Nature Versus Nurture – My Opinion

There are a lot of people from many walks of life and fields of science who have studied for many years on the question of what makes us act the way we do. Are we born into the world devoid of personality and everything is imprinted on us by what happens to us or, are we “just born that way?” Your mom was an alcoholic, your grandpa was an alcoholic, and your brother is an alcoholic. You are doomed to a life of alcoholism. “I can’t help myself, I was born this way.”

Or, is it, as I believe, possible to break the cycle. I am using that example but there are many, many others. Many cycles of many different types exist in people’s lives. Cycles of a multitude variety of abuse, addictions, and a veritable plethora of other proclivities we may have. Conversely, there are some people who just seem to be born nice. Pleasant and wholesome, they are naturally easy to get along with. But where does it all start?

I have 4 kids and 10 grandkids and I can tell you that every one of them is so different from every other one of them — except where they’re not. Dr. Dobson asked in his book, The Strong-Willed Child, why it was that some children are born “easy children” while others he describes as, “They come into the world smoking a cigar and complaining about the temperature in the delivery room…”

There is a lot of the genetic makeup that predicts and controls our actions, but every person ever born was born for a specific reason. God has a job for any and everyone who will come to Him and offer themselves. While so-called scientists exclude God from the conversation, it is He that has made us and not just our genetic code. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that He gave us a specific, individual genetic code to handle the work we are meant to be doing.

But, we are not all mindless robots, cursed by fate to be what we are and to pass whatever legacy we have, evil or good, down through the generations. No, we have free will. An animal will behave the way it is “programmed” and even the strongest training cannot change its actual nature. God created humans differently. He gave us free will. A choice. We can choose to rise above. There are some things that we may not be able to change, but God offers us His power to help us change. Unlike an animal, we can choose to do or not do what we want and if we will humble ourselves and recognize there is a Creator who has made us for a purpose, we will become satisfied and settled with the rest of our life.