The Good Store
In considering the subconscious the question arises: Why did a good God create the subconscious portion of our minds and leave it out of our control? Isn’t that a moral liability, especially as the subconscious is the residing place of the driving instincts or urges? Can the subconscious work beneficently and to our advantage?
Yes. Suppose the conscious mind had to take over the complete load of responsibility for being good and doing good. That would load too much on conscious decision and would make goodness too precarious, depending every moment on good decisions. So God has provided for what Jesus calls “the good store.” “The good man brings good out of his good store, and the evil man brings evil out of his store of evil” (Matthew 12:35, Moffatt). Every good deed, every good thought, every good attitude is dropped into the subconscious mind and thus becomes a part of “the good store” which is being built up within. This good store in the subconscious takes over in conscious crises and while we are asleep, and it predisposes us to goodness. We thus become good by habit. Habit is working with us and not against us. This makes goodness not a precarious thing depending on the passing good act – it becomes a constitutional thing, a part of our make-up. We become naturally good – it becomes second-nature to us to do the right thing, say the right word, take the right attitude.
The driving urges in the subconscious have had a long association with evil by racial inheritance when we take them over as individuals. Hence a certain bent toward evil. But intrinsically they are not evil. They can be surrendered to the Holy Spirit, cleansed by Him, redirected and brought into co-ordination and unity with the conscious mind, so that conscious mind and subconscious under a single control are directed to one end – the Kingdom of God. Then a man is a truly coordinated and integrated person. And not precariously so. The good store holds him to goodness. You make the subconscious, and then the subconscious makes you. We become almost automatically good – automatic because we have chosen through infinite decisions the character of the subconscious.