Consider the following scenario;
At about the age of thirteen I began to notice girls -- or should I say, it was then that I began to notice little else. Twenty-five years later the inclination is a bit more refined, a bit more controlled -- but only a bit. Wherever I am, I notice women, and I notice particular parts of women. I often entertain fleeting thoughts -- at times lingering thoughts -- of how I might enjoy having sex with women I have never met. It is, after all, only natural.
Or is it? Was I born with an inclination to have sex with several different attractive women each day, an inclination that merely remained dormant for thirteen years? Did my father, whose desires are very similar to mine, train me to think about women in a certain way? Am I the product of lifelong exposure to advertisements, films and popular music? Did the trauma of my parents' divorce when I was three, or my mother's actions during my infancy, create in me particular sexual needs and desires?
The overwhelming message of the popular culture, which a thousand films and ten thousand love songs drill into us, is that to find a full life we must seek adventure, drink the cup of passion, follow our heart. "Loving you can't be wrong," the voice croons, "because it feels so right." We want to believe this. We may even get a vicarious thrill from watching it work out happily ever after on the silver screen. But in our better moments, we know otherwise. We know, even without Scripture to tell us, that "the heart is devious above all else”, that positive experiences and strong desires can never legitimize immorality. We know it when a pedophile describes his nurturing relationships with children. We know it when an adulterous wife complains of her boring husband. We know it when a pornographer proclaims his rights of free speech. We know it when a stripper rationalizes her exploitation.
Recent evidence suggests that approx 50% of our personality is actually innate from our genetic molecules. Evidence of this is derived from studies of Identical twins that were reared apart at birth. When these siblings were united together, many of them are similar in fear, reaction, and even in bad habits *such as nail biting*;
'Identical Strangers' Explore Nature Vs. Nurture : NPR
A lot of who we are is already predetermined before our birth, and the rest of us is built by an environment that we have no control over. Some of us are fortunate to be born to caring and loving parents, while others may have been neglected as children. All of this plays a vast role in who we are, but coincidently we have no control over any of it.
We also know that we cannot justify our behavior by an appeal to our nature. A comic no-good husband in a Woody Allen film says to his wife, "Sure I beat ya -- that's my way -- it don't mean I don't love ya. And I always warn ya first." But there is nothing comic about the growing epidemic of domestic violence, gang bloodshed and interracial strife. Whatever the causes, we cannot excuse violence on the part of a person who claims, "This is just the way I am." We could easily apply the "Just that way" defense to a number of social problems that may involve deeply ingrained (even biological) causes -- violence, substance abuse, racism, schizophrenia, pedophilia -- but we do not, because we recognize that an explanation for the behavior is not a justification for the behavior.
All of these questions I find genuinely interesting. They are not however, moral questions. Moral questions have to do with the rightness or wrongness of my actions, regardless of the source or strength of my desires. Whatever I may attribute to my genes, or to my parents, or to my culture, none of them can force me, at the crucial moment to turn a glance into a fantasy, or a fantasy into a flirtation, or a flirtation into a sexual act. At that moment my will is involved, and precisely such moments define my obedience and growth as a Muslim. However good I may feel about my conduct or however deeply ingrained is my desire to act in a certain way, neither of those factors is the measure of obedience. In fact, more often than not they are measures of self-deception.
(THE GREAT NATURE-NURTURE DEBATE)
At about the age of thirteen I began to notice girls -- or should I say, it was then that I began to notice little else. Twenty-five years later the inclination is a bit more refined, a bit more controlled -- but only a bit. Wherever I am, I notice women, and I notice particular parts of women. I often entertain fleeting thoughts -- at times lingering thoughts -- of how I might enjoy having sex with women I have never met. It is, after all, only natural.
Or is it? Was I born with an inclination to have sex with several different attractive women each day, an inclination that merely remained dormant for thirteen years? Did my father, whose desires are very similar to mine, train me to think about women in a certain way? Am I the product of lifelong exposure to advertisements, films and popular music? Did the trauma of my parents' divorce when I was three, or my mother's actions during my infancy, create in me particular sexual needs and desires?
The overwhelming message of the popular culture, which a thousand films and ten thousand love songs drill into us, is that to find a full life we must seek adventure, drink the cup of passion, follow our heart. "Loving you can't be wrong," the voice croons, "because it feels so right." We want to believe this. We may even get a vicarious thrill from watching it work out happily ever after on the silver screen. But in our better moments, we know otherwise. We know, even without Scripture to tell us, that "the heart is devious above all else”, that positive experiences and strong desires can never legitimize immorality. We know it when a pedophile describes his nurturing relationships with children. We know it when an adulterous wife complains of her boring husband. We know it when a pornographer proclaims his rights of free speech. We know it when a stripper rationalizes her exploitation.
Recent evidence suggests that approx 50% of our personality is actually innate from our genetic molecules. Evidence of this is derived from studies of Identical twins that were reared apart at birth. When these siblings were united together, many of them are similar in fear, reaction, and even in bad habits *such as nail biting*;
'Identical Strangers' Explore Nature Vs. Nurture : NPR
A lot of who we are is already predetermined before our birth, and the rest of us is built by an environment that we have no control over. Some of us are fortunate to be born to caring and loving parents, while others may have been neglected as children. All of this plays a vast role in who we are, but coincidently we have no control over any of it.
We also know that we cannot justify our behavior by an appeal to our nature. A comic no-good husband in a Woody Allen film says to his wife, "Sure I beat ya -- that's my way -- it don't mean I don't love ya. And I always warn ya first." But there is nothing comic about the growing epidemic of domestic violence, gang bloodshed and interracial strife. Whatever the causes, we cannot excuse violence on the part of a person who claims, "This is just the way I am." We could easily apply the "Just that way" defense to a number of social problems that may involve deeply ingrained (even biological) causes -- violence, substance abuse, racism, schizophrenia, pedophilia -- but we do not, because we recognize that an explanation for the behavior is not a justification for the behavior.
All of these questions I find genuinely interesting. They are not however, moral questions. Moral questions have to do with the rightness or wrongness of my actions, regardless of the source or strength of my desires. Whatever I may attribute to my genes, or to my parents, or to my culture, none of them can force me, at the crucial moment to turn a glance into a fantasy, or a fantasy into a flirtation, or a flirtation into a sexual act. At that moment my will is involved, and precisely such moments define my obedience and growth as a Muslim. However good I may feel about my conduct or however deeply ingrained is my desire to act in a certain way, neither of those factors is the measure of obedience. In fact, more often than not they are measures of self-deception.
(THE GREAT NATURE-NURTURE DEBATE)
