Kyle Gebhart

One of my frustrations over the last week was in interactions with someone who is attached to their inability to change because of what they refer to as ’social conditioning’. I’m not a fan of this mentality.

Too many people paint themselves into a corner as a victim of their social or genetic circumstances – while I don’t deny we all have certain ‘unchangables’ – often people use their social status or genetic tendancies as their primary reason for doing what they do.

The bottom line is the power of God has the ability to transform our behaviors – to prevail over our family dysfunctions, social status, and even our genetic predispositions. The unfortunate reality is most people will never appeal to the power of God to transform them. They will continue to use their life circumstances as an excuse for their behavior.

This is essentially a means of self-justification. It is becoming disturbing how even the legal system is becoming attached to these theories to the degree of claiming morally and legally deviant behavior as genetically pre-determined. For example: some people are just ‘born’ with a predatory instinct related to children. This is a rabbit-hole that ends in the depths of hell. Suddenly murder, theft, and adultery become genetic pre-dispositions – not choices made in a human heart. Human choice is removed from the picture and we all become victims of our genetic code or our socio-ecomonic milieu.

The irony in this is that those humanists who shout the loudest for ‘human rights to choose’ – are the same ones claiming that we really don’t have much of a choice. We’re simply ‘born’ to murder, steal or lie.

Of course, this is the natural state of the unrenewed mind, to submit to a harsh master, a ‘ba’al’. In this case the master is genetically hard-wired, relentless and exerting it’s power from within our own DNA. Talk about a bleak future. Of course, one of the biggest proponents of this type of determinism is quite infamous: Adolph Hitler. He claimed that the genetic code of the ‘Aryan race’ was the answer to our problems – while the genetic ‘deviations’ of the Jewish race were the source of all of socities’ ills. Is this really a path we want to start down?

Again, it is obvious there are many things that are not within our power to see changed; but this list is far smaller than more people wish. God has placed within us His Spirit – the very power of God that brought forth all of creation. The good news is that our family situation, where we were born, or our ‘genetic predispositions’ are not what primarily defines us. God is the one who names us, changes us, and has the Divine right to determine our identity. That is good news indeed in my opinion.