore what I know about bacon (it stuffs your arteries and kills you) and put it into two dishes, Bacon-Topped Grilled Cheese, and Swiss Tossed Salad. (I skipped the olives and the silly dressing on the salad.)20150301_183308 I don’t regret a single bite, although the bacon may get its revenge and dispatch me a little earlier to where Butterscotch has gone, where I will have some explaining to do.