Chapter 3

An Epigenetic Theory for the Increase of Narcissism in Society

The task is… not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what

nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.

—Erwin Schrodinger

In this chapter we will explore the connections between the brain and genetics to see just how much control we have to shape our own destiny and the incredible flexibility of the brain to accommodate us in whatever we set our mind to do, but if we get lost in our thoughts, there is no genetic stop button that turns off our DNA from accommodating us into the abyss of human depravity. This chapter posits a mechanism that powers human adaptation, equating civilization with domestication, suggesting that technology has made us soft, which has inadvertently compromised the human genome, making it easy to lead the world to its final solution. This chapter will examine how worldviews seep into our minds, alter our brains, are convert to biochemical molecules and reemerge in our children as predispositions for behavior, perpetuating a downward spiral of narcissism within society.

People act like a flock of birds that change direction in flight all at once in an orchestrated fashion by some hidden signaling system they have perfected. Similarly, as a child all my neighbors knew each other on a first-name basis, but fifty years of misdirected cultural change has turned my charming neighborhood into the hood. How did so many people together coordinate such a downward moral spiral in only a couple generations? Any culture will see a rise in narcissism and psychopathy whenever it undergoes a decline of moral fabric. A lack of morality is the perfect environment for sin, like growing a culture of bacteria in a petri dish. Social engineers similarly grow thoughts and ideas in society by evidence of people thinking and acting collectively with no one seemingly at the wheel. Culture is the soul of society. It has a mind of its own to believe what it wants, yet the mind of culture is not subject to any one person, because it doesn’t belong to anyone, but to the group. Culture has the power to shape peoples’ behavior, making them act as one person, creating itself on a subliminal level.

Culture is so close to the human experience that we would not be human without it. This strange, inherent phenomenon of group behavior, sown into the human genome has proven itself central to humanity, always evolving and having free reign to express itself in each successive generation. How do we control the ebb and flow of change when society loses control of what it is becoming and elects fate as its leader? The least common denominator of cultural change always takes over and misdirects people into the shallows, invariably running them aground on the shoals of selfish hedonism.

How does culture influence the individual? Culture is: The collective influence on individuals in society. 

We have seen animals obeying their instincts, such as when fall comes and geese fly south for the winter. These animals are obeying certain genetic influences that are linked to seasonal changes in sunlight and temperature. Adaptation then as we observe it in nature should be viewed as developing shapes and sizes, behaviors and instincts that are flexible enough to accommodate a changing environment. The result is that it makes life very flexible (plastic) in its ability to adapt, because it can draw from changes in its surroundings, or it can draw from its own genetic past, or it can press forward in completely novel directions.

There is compelling evidence that instincts and idiosyncratic behavior develop through a mechanism that universally exists in the genetic fabric of all living things for the purpose of acclimating to shifting conditions. This inborn mechanism, belongs to a fast growing field of genetics called Epigenetics. It best explains the marvelously flexible system of checks and balances we observe in all living things, picking its target of selection based on what the animal most often uses for survival; for us it is our brains.

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Before the industrial revolution, the father passed down his trade to his sons. Shoeman, Smith, Wheeler and Taylor are still common names that described what people did for a living. Back then the son inherited the name along with the trade, and after so many generations he inherited an aptitude and predisposition to carry on the family business. Teasing out the differences between nature and nurture is not easy, but there are examples in nature that totally eliminate the nurture side of the equation. For example, how do salmon instinctively swim upstream in a specific creek to lay their eggs in the place of their origin without any instruction from their parents? A map of their destination must have been hardwired into their little fish brains while they were still in the egg. Does this happen only to salmon? How do some migratory birds instinctively know which direction to fly and how do they know when they have arrived at their destination, and how do they even know they are migratory birds if they have never received training from their parents? Again, perhaps everything they need to know is formed in them while they were in the egg? Do only certain animals have these gifts, or do they make it crystal clear that these things are happening in us all?

“…Genes are followers, not leaders, in evolution” is a quote by Mary Jane West-Eberhard in her book Developmental Plasticity and Evolution (p. 20), which is the theme of her work in genetics. The fact that genes do not lead but follow suggests a very flexible genome and requires very far-reaching and revolutionary changes in our thinking about genetics that has been teaching us for the last century and a half that we are the product of our genes. With a brain as big and powerful as our own it would seem impossible that we could use it to point ourselves in the wrong direction, but if all humanity throughout the ages could make one set of footprints, we would look back and see the progress of a drunken man who appears to be lost. Society is disintegrating before our very eyes and no one knows how to stop it. God has apparently given man a very profound gift in our ability to manage the earth, and He has given us a very powerful brain, but it seems the responsibility is just too much for us. 

