The nature vs nurture debate has long fascinated and divided sociologists. Are we the products of our environment or are we genetically predisposed to exhibit certain qualities? The question is on my mind for a couple of reasons this morning. First, because I’m taking Lauren to see Wicked at the Melba tonight (it’ll be my third time to see it; it’s my favorite movie from 2024), and the central character is a classic case of the nature vs nurture debate. The other reason I’m thinking of it is because I’m studying Genesis for the first part of this year, and I wrote about Abraham and Isaac yesterday, but never finished all I wanted to say. I suppose I’ll never run out of things to talk about tremendous heroes of faith.
That said, they weren’t always heroes of faith, were they? Abraham lied. His son Isaac lied (the same lie!). Isaac’s son Jacob also lied, as well as connived, schemed, and—true to his name’s meaning—supplanted his brother Esau. It’s enough to make you wonder if there wasn’t something in the blood of Abraham, something in his DNA that was passed down to Isaac, and from Isaac to Jacob. I won’t rule it out entirely; goodness knows, I’m no geneticist. Just purely by observation, it seems like there are traits we pass down through our DNA, qualities we inherit, and habits we come predisposed to sink into.
Nevertheless, there’s Joseph.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all had their faults, and some of them share striking similarities. Many of Jacob’s sons followed their father’s footsteps and conspired against their brother Joseph. In that case, it seems like the cycle/trend/nature continued from father to sons, but Joseph is also a son of Jacob, and he did not follow in his father’s steps. In fact, Joseph is one of the very rare people discussed at length in the Bible about whom the Holy Spirit has nothing negative to say. He was virtuous, righteous, and godly, and while he wasn’t sinless, he clearly broke the family mold when it came to taking shortcuts and using deception to get by.
I was talking to David Reese about this the other day (what a thoughtful guy he is, with a tremendous perspective on Bible things), and he described it as “generational sin, passed from father to son,” not in the literal sense, because children don’t inherit the actual sins of their parents (Ezekiel 18:20), but from the standpoint of children observing their parents, silently learning from them, and growing up to act like them (warts and all). Regardless of which side of the nature vs nurture debate you land on (and reality is probably a bit of both), the fact remains: Everyone is ultimately responsible for his own actions. We might be predisposed to act a certain way, either because of genetics or the culture we grow up in, but the choice—the action of the act—remains ours. Isaac followed the sins of Abraham, but he didn’t inherit them. Jacob followed the sins of Isaac, as did many of Jacob’s sons after him.
Nevertheless, there’s Joseph.
We do ourselves a disservice when we focus on why we made a bad decision, why we found it so tempting, why we found it so easy to yield when others seem to have no trouble resisting, etc. I have never been tempted to drink a drop of alcohol. For some, it’s a daily (hourly) struggle to stay sober. Why are we different? What, in our backgrounds, accounts for the difference? It doesn’t matter. We are what we are. We are what we have grown into. Looking back doesn’t change our present. All we can do is take life one step at a time and lean on the Lord to help us be the image He made us to be.
~Matthew
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PS: I don’t want to seem like I’m coming down too harshly on Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob for their sins. We all have sinned; that’s the reality of life. To their great credit, all three of those patriarchs rose above their sins and grew into better, more faithful, people. That’s the goal for all of us. If they can, so can we.