Articles
Can Humans Exercise Self-Control?
Naturalism is a gift that keep on giving. What seems on the surface to be merely a historical, scientific theory creeps its way into all aspects of life, for truly if there is no God and life is merely happenstance, the ramifications are endless.
For example, public policy is increasingly shaped by Darwinian philosophy, the dogma that humans are merely the product of what the natural environment has shaped through millions of years of evolution. The practical outgrowth is that people are not responsible for what they are and do, and therefore we should not place expectations upon them or hold them fully accountable for their actions.
Those of us who lived through the onset and development of the AIDS epidemic saw this firsthand. Did we ever hear public service announcements – health officials, advertisements, pamphlets, etc. – counsel the homosexual community to stop doing the very things that caused AIDS in the first place? NO, policy was based on the assumption that the behavior could not be changed and billions of dollars were spent on how to manage the consequences of the disease. Interestingly, several years ago the CDC pointlessly changed its name to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but you won’t hear them recommend teens to abstain from premarital sex to prevent STDs. Nope, the policy is to flood schools with free condoms:
“The public health profession’s mania for showering condoms upon Americans, from schoolchildren on up, reflects the same rejection of individual self-control. A 1995 editorial in the American Journal of Public Health called ‘our society’s failure’ to place condom vending machines in convenience stores and public bathrooms and our failure to encourage ‘aggressive marketing of condoms’ a ‘national tragedy.’ As emeritus professor Monroe Lerner of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health argues, the federal public health bureaucracy now assumes that people have ‘no impulse control, no sense of personal responsibility.’ It expects young people in particular, he says, to engage in ‘promiscuous sexual relations’ … Lerner, who helped push the field into more political arenas during the 1960s, a development he now regrets, acerbically summarizes the past three decades of public health thinking: ‘The words sin and deviance have vanished from the vocabulary’” (Heather Mac Donald, The Burden of Bad Ideas 50).
The Biblical view of humanity, however, is quite different. God gives us a “top down” description of our creation: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing’ … So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them” (Gen 1:26-27). We are a special creation fundamentally unlike the lower animals. They are not our ancestors; we did not develop from primitive life forms. We were created suddenly, by divine fiat, for special purposes and with correspondingly advanced thought processes.
Part of our mental acumen is the ability to determine what we will do in our lives, to exercise “free will.” This differs from animals which are “preprogrammed” to do certain things. We call this instinct. Birds, for example, do what birds are designed to do: build nests; lay eggs; hunt; “sing” and ruin newly washed cars. Some migrate; others can be domesticated; certain species can be trained to “speak” or majestically fly into a stadium before a sporting event. But a bird can’t decide not to do bird things. Birds don’t have consciences; they don’t work math problems; they can’t choose to live like a squirrel or a wallaby.
Yet in regard to humans, free will terminology which implies self-control is sprinkled all throughout Scripture:
“Flee sexual immorality” – 1 Cor 6:18.
“Let him who stole steal no longer; but rather let him labor” – Eph 4:28.
“Submit … to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake …” – 1 Pet 2:13.
“What God has joined together, let not man separate” – Mt 19:6.
“Do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation” – Eph 5:18.
“Abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul” – 1 Pet 2:11.
So many of the ills of our society are matters willfully chosen by people who have been encouraged to think they are not responsible for what they do. Many are direct violations of God’s laws. Promiscuous sex, drunkenness, stealing, contempt for law, divorce … these are the things that wreck lives, promote further sin, laden with emotional baggage, instill a sense of helplessness and hopelessness, burden with guilt.
Absent in Scripture are discussions of nurture, cultural conditioning, habits and other extenuating factors that undermine the concepts of volition, rationality and free will. In fact, the current approach to human behavior is dehumanizing, destabilizing and degenerative because it attacks the ability of man to choose to rise above his own behavior and make better choices.
Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:23; 2 Pet 1:6). That is, all humans, Christians or not, have the ability to deny themselves pleasure and comfort and self-indulgence if it achieves a greater outcome. However, through Scripture the Holy Spirit has given greater insight into our choices, urging obedience to God even when the result is uncomfortable, disadvantageous or perhaps downright harmful to us.
For example, why should we not steal? On the upside, stealing offers immediate, easy acquisition. The downside: emotional and financial damage to others, a criminal record, imprisonment, loss of self-respect. And, it is a sin that will lead one to hell if uncorrected. It doesn’t matter how you were raised, if you came from a broken home, how much money you have, who you hang with, how much the culture may glorify thievery, etc. A human with a functional mind and conscience can understand that stealing is wrong. And making excuses for the thief is merely lowering the bar of expectation, which enables the thief to remain a thief. Such godless policies promote sin and perpetuate what they seek to cure.
