““Sometimes when counselees are cornered and forced to acknowledge that their behavior is irresponsible, they attempt to dodge the issue by replying: “Well, I guess that’s just the way I am.” They say this in a resigned manner and expect to leave the whole matter right there. They speak as though there were no possibility for genuine personality change. Such a view of man is decidedly unscriptural. Human beings in one way might be described more accurately as human becomings. Personality can be changed. God, throughout history, has turned Jacobs into Israels, Simons into Peters and Sauls into Pauls. Today’s personality is based on yesterday. What one is today is but the composite of his past. At birth, God gave to each of us a basic deposit of inherited stuff which Scripture calls phusis (nature). This is a matter of gene makeup. 1 But that is not personality. How one uses the phusis in responding to life’s problems and life’s challenges determines the personality. Those response patterns may become deeply etched over a period of time. At length, they may seem to be, as we say, “second nature,” i.e., almost as “given” as the original phusis. Though habit patterns are hard to change, change is not impossible. Nouthetic counselors regularly see patterns of 30-40 years’ duration altered. What was learned can be unlearned.””
