Becoming Who We Were Created to Be

Are we blank slates at birth shaped by family, faith community, culture, and environment? Are we born hopelessly sinful, totally depraved? Or fundamentally good? Do our genes predetermine who we are?

The term Tabula rasa, or “blank slate theory,” derives from John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). He argued that we are not born with innate ideas, but that knowledge comes through experience. We are born without knowledge. We acquire it through our environment, education, culture, and relationships.

It’s important to remember that Locke was talking about knowledge. John Watson and B.F. Skinner, the godfathers of behaviorism, took Locke’s theory much further, arguing that personality and behavior are shaped by conditioning through rewards and punishments.

Watson and Skinner’s deterministic behaviorism does not hold up empirically. Identical twins raised apart often show remarkable similarities in personality, IQ, political orientation, humor, vocational interests, and habits. Infants are born with temperament, emotional predispositions, innate facial recognition, language-learning capacities, reflexes, and some universal moral intuitions.  Humans are not born psychologically empty.

Locke was correct when it comes to knowledge; deterministic behaviorists are wrong to universally apply tabula rasa to personality and behavior.

The opposite extreme is genetic determinism, which claims that genes determine pretty much everything – intelligence, personality, temperament, mental health and mental illness, talents, and even moral tendencies. Genes, however, are not destiny. You’re not doomed by your heritage. Education elevates IQ scores. Trauma changes brain structure. Meditation and prayer alter neural pathways. Nutrition affects cognition. Poverty influences development. Secure attachment shapes emotional regulation.

It’s not nurture or nature. It’s both.

Genes are important, but they do not solely determine who we become. Environment is important, but environment alone doesn’t determine who we become.

Genes influence sensitivity to stress, how quickly we learn, and what kinds of environments we seek. Epigeneticists have shown that experiences influence gene expression through chemical modifications that affect how genes are used without changing the DNA sequence itself. Experiences influence gene expression – negative events like chronic stress, trauma, famine, war, poverty, abuse, or neglect (especially as a young child), and positive experiences, such as being raised by nurturing parents in a safe environment affect how genes are used.

The broad consensus across the disciplines of psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral genetics is that humans are neither blank slates nor prisoners of their DNA. The dominant view today is called interactionism. It avoids the oversimplifications of both genetic determinism and deterministic behaviorism. Genes, family, home environment, culture, trauma, education, nutrition, peer groups, personal choices, and happenstance all combine to form our personalities and behaviors. We are born with inherited biological tendencies that are continually being shaped by our environments, relationships, cultures, and our own choices. We have genuine human agency, and, therefore, responsibility.

All of this is important in light of our call to be Christlike. Spiritual formation, discipleship, has as its goal becoming like Jesus.

What was Jesus like? Kind. Forgiving. An enemy of Death. Just. Promoter of peace, justice, and fairness. Opposed to hypocrisy, hatred, violence, war, dishonesty, manipulation, and the desire to be wealthy. Not concerned with ritual purity or religiosity, but rather with the wellbeing of the poor, oppressed, and damaged.

How do I develop a Christlike character?

Some humanists tell me I don’t need to because there is Christ in all of us, innate goodness. I simply need enlightenment to realize it.

Some strict Calvinists tell me we are all totally depraved, that there is nothing good in any of us, and only God alone can change things.

Some traditions envision a life-long struggle to become holy, to die to the flesh, to bring every thought into captivity, and live by strict moral codes. That can be exhausting and discouraging. I’ve been with people on their deathbeds who were absolutely terrified of facing a wrathful God. They felt they were not good enough.

Other traditions emphasize that “it’s all of grace,” but seem to have little interest in living more deeply into that grace. I’ve been with other people as they’re dying who are perfectly content to face God even though they spent a lifetime adoring their own reflections and giving no thought to the poor, the homeless, the sick, the incarcerated.

Spiritual disciplines, like prayer, devotional reading, meditation, silence, solitude, and service, are essential. They are gifts given to help us connect with God. As we engage in them, we slowly grow more like Jesus. But they are not things we do to get God to like us. God already likes us. In fact, God loves us.

But God doesn’t necessarily love everything we do. Behavior that harms or diminishes ourselves or others needs correcting. We can be too complacent, content to drift through life doing what we want to do presuming upon grace. New Jerusalem, the figurative bride of Christ, has made herself ready for eternal union with God. God is a consuming fire. To draw near to God is to be refined.

Effort is required to grow in grace, to become more Christlike. Practicing spiritual disciplines regularly is essential. Deny yourself, take up your cross, follow Jesus. The one who would save their life must lose it. We must learn to detach from everything except God.

Thomas Merton said, “All sin is rooted in the failure of love. All sin is a withdrawal of love from God, in order to love something else.” (No Man Is an Island, p. 18)

To what am I attached? Most of us (maybe all?) are attached to our own persona.

Personae are the masks we wear, the images we portray to ourselves and the world. They are not necessarily bad. We all have them. We all need them. To fit in at school or in the workplace, we had to develop a persona – athlete, smart kid, class clown; ambitious businessperson who’s on the ball …

Some of us developed negative personae. We see ourselves as losers, stupid, screw-ups. Some of us have absorbed cultural stereotypes. Some of us view ourselves through the lens of dominant white male culture and conclude (usually unconsciously) that we are inferior. There are Black people who hate Black people, women who hate women, and Asians who think their eyes are ugly because they’ve been taught by society to hate themselves.

Positive or negative, we must detach from our personae in order to reach our spiritual potential in Christ. Only our true selves can become Christlike. Personae are masks we wear, roles we play. They are not who we really are.

Most of us reach middle age without any idea of who we really are. We’ve been “teachers,” “physicians,” or “finish carpenters” so long we assume that that is our core identity. That’s why so many people feel lost after they retire. Some of us create new personae – neighborhood fix-it guy, grandmother, fisherman, gardener. Nothing wrong with hobbies, but we still haven’t gotten to the core of who we really are. We are human beings, not human doings. We need not stop doing what we’re doing, but to discover who we are, we must detach from all the roles and masks.

Detachment is not asceticism. Detachment doesn’t mean becoming a monk or nun living in an Egyptian cave and sleeping on rocks. Detachment simply means letting go of false identities. I am not defined by my genetics, nor by my environment, nor by what was or is expected of me. I am not defined by what I do.

We are born neither blank slates, nor hopelessly depraved, nor all good. Character formation is not predetermined. God doesn’t magically zap us into perfection. God plays a major part, but we must coöperate. We can decide to be formed into the image of Christ.

To do so, I must discover who I really am. I cannot find myself in me alone; I must find myself in and through others. This is why we need spiritual companions, guides, spiritual directors, wise elders.

And so, I find a wise elder and commit to spiritual direction long-term. I engage in therapy as needed. I pray, meditate, read devotionally, serve the poor, learn to listen. And, I pray: “Lord, show me who I really am, who you created me to be, my true self, that I might become what I was created to be—fully human and fully alive.”