Following are three factors in order of influence that cycle through the generations, making us who and what we are:

1) Epigenetic: behavioral traits we receive at birth

2) Critical period: behaviors that form between the ages of 0-5

3) Culture: influences of society throughout life

Understanding how novel traits emerge in plants and animals would wrap up nicely if there were evidence to support the idea that our experiences directly edit the DNA molecule, but they don’t. According to the central dogma of genetics called Weismann’s Barrier, genetic information passes in only one direction: from DNA → to RNA → to Protein. In other words protein molecules cannot “upload” their information to DNA from which they originated. However, it is hardly necessary for information to pass directly to the next generation by editing germ cells, since there are other ways for this to happen without risking the integrity of genetic material.

Geneticists have calculated that about 98 percent of our genes do not code for proteins, making them available for other kinds of work, such as cell maintenance, much of which is epigenetic. In epigenetics – the prefix: Epi- means "above the genes." According to this definition, something is occurring at, near or against the genes to influence gene expression. That is, DNA may code for physical and behavioral traits, but Epigenetic molecules appended to the DNA has the final say about what those physical and behavioral traits will be! For example, when our brains develop during our critical period between the ages of 0-5, it forms around environmental conditions. These environmental changes to our DNA are expressed by epigenetic influences. The key question is: do we inherit these epigenetic changes? If we do, then we can inherit environmental influences on the gene, which would make us vulnerable to environmental change. Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb say we do.

…For many years it was taken for granted that all memories of the “epigenetic past” had to be completely erased before cells became germ [reproductive] cells. This assumption ruled out any possibility that induced epigenetic variations could be inherited. The discovery in the 1980s that the epigenetic slate is not wiped clean—that some epigenetic information does pass from one generation to the next—was therefore totally unexpected (Jablonka, Page 139).

Chapter List

Epigenetic functions assign flags to certain genes, among other things. These flags (also termed switches) consist of small molecules that surround the gene, creating a microenvironment around them, appending additional instructions to their protein synthesis or else turning them on or off. For example, kidney cells are kidney cells because epigenetic effects on the cell turn on the sections of the chromosome that code for kidney cell production (Jablonka, page 113). When that cell divides, the resulting child cell is another kidney cell, which means epigenetic effects are inherited from cell to cell, and as previously stated, there is compelling evidence that they are also inherited from parent to offspring:

In genetic inheritance, traits are passed from one generation to the next via DNA sequences in genes. Differences in a DNA sequence specify differences in a trait. Epigenetic inheritance involves passing a trait from one generation to the next without a difference in DNA sequence. Known mechanisms of epigenetic inheritance include changes in molecular structures around the DNA so that while the gene is the same, the gene behaves differently. For example, genes switch on and off in response to hormonal signals. [i]

This accounts for the mere 1.1% difference in our DNA from chimpanzee's, suggesting that the major difference between them and us is epigenetic (West-Eberhard, p 335)! The way our genes function and are expressed perform under a giant web of epigenetic influences which do far more than anyone expected to create the expressions of life and variation that we observe in nature and in ourselves. Take the Human Genome Project, scientists were disappointed about half way through the mission when they began to realize that what they were learning was never going to span the immeasurable variation of nature’s intricate complexity. The great hope of the Human Genome Project was to plot one gene to one trait, and with that they could heal any disease, modify our food production and genetically perfect humanity, but there wasn’t a one-to-one correlation between genes and proteins. Scientists quickly realized that DNA doesn’t fit into the nice formula they expected. There are only about ten thousand genes in the human genome. That may sound like a lot, until you begin adding up all the different tissues and organs throughout the body, along with our physiological systems and anatomic structures, etc....

Moreover, when we consider that only about 2-3 percent of our genes code for proteins, it reduces the number of active protein coding genes to about 300. The only possible explanation for the complexity of life under such a small number of genes is that they are working in concert with each other in a near infinite array of combinations. When you consider that the possible combinations for 300 genes is about 3 X 10 384 (the number 3 with 384 zeros behind it), our observations of the rich variation of life are restored. This means we must revise our earlier notions of one gene coding for one protein. Genes mostly work in groups, are assigned to groups at birth, and are reassigned and rearranged throughout life, based on epigenetic information that attempts to support the survival needs of the organism, based on a built-in highly flexible genome that God designed to respond directly to the environment. However, since our genes do not change their sequence, epigenetics is responsible for recombining our genes by various means that will be discussed shortly. To the degree that our genes are hardly different from that of a chimp is the degree that something vastly unintuitive is transpiring within our cells.

These epigenetic forces automatically acclimate to our circumstances, so we can imagine the problems this causes when our circumstances begin to disintegrate. Our biology will attempt to adapt to them, similar to a chameleon that changes its colors to blend into its surroundings. In other words, instead of trying to fix the problems of society, we tend to adapt to them. All animals do the same, and our bodies have the same biology of all other animals, but what is different about us is that we usually cause the changes to our circumstances, but often in ways we do not control, which sets up a feedback loop that perpetuates the problems we are creating by acclimating to them. This is why it is so difficult to fix social problems.

