If comedian Flip Wilson were still with us, maybe he\u2019d be saying, \u201cMy genes made me do it.\u201d But it wouldn\u2019t be as funny. Or as accurate.<\/p>\n
One of the most acclaimed novels of all time, \u201cAnna Karenina\u201d by Leo Tolstoy, deals with the all-too-human failure of infidelity.<\/p>\n
Tolstoy painstakingly draws out the circumstances and consequences of his characters\u2019 failings. And he delves into the interior life of his doomed protagonist. For instance, Tolstoy tells us that the more Anna grew disenchanted with her husband, the larger his ears looked to her.<\/p>\n
As it turns out, Tolstoy needn\u2019t have bothered with all this detail. All he needed to do was to wait for science to reduce the conundrum of infidelity to a simple acronym: DNA.<\/p>\n
A study published earlier this year in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior analyzed data from nearly 7,400 Finnish twins and siblings \u201cwho had been in a monogamous relationship for at least one year.\u201d The study found that nearly 10 percent of men and more than 6 percent of women admitted to cheating.<\/p>\n
Researchers also found that \u201cidentical twins correlated strongly with one [another] in terms of unfaithfulness, while fraternal twins and siblings did not.\u201d Since identical twins share 100 percent of their DNA, and siblings share only half, they concluded that \u201cthe clear finding is that an individual\u2019s genetic makeup in general influences how likely he or she is to cheat.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lead researcher, Brendan Zietsch of the University of Queensland, told the Washington Post that \u201cwhile there may be a clear genetic influence on our tendency to cheat, there is no such thing as a single \u2018infidelity gene.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
I can guarantee you that this is not how this study, or to be more precise, the story about this study, will be understood by the average person. To paraphrase Lady Gaga, we\u2019ll soon be hearing, \u201cI\u2019m not a cheater, I was born this way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christian Jordal, a marriage therapist at Drexel University, is skeptical. He told the Post that \u201cthere can be a tremendous amount of ambiguity around why people cheat … It\u2019s the same sort of mystery of the human heart: How is it that we choose to be attracted to someone? Why do we think or feel the way we do around love and romance? In the same way we don\u2019t always have these answers, we don\u2019t have the answers around infidelity issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s right. Nonetheless, the Post reports \u201cAmong mental health professionals, the belief that infidelity always arises from an intrinsic flaw within the transgressor \u2014 such as a failure to commit or abnormally high sensation-seeking \u2014 is largely outdated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course it\u2019s outdated. After all, what\u2019s labeled these days as pathological isn\u2019t transgressing moral norms, it\u2019s believing that there are such things as moral norms in the first place!<\/p>\n
Look, is someone\u2019s behavior partly a function of temperament? Probably. Does heredity influence temperament? In all likelihood. But this is light years away from saying, as the Post headline does, that monogamy and\/or infidelity is \u201cprogrammed\u201d in our genes.<\/p>\n
I can hear Chuck Colson shouting \u201cthis is scientism run amok!\u201d The mystery and complexity of human behavior, our capacity for good and our propensity to do evil, is reduced to our genetic makeup which in turn regulates some neurotransmitter in our brains.<\/p>\n
This is, to coin a phrase, horse hockey. But worst of all, this view of human behavior demeans the human person, reducing us to a-moral automatons doomed to act only according to our genetic software.<\/p>\n
But that, my friends is not who we are. Yes, we fail, and fail frequently. But we were made a little lower than the angels, in the very image of God. So while we cry out with Paul in Romans 7, \u201cFor what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do,\u201d as God\u2019s adopted children, we can also cry out, \u201cWho will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God \u2014 through Jesus Christ our Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amen.<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Whether you\u2019re a serial monogamist or have a tendency to stray may be partly programmed into your genes
\nMeeri Kim | Washington Post | November 6, 2015<\/p>\n
Saber-tooth Psychology
\nEric Metaxas | BreakPoint.org | November 4, 2015<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2015 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. “BreakPoint” is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If comedian Flip Wilson were still with us, maybe he\u2019d be saying, \u201cMy genes made me do it.\u201d But it wouldn\u2019t be as funny. Or as accurate. One of the most acclaimed novels of all time, \u201cAnna Karenina\u201d by Leo Tolstoy, deals with the all-too-human failure of infidelity. Tolstoy painstakingly draws out the circumstances and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,2520,2224,2522,1746,2521,1190],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6865"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}