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“CHOOSE TO DEFY YOUR DNA”
Joshua 24:14-15
In recent years, I’ve been making some intriguing discoveries about my ancestors.
In Cambridge, I learned that it was apparently Thomas Hobson who built the first conduit
to drain the city’s toxic waste. I’m proud to be a descendant of the guy who cleaned up
that town! I also learned that my great-ancestor Paul Mrovka from Poland had to come to
America because he had been shooting off his mouth about the Kaiser.
After my grandfather Edmund Mrovka died, the editor of the Collinsville Herald
wrote, “We’re going to miss old Ed. He was always writing fiery letters to the editor.”
(Sounds like me!) Grandpa almost moved to Russia to join the Bolsheviks after their
revolution, but someone said, “Ed! You can’t go there! They don’t have freedom of
speech. What would happen to you over there?” Ed wisely decided to stay here.
I can see a lot of myself in some of my ancestors. However, God did not give me
the organizational ability that enabled my father to organize the supply department for the
Brazilian Air Force. And thank God I don’t have to be like the one ancestor who both
fought for the Confederacy and seduced his brother’s wife, or the one who smuggled
liquor during Prohibition. Not all of the DNA of our ancestors always gets passed to us.
And even the traits and talents we have inherited from our ancestors are not the
determining factors in how our lives turn out. What makes all the difference is not the
genetic hand of cards we’ve been dealt, but what we do with it. In one of the Harry
Potter stories, the headmaster Albus Dumbledore says, “It is our choices, Harry, that
show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Movies like “Back to the Future” and “Peggy Sue Got Married” illustrate for us
how just a few crucial decisions can have a monumental impact in someone’s life. In
“Back to the Future”, George McFly makes the decision to stand up to Biff the bully, a
decision that dramatically alters the economic future of his family 30 years later. Peggy
Sue travels 20 years back in time and seeks to prevent her disastrous marriage by
resisting the advances of her boyfriend. In both stories, the audience gets to see the farreaching consequences of the characters’ actions.
Life is like a volume of interactive fiction. It is a story where we get to write the
plot by the choices we make each day. As Doc the mad scientist says at the end of “Back
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to the Future Part 3”, “Your future hasn’t been written yet! No one’s has. Your future is
whatever you make it, so make it a good one!”
Each of us is the product of a long list of decisions we have made. Just a few of
those decisions can radically alter the course of our life. Not all of our decisions carry the
same weight. It doesn’t matter a whole lot whether we get the best deal on a new car or a
new home. And it may not matter whether we landed the best job or the best salary we
could have gotten. But there are a few decisions that profoundly affect our lot in life and
even our final destiny.
In many ways, I am not the expert decision-maker I wish I was. If I were a
purchasing agent or a store manager or a hiring officer, I don’t know how well I would
perform. When choosing between brands of cars or investment opportunities, I’m not
sure I’ll always choose the best deal.
But I have made a few good decisions in life that truly mattered. One of those
decisions was my decision to accept Jesus Christ. Accepting Christ is a decision that has
radically altered my emotional health, my sense of ethics, and even the way I handle
intellectual issues. My commitment to Christ has put me in touch with answers to life’s
questions that I never would have discovered otherwise. Knowing Christ has given me a
reliable foundation on which to build my life.
But that’s not the only crucial correct decision I have ever made. Another crucial
correct decision I have made was to marry the gal I married 33 years ago. I can only
imagine how different my life might have been otherwise. The spouse we choose will
have an impact on our home life, our finances, our career, and our children. The decision
of whom to marry is not a question with only 1 right answer (otherwise second marriages
would never work). To marry or not is a question in itself. But if we marry, choosing
character matters more than finding compatibility. A couple with character can work
through their differences, but even the best-matched couple is sunk without
trustworthiness, care, and commitment. Choosing such a person is a life-altering choice.
Choices about intimacy are choices that involve the totality of who we are.
