Born this Way
Yes, we all were, but that's not an excuse.
You’ve heard it 1000 times: “I was born this way!”
Heck, Lady Gaga wrote a six-time platinum, number one hit song on the Hot 100 chart, named “Born this Way.” That’s how much this phrase has become part of today’s culture.
You typically hear this phrase when somebody is doing something that they know is bad behavior and they use the phrase to justify it. The implication is that because they were born with this propensity to do whatever it is that they want to do, that it’s a good thing that they are doing it. Or at least it’s not a bad thing and you certainly shouldn’t get up in their grill because of it.
To give you a more mild example, someone might say, “I’m Italian! Screaming at my spouse and kids is just how we talk. It’s in my DNA! I was born this way.” But you’ll find the same thing being used to justify all sorts of behavior: screaming and yelling, being hard on kids, disrespecting parents, lying, stealing, and of course sexual behavior.
Like any good lie, “I was born this way!” has an element of truth to it as well as a nasty twisting of that truth.
Here’s the reality: all of us were born with a propensity for bad behavior. That’s called original sin. You’ve got it. I’ve got it. We’ve all got it from Adam and it has been passed down to us since the beginning. Nobody is immune to it. As soon as kids talk, they start to lie, and it only gets worse from there as they grow up. That sin nature is ever-present.
So, the question isn’t whether we were “born this way” — we were — but rather what we’re going to do about it. And in that respect, popular culture and Christianity deal with things very differently.
Popular culture says that you make your choice based on whatever feels good at the time and then you use whatever excuse you need to justify your choice. And “I was born this way” is a handy excuse because it’s true for all of us.
In contrast, Christianity says, yes, you were born that way, but that sin nature is going to wreck your life here on earth and then get you sent to hell in the afterlife. And you’re powerless to stop it on your own because it’s part of your nature. The only way to get yourself right is to accept responsibility for your actions, confess them to God, repent (turn away and strike out on a new path), and ask Jesus for the forgiveness that only he can provide through his death on the cross.
Popular culture says, I was born this way and I’m proud of it!
Christianity says, I was born this way, I’m ashamed of it, and I’ve asked Jesus to make things right again.
Have you said, “I was born this way,” to excuse a sin? What do you need to confess and repent of to Jesus? Maybe it’s time to stop trying to justify yourself and accept Jesus’s death in your place as the only justification with any power.
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I feel like this was written for me tonight. My husband and I had an argument about what he called my despicable belief that consenting adults are wrong for engaging in homosexual relationships just because a man-made book said so.
It was intense.
However, I prayed to God to help guide us through the conflict and my husband is now going to look into and learn about the evidence for Christianity being true and what it actually teaches.
A friend of mine from Bible study made an equivalent analogy; he called it “ the Flip Wilson ‘the devil made me do it’ excuse.