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You came prepackaged with an ensemble of built-in character traits. These personal attributes seem to be part of your inborn nature. Many of them are good and can be used for good; some are not so good, and those can tend to hurt you and others. Then add life-experiences to your natural tendencies, and your unique personality becomes cemented. Yet, life is not all sunshine and rainbows; difficult moments arise when the not so pretty aspects of your unique personality take over and rule the day. This oftentimes can inflame circumstances. In those moments you might recognize from a feeling of inner turmoil and conviction, or because it was pointed out, that you are not only harming yourself and others, but that your behavior is offensive to God. A great controversy ensues and you put God on trial for how He made you. “Why have you made me this way?” The inner voice gets louder. “This is the way I am; I was born this way. If it’s wrong, then why did God make me like this? If God gave me certain natural instincts and tendencies and those involuntarily intersected with life and formed who I am, and some of those ways offend God, then it must be God’s fault.” What would God say about your reasoning? “Who are you to talk back to God, to question Him?”
In the famous experiments that Ivan Pavlov conducted with his dogs, he believed that events could trigger a conditioned response. In 1902, Pavlov started with the premise that there are some things that a dog does not need to learn. For example, dogs don’t learn to salivate whenever they see food. This instinctive behavior is a reflex and is hard-wired into the dog. However, Pavlov showed that dogs could be conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell if that sound was repeatedly presented at the same time that they were given food. This conditioned response or triggered behavior demonstrated the formation of a new association between the unconditioned stimulus (inborn nature) and the neutral stimulus (life experiences). Pavlov’s research shed light on the underlying mechanisms of learning and provided a framework to understand how environmental stimuli and repetitive experiences can shape our behaviors and responses.
If God made a dog to act like a dog, then He certainly can’t punish the dog for being a dog. And aren’t humans just like animals, with animal instincts hard-wired into us? It seems plausible that the same reasoning should apply to humans. How can God fault you for displaying the very nature that He willfully placed in you? No man can reject what was inserted in him before his birth. Therefore, we must conclude that Yahweh is responsible when you “act like a dog.”
To a certain degree, it’s true, but this faulty argument quickly fades as it runs into its limitations. Humans can opt out of their inherent nature, their conditioned responses and triggered behaviors, because we were created in the image of God. The dog was not! Man is the only member of God’s creation that carries His DNA. As such, no matter how deeply hidden, you have the option to express the DNA of your Creator. But, the full expression of God’s genetics can only manifest when, by grace, you personally encounter God, and you become aware of who He is and who you are in Him. However, this encounter will not change your personality or your triggered behaviors. Your new creature will still look like the old you and will tend to act like the old you, unless you purposely change. Those built-in character traits and the conditioning from your life experiences can only be effectively altered with God’s help—with further access to His grace.
When you come naked and vulnerable before the Lord a whole pantheon of personal gods and idols are uncovered. And when the god of self is exposed, the one who sits on the throne as your supreme leader, you must make a choice. Serve Yahweh—or all the gods on the other side of the River and in Egypt that are lurking in your heart. We are all on the same journey from slavery to freedom, from the bondage to sin to becoming a prisoner of righteousness. And that is not without a tsunami of emotions, rising to destroy the old man and receding to reveal the catastrophic damage to the carnal nature left behind.
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