Stubborn

When I was roughly twelve years old, I remember my grandparents saying something like, “You need to accept Jesus Christ into your heart in order to get into heaven.” I remember thinking, “What about all the people who were raised differently?” and I even asked them about that. They said something like, “God will provide them with the truth”—basically through other people or means—“and it’s up to them to decide.”

However, it just didn’t sit right with me. What if someone from a different faith tried to convince my grandparents that they were wrong? I would have said, “Good luck with that.” In my mind, it suggested that simply being born in a specific area determined whether someone was going to be “saved” or not. That seemed unfair, and what God wouldn’t be able to see that? It felt like humans were putting their own shortcomings onto God.

That got me thinking about what actually shapes a person. It seemed to come down to two fundamental forces: genetics and environment. Take an extreme case, like being born blind. That physical trait is genetic, yet it fundamentally alters every single environmental experience you will ever have from that moment forward.

Some people will argue, “Why can siblings be so different? They roughly have the same genes and their environments are somewhat close.” But I don’t think they can ever be close enough. I think you could take anyone and make an exact 1:1 copy—and I mean 1:1. They have the same genes, the same memories, everything. However, as soon as that 1:1 copy is created, the differences start simply because their environments are different. Even if they are standing right next to each other, that alone is enough of a difference. As time goes on, those differences add up. If you were to separate them for ten years and then reunite them, sure, they would have similarities, but they would be their own distinct people.

It wasn’t until my twenties that I did a Google search for what I believed in, and that’s when I discovered the word determinism. I had spent years not knowing what to call it. I remember hearing the phrase “product of your environment” in the movie American History X, but that wasn’t quite right. “Nature vs. Nurture” came up, but it wasn’t one or the other—it was both. When I read the definition for determinism, I finally had a name for it.