Rebuilding the Heart (Environmentalism)

When the man and his wife heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

And the LORD God called unto the man, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said unto him, I heard thee in the garden; and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And God said unto him, Who told thee that thou wast naked?

Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, “You shall not eat?” Then the man said, “The woman whom you gave me to be my wife, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate it.” Genesis 3:8-13

The Guilt

As we have seen, guilt and responsibility go hand in hand, because guilt is incurred when responsibility is neglected. When Adam and Eve chose to neglect their responsibility to work and care for the garden in obedience to God, they incurred guilt by transgressing God's law.

This autonomous impulse is at the heart of all pagan thought and philosophy. With God and His covenant set aside, the supremacy of man will inexorably follow. Indeed, the great antithesis of history is the endless struggle for thrones and power: Who is in charge? To whom do I answer?

Is man in control and therefore sovereign, or is God sovereign in this relationship? The futility of man's attempts to dethrone God is shown in the revival of paganism, especially in the pagan attempt to appease man's guilty conscience.

One of the first sinful ways in which man tries to alleviate his guilt is to blame his environment. Think of the incident of the forbidden fruit in Eden. When God asked Adam about his nakedness and whether he had eaten of the forbidden fruit, Adam replied:

“The woman you gave me as a wife, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate.”

The malice in Adam’s heart was now plain to see. In his guilt, Adam tried to ease his conscience by blaming God’s seemingly inadequate gifts. Eve, whom Adam had received as a great gift, was now blamed for Adam’s poor decision.

Not to be outdone, when asked the same question, Eve chose to blame the serpent who had deceived her. Both parties claimed that the environment was the cause of the transgression, and thus both parties ignored their individual, moral guilt for the sin.

Paganism itself believes in what we call a “closed universe.” That man exists in an impersonal and indifferent universe is the predominant characteristic of pagan thought. If there is no sovereign personality governing man, there can be no personal universe either.

An impersonal universe means there is no meaning and therefore no accountability. Without meaning, man is free to blame the environment, after all, “evolution made me this way.” Without accountability, man is free to determine his own purpose, after all, naturalistic evolution has no purpose.

This closed-world thinking would have us believe that the earth is all we have, and that death is the end of everything. Chance rules us and fate is its servant. The pagan belief in this absurdity requires a good deal of environmental philosophy.

If we are simply pockets of protoplasm and glowing neurons, products of time and chance acting on cells and matter, then whatever happens is the result of a relativized chain of being in which everything has to be self-determined rather than determined by God.

But the Bible doesn't talk about anything like that.

The God of the Bible asserts His superiority in and through history. He is the Creator of the world. Every atom and molecule moves under the sovereignty of Jehovah. This is not a universe governed by chance; it is a universe governed by a personal God. His sovereignty over and through time results in what theologians call “first and second causes.”

God has given us freedom to choose what he has predestined. We are free as secondary creatures, entirely derived to move through history with purpose and meaning, but this movement can only occur to the degree that it acknowledges and praises the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Yet this also means that the tri-personal God has a law attached to his person. To be sovereign, he must have a law-word, and we have that in the Bible. This fact alone completely eradicates any possible successful mission of man's usurpation of God.

Man will try to free himself from God and will rebel against the maturity that God requires of him; however, this will be entirely in vain, for he is a finite creature. Urgent news: we are supporting men.
Man's creatureliness means that man is responsible and culpable before God and His law. He cannot blame the environment for his troubles.

As James 4:1 asks: “What causes fights and quarrels among you?

Where do they come from, if not from the pleasures that militate in your flesh?” It is not what goes into a man that defiles him, it is what comes out: it is what comes from the heart – the center of man that defiles and defiles him. We are not primarily products of our environment; we were created to create, produced to produce, caused to cause. We are personal beings who come from a Personal Being.

Now, let’s look at how environmentalism tends to work in practice. You may have grown up in a terrible home: abusive, promiscuous, or addicted parents. Verbal, emotional, or physical abuse may have marked your childhood. Husbands who exploit their wives, wives who exploit their husbands—these are the environments in which many people grew up.

Maybe your parents never taught you how to deal with conflict or how to manage money. Maybe you were picked on by a bully at school. It’s quite possible that you were sexually abused in some way during your childhood. However, these heinous sins should not be seen as defining who you are.

The pagan sees man as a product of chaos and his environment.

Christian doctrine teaches that man is a product of the living God, made in his image. Our being and nature are determined by God, not self-determined. This distinction is absolutely necessary for dealing with emotions, compulsions, and trials. We are not made in the image of our environment.

It goes without saying that we have to deal with issues related to our family of origin. You have to deal with the fact that you have been betrayed by someone, hurt by someone, perhaps crushed by someone. At some point, you have been affected by someone’s sins.

Families can be great blessings or terrible curses, depending on the holiness of their members. That said, we must not discredit or underestimate those “environmental” circumstances. Instead of brushing them aside, ignoring them, or pretending they don’t exist, we need to be able to filter them through proper theology.
Let's be even more practical for a moment.

