Back in the day when I studied Religious Education and linked issues of morals and ethics we came across the fun debate of nature vs nurture. How much of the individual – her behaviour and thought-processes – are inherent in her being, and how much has she acquired through various means from her surroundings? If he had been brought up in different circumstances would he have been as great? Would he have carried out so many atrocities?
I loved those questions and they still crop up now in my work with young people from varying backgrounds. The question is there – would they have turned out that way if they were raised differently? The convenient conclusion to reach is to suggest that it’s not one against the other, it is the degree to which they both correlate. What cannot be denied, however, is that the nurturing environment can and does play a vital part in the development of a person.
That has huge bearings on life in Christ and His Body. One of the lessons I learnt over the last three years is that it can be difficult to see what conditioning you have experienced and how pervasive it has been until you leave that conditioning. You don’t know how some of the things you take for granted are embedded and their harmful effects until you experience withdrawal from it. Church is an outstanding example of conditioning. It is a place of people and inevitably human frailties and flaws will emerge. Creature comforts that were a part of life before Christ can be hard to break in Christ and sometimes you come across substitute conditionings that can be even more harmful than the ones you left behind.
Am I suggesting people ‘leave’ church? Not at all. What I am suggesting is that sometimes we need to wake up to how conditioned we have been to patterns of thought and behaviour that do not honour God, but rather choke people’s connection to god and each other, stifle genuine growth in christ and tragically quench the Holy Spirit.
Some refute these notions because the status quo is fine and it is other people refusing to accept it that causes the problem. Other people know something is wrong, but do not want to be confrontational and upset the balance of things. So for the easy life they let things carry on. Mumbling and complaining, but not doing anything about it. The real challenge is to be led by the spirit of God to stop with the games and expose the lies for what they are whilst passionately pursuing the truth of what it is to be conformed to the character of Christ rather than the comforts of our routines. Sometimes the way to realise how deeply we have been conditioned is to step away from the conditioning. Step away and consider have we made idols out of useful practices for a season? Have we built shrines to fading, temporal concepts and structures that were never meant to be forever? Do our way of doing things pay more attentionn to lifeless rituals than the living God?
Better to challenge yourself and your spiritual siblings now and engage in the painful process of repentanceand reparation now, than find yourself one day realising just how choked up and unproductive you have been because you entertained folly and missed the Point of His Presence.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
dmcd
Life With CD 