Our History Explains Something and Causes Nothing

It has become natural for most of us to explain our present character by exploring our past experiences. This is especially true when our character is deficient in some way. If we are overly meek and passive, it’s because we did not receive enough affirmation as a child. If we can’t relate to men, it’s because our father was distant. If we frequently lash out in anger, even with violence, it’s because we were picked on in the classroom.

Now obviously our past is not insignificant. A good counselor (a pastor, a friend, a fellow Christian) will ask good questions and try to understand our previous experiences.  Our past can effect the way we behave and the way we interpret reality in the present.  But the past, no matter how tragic, does not absolve us of moral responsibility. Our personal history explains something, but it causes nothing.

An Ambiguously Cured Soul

In his excellent book, Seeing with New Eyes, David Powlison tells the story of Amelia.  Since she was in elementary school, Amelia struggled with lesbian fantasies.  She hated these fantasies and loved them at the same time.  She was a Christian and figured she had to change or come out of the closet and forget about God.

So she got some Christian counseling and learned that she didn’t choose these desires; they just happened to her.  Her therapist asked lots of questions and explained the reasons for her lesbian attractions.  Amelia’s father was an alcoholic and beat her and molested her.  As a result, Amelia never learned to trust men.  She looked to her mother for comfort, but she was helpless and passive.  So Amelia has spent her life looking for a female love to fill the void her mother left inside her when Amelia needed her most.  Years later, Amelia has come to see that only Jesus can fill her deepest needs and she is learning to resist her temptations more effectively.

What are we to make of this testimony?  Powlison calls Amelia an “ambiguously cured soul.”  Some good has certainly taken place. Amelia has been treated kindly. She’s been encouraged to find satisfaction in Jesus not in illicit sex. But there are some problems in Amelia’s new understanding of herself.  Her history, while crucial, is not as determinative as she thinks.  Powlison notes that a woman with the same family history could have ended up with at least six different choices and habits.

(1) She could long for lesbian love, like Amelia, trying to fill the void her mother left. (2) She could also have become promiscuous with men, having a distrust of women from her absent mother and a fascination with men from her overly sexual father. (3) She could have become anti-social, figuring it’s not safe to relate to anyone because of her background. (4) She could have become an addict, choosing to drown her pain in alcohol or drugs. (5) She could have married an abusive man, repeating what happened to her growing up. (6) Or she could have grown to love and value godliness in marriage after having seen such ungodliness growing up.

Powlison concludes, “Knowledge of a person’s history may be important for many reasons (compassion, understanding, knowledge of characteristic temptations), but it never determines the hearts inclinations.”

An Up Hill Climb

Powlison’s insights go against the prevailing assumptions of our day. If some Christians forget that sinners are also sinned against (and need our sympathy), then our culture has forgotten that we are sinners at all. The world around us is loathe to deal in moral categories or assign moral blame (except for some “sins” like homophobia, producing greenhouse gases, judgmentalism, etc.). And since we can’t talk of sin, we resort to historical (or biological) determinism.

This thinking is pervasive even in Christian counseling. The core motivation theory behind the sort of counseling Amelia received–the kind of counseling that primarily sees the heart as empty, needy, and disappointed–derives from Jungian depth psychology more than the Bible.  According to many contemporary Christian psychology models, the heart’s problem is that it is essentially a leaky love tank longing to be filled.  Good counseling, then, helps us figure out how to stop the leak or fill the tank–with Jesus, if it’s Christian counseling.

The Bible’s depiction of the heart’s problem is much different.  According to Scripture, the heart is bent toward sin.  It is an idol-making factory making false gods out of people’s approval and ultimately putting ourselves on the throne. We may be wounded, but sin is caused by a sinful heart, not a hurting past.

The Task Before Us

Our job, then, as Christians is, on the one hand, to take past hurts seriously and sympathetically, and yet to help people see that the past does not determine our future.

Consider: no human being was more unjustly sinned against than Jesus. He was made of the same biological stuff that we are and faced all the same trials and temptations. Still, he was not bitter. He did not revile. He did not live for the approval of others. His “woundedness” did not render him emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually unhealthy. Instead, by his wounds we can be healed. The good news is that in his suffering there is hope for our sin.

But only if we see sin as sin and not the syllogistic result of our personal history.