Instead of blaming our environment for everything, let us instead embrace our environment, knowing that God was and is in control from the beginning. These things shape us, no doubt, and we would be wise to recognize them. Here is a non-exhaustive list of possible environmental factors that have shaped your emotional maturity, or lack thereof:

Family

Your parents have done so much for you, so you owe them everything; thus, what you should have considered a good gift from God becomes an idol. Or perhaps the family “name” was such an inexhaustible source of focus that you constantly sought to please your parents, no matter the cost, regardless of what you believed to be true or felt to be right.

You could never really please them, so you are crushed by the weight of performance. Your family takes priority over the Kingdom. Or maybe the reverse is true: you grew up in a disunited family, with abuse and arguments, a dysfunctional “family” that could never get things right. To this day, it bothers you.

Relationships

You don't trust people. Never. This happens because people have let you down so many times that you've decided to protect yourself. You can't understand any more emotional wounds, so you don't let anyone get close.

The opposite can also be true: you crave friendship so much that you're willing to say anything to anyone, but no one really knows you.

Success

The rat race to have bigger, better, more expensive things is what drives you. You call it post-millennial progress, but it's really greed. You want to make a lot of money because you want to prove something to your parents, your friends, your false god.

Instead of Kingdom faithfulness, you are after your own kingdom. This can also have an opposite dysfunction: you are lazy and negligent, never finishing things because you have never learned your purpose in God's Kingdom.

Sex

Perhaps your parents never taught you anything, and you grew up thinking that sexuality was a terrible topic to discuss. This confusion may have led you to explore your sexuality in sinful ways, which has destroyed your self-esteem.

Due to your past, sexual frustration has set in and as a result, you are unable to get close to your spouse. Your false expectations have led you to false views of men and women and lust consumes you.

Conflict

You grew up in a passive household, which meant that conflict had to be avoided at all costs. You did everything you could to please people in order to escape their liking of you and thus their wrath.

Or maybe you grew up in a noisy house where everyone yelled all the time and resolving conflicts felt more like a fight with a knife.

Either way, you have no clue how to be a peacemaker or how to recognize your sin and help ignore sin in others. Matthew 18 means nothing to you.

Iran

The emotionally fragile person goes crazy at the slightest sign of any perceived instability. You love control and the minute you lose it, you lose your mind and the volcano erupts. You don't know how to speak softly because no one has ever spoken softly to you.

Sometimes you indulge in sarcasm and gossip because you are afraid of her anger, because of what you have done to her. There are dozens and dozens of things we could look for, and this list barely scratches the surface. The point, however, is quite clear.

Family of origin issues do affect us in ways we often don't even realize. The way our parents acted and reacted gives us an unconscious perspective on how things should or shouldn't be.

For example, your parents were passive and never talked about problems, so you assume that this is the only way to deal with things. You get the picture.

The reason we need to have a healthy view of our environment, whether it's your family of origin, your current stage of life, your relationships, etc., is that our emotions are uniquely connected to these experiences, and these experiences tend to shape us in ways we don't usually anticipate.

A child whose insecurity leads him to seek approval from habitually absent parents will have an impact on him as he grows up. Like it or not, we all have emotional baggage and are all influenced to a great extent by our environment.

However, it is one thing to identify these problems, another thing to deal with them.

How should we begin to treat ourselves in light of this newfound revelation? The first thing I suggest is to remember the theological foundation of what we have just discussed: the environment is sovereignly orchestrated by God—good and bad—and God desires our maturation through struggle.

Evil must be seen as evil, and growing up means knowing the difference. These are not untouchable problems; they are problems that God can and will solve. When he sinned, David did not blame others; his repentance was deep, and that is because, ultimately, his sin was against God (Psalm 51:4).

The same can be said of the sins of others that affect us. They are first and foremost sins against God, and only then are they against others. If you have bitterness in your heart toward your family or your spouse, the only way out is through repentance and forgiveness, and that will take a lot of work.

Another thing I suggest is taking the time to sit down with a good friend who is willing to listen to you and help you examine the emotional struggles you are experiencing.

You don’t really know someone until you ask them the question, “What is it like to live with me?” This kind of humility and transparency is very difficult, because it requires us to be open to examination. And no one likes to be vulnerable like that.

Conclusion

The way out of the emotional trap of your environment is to deal with God first, confessing any unrepentant sin, and second, discussing the struggle with a friend who is willing to potentially hurt you.

Remember, this is what Scripture says about faithfulness (Prov. 27:6). Examining your surroundings instead of blaming them is essential to a healthy heart.

In all that we feel—all sorrow and joy, all sorrow and happiness—we must yield ourselves to biblical thought and feeling. No environment is so bad that God cannot overcome it. No education is so bad that you cannot work in Christ to follow a different course.

No hurt is so deep that your Savior cannot sympathize with you. No emotional scar is so bad that the balm of our union with Christ cannot heal it.

You are not a product of your environment: you are a human being made in the image of God, and Christ came to ensure that that image is fully restored.