Choices that can lead to addiction can also be landmark decisions. I’m glad I never tried
a cigarette. I’m glad I said No to all the marijuana I was offered while I was in college.
Such decisions make a more powerful difference than the traits we were born with.
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Near the end of Joshua’s life, Joshua calls the nation of Israel together and
proclaims to them that they must choose for themselves once and for all whom they will
serve. They must choose between the God who led them out of Egypt, and the gods of
the surrounding nations. And the choice they make will make a world of difference.
Joshua reminds his people that idolatry is in their DNA. Their distant ancestors
used to worship the gods of Mesopotamia. Their immediate ancestors used to worship
the gods of Egypt. Joshua calls them to make a break from the DNA in their past.
Joshua knows that a decision to serve the Lord is a decision that each person must
make for themselves. No one else can do it for you. Your response to God is what
counts, not your family’s nor anyone else’s. Joshua gives them space to make their own
decision. He knows this kind of decision will be meaningless unless it’s truly our own.
Decision is an act of the will. It happens when we say, “I will seek counseling for
my emotional problems. I will seek treatment for my addiction. I will destroy my credit
card. I will keep a separate roof over my head until we are ready to be married.” One
fact that sets us above the animal world is the fact that we humans are not locked into our
instincts or conditioning. We humans are free to choose our own response. What makes
us humans most like God is our ability to rise above our programming. We are capable
of making life-transforming decisions, including the choice to defy our DNA.
We’ve seen how the sins of parents are visited upon the children for generations;
like parent, like child. We see the constant cycle of violence, the constant cycle of
dysfunctional family behavior. Our families pass down powerful scripts to us that shape
our sense of who we are, where we came from, and where we’re going.
But instead of being locked into a dysfunctional script passed down to us by our
ancestors, the good news is that we can write a new script for our lives. As Stephen
Covey says in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “a tendency that’s run through
your family for generations can stop with you. You are a transition person, a link between
the past and the future. And your own change can affect many, many lives downstream.”
Catherine and I have both inherited dysfunctional family histories. But we are
determined to make a break with the past. We are determined to be a transitional
generation. We are determined to write a new script for our family’s future, to do as
Joshua does where he says, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
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There’s been a lot of talk in recent years that our faults have all been programmed
into us by genetics. We’re told there’s an adultery gene, a violence gene, and all kind of
other congenital excuses why we do what we do. We say, “God made me this way.
That’s just who I am.” But none of us is stuck with what we were born with.
The human brain is born with only 25% of the neurons we have when we grow
up. The other 75% are produced by our responses to our environment, by the choices we
make. And although it may take a lifetime to reprogram ourselves, with God’s power, we
can choose to rewrite what our experiences and our choices have wired into our brains.
God created the basics of who we are, although God did not create our selfishness
or other defects. We all have desires and impulses that are rooted in who we are. But
God did not create us to be slaves to our natures. God created us to rise above our nature.
God is not glorified by robots who are controlled by our DNA. God is glorified
by beings who are free to make choices that are pleasing to God. No one can condemn a
robot for doing what it is programmed to do. The fact that God will hold us responsible
for our actions only makes sense if it’s true that we are more than machines, more than
robots. Unlike machines, robots, or even animals, we have the power of choice, the
power to defy our DNA. We can rise above the scripts we’ve had drilled into our heads.
Our life is the product of a long list of decisions we have made. Some of those
decisions will have a profound impact on how our life turns out, far more than anything
written in our DNA. But the most important decision we will ever make is our decision
to let Jesus Christ put us right with God and take control of our life. What we do with
Christ is a decision that will determine our eternal destiny. The choice is up to us. As
Joshua says, “If you be unwilling to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will
serve… But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Let us pray. Lord, in our watershed decisions in life, help us to make choices we
will not regret in the future. Help us to rise above our programming, whenever it gets in
the way of Your loving plan for our lives. And help those who have never done so before
to make that life-changing decision to turn their lives over to Christ’s control. We ask in
His name. Amen.