I’d Rather Take the Blame

            Human behaviors are complex. Multiple contributing factors enter into all our decisions. Genetics deals us a hand we had no part in choosing; everything from gender to eye color to musical or athletic giftedness is nature. We are equally powerless about the life circumstances into which we are born; everything from geography to economics to educational opportunity is nurture.

            In its extreme form, the nature-vs.-nurture debate pushes us to account for human behaviors by factors fixed at or before birth; thus determinism says we do what we do because we cannot do otherwise. So a criminal should not be held accountable or punished because genetic factors “made her that way” to the degree that she could not do other than she did. (By the way, this same view means that no one should be praised, receive an award, or have a statue erected to himself either. He could not have done otherwise than he did.)

            Again, in its extreme form, the other side of this debate says that wealth or poverty, education or illiteracy, loving parents or parental abuse decides one’s behaviors; Skinner’s radical behaviorism, for example, holds that the patterning of childhood results in predictable and inevitable outcomes. Again, there should be neither praise nor blame, pride nor guilt. We simply do what we do.

            All of us instinctively know better. Do you do what you do because you cannot do otherwise? Or do you at least sometimes rise above instinct and desire in a given situation to do something else instead?

            Rioting in London, genocide in Darfur, greed on Wall Street, shootings on high school campuses, legislation in Washington – name whatever piece of disgusting human behavior has riled you recently. Now think of the talking-head explanations you have heard on TV for that action. Poverty, lack of after-school sports, capitalism, socialism, race, religion, video games – all these things and a thousand more get the blame for what has been reported. Time out!

            All the things named by the talking heads are contributing factors to a messed-up world – one fallen from and rebellious against God. That much is true. And the people of God must address them for the common good. But all of us must begin where we know we should – with personal responsibility.

            I resent, deny, and deplore anyone’s explanation of me that says I am a billiard ball or physical machine who cannot be other than I am. It is demeaning to say you are just atoms in mechanical motion, doing what you must do. There is no human dignity or worth apart from human freedom. If the determinists are right, they can’t even know they are right because they are simply thinking and saying what they cannot but think or say. The very fact that they try to convince the rest of us of their theories proves they believe we can choose to change.

            For one, I’d rather take the blame for being the sinner I am than to offer as my defense a self-defeating theory that denies I am even a real person.