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Genetic information that no longer serves a purpose, usually from a change in the environment, can be put aside as modules, and then later un-shelved and reused at a later time (called reversion). These modules make up the majority of our genetic material, serving as a history of our genetic past. They are bundles of genes that can be shelved and un-shelved to combine forces with other genes and modules, and are capable of engineering very specific behavioral characteristics. Based on these insights, biological processes interpret the way we live as adapting to the environment by modifying the environment of the DNA to establish highly tuned instincts, designed to help us deal with a changing world. We can use the word "culture" in place of instincts.

In development, genes and environment have complementary quantitative effects on switches, such that an increase in the influence of one implies a commensurate decrease in the influence of the other. There is a sliding continuum in their proportional influences on switch determination, such that environmental and genetic factors in a sense compete with each other for control of regulation (West-Eberhard, p. 100).

In other words, as we mature throughout childhood there is one of two developmental pathways we will follow: the trail that our parents and ancestors established, or venturing into a brand new direction and blazing our own trail. In the later case our bodies will essentially take over; modules of our genetic past will be un-shelved and put back to use that often code for selfish and animalistic ways of surviving. In short, when a child is left to his own devices, he invariably reverts to a more primitive way of life. This happens to be the growing trend in society and is wreaking havoc throughout the world. 

Homology (Same-ology) is the study of biological similarities within all living organisms. For example, fish eyes work similar to bird eyes and human eyes. Since there are so many similarities between biological systems, it should not surprise us to learn that there are functional similarities between our DNA and the neurons of our brain. Brain cells wire to other brain cells that fire in concert with each other in reaction to the same outside stimuli, referred to Hebbian Plasticity that holds to the truism: ‘Cells that fire together wire together.’ Just as the brain is incredibly flexible (especially in children) and continually rewires itself throughout life to accommodate our mental and physiological needs, so our genes are doing the same things in very similar ways, suggesting there is a connection between the functionality of our brain and our genes. Our genes often need to trade positions along the DNA strand, controlled by epigenetic functions that reassign genes to work with other genes, causing them to produce completely different expressions to accommodate our needs based on a changing environment. In genetics jargon this process of gene sequencing is called Exon Shuffling.

An Exon as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as: “A nucleotide sequence in DNA that carries the code for the final messenger RNA molecule and thus defines the amino acid sequence during protein synthesis.” According to this definition, exons constitute the end product of gene expression, so that when these units change places the body can make any protein it needs, with the goal of establishing highly specific behavioral modules for the purpose of accommodation. Barlow (1977) wrote: “A cornerstone of ethological theory is the belief that behavior comes in discrete packets…” (referring to modularity p. 98), and as West-Eberhard also wrote, “Traits can be lost and regained as units” (p. 234). So then, we think and behave in a manner similar to our biology, but that is not surprising. The process of exon shuffling is partly summarized by West-Eberhard, p.317:

Since biochemistry and molecular biology focus on the fundamentally modular structure and behavior of biological molecules, it is perhaps not surprising that they arrived early at a combinatorial view of evolution, and that it was a molecular biologist (Jacob, 1977) who described evolution as “tinkering” with preexisting pieces. The lowest level of combinatorial evolution is based on the “changeability” of the genetic code—its ability to undergo rearrangement without loss of functionality (Maeshiro and Kimura, 1998).

Chapter List

Combinatorial adaptation refers to groups of genes that form modules to produce new protein molecules that alter physical and behavioral traits, effectively fine-tuning the organism. Phenotypic plasticity is a popular genetic term that describes the flexibility of gene expression; that is, it describes how our genes make us what and who we are. In other words,

Genes can produce alternate effects by differences in transcription from different promoters. Another way is by differences in how the transcripts are joined together, or spliced. RNA splicing cuts and then joins together (splices) sections of transcribed pre-RNA into the mRNA that will form the functional gene product. Alternative splicing produces alternative molecular phenotypes, and as might be predicted, it is involved in the origins of molecular novelties (West-Eberhard, pp. 318-323).

These alternative gene expressions are best seen as genetic modules that are pre-built as self-contained components designed for easy assembly and flexible use that can be invoked by a single switch. “A switch implies some change in state, for example, between on and off, under certain conditions… so a condition sensitivity is an implicit quality of all switches. They mark developmental decision points that depend on conditions. Conditions in this case may refer to the internal environment, the social environment, or the external environment” (West-Eberhard, p. 68).

Now that we understand that epigenetic functions are commonplace and important, let’s take a closer look at what is happening around the DNA molecule to make it respond so concisely to environmental cues when these switches are applied. Switches refer to, “Some element of a phenotype [that] changes from a default state, action, or pathway to an alternative one” (West-Eberhard, Page 67), referred to as an Alternative Phenotype (an alternative gene expression). The greatest strength of epigenetic switches is their ability to determine which genes work in concert with other genes. 

Genes are assigned partners at birth, and gene sequence does not change throughout life, but epigenetic influences assign genes to work with other genes that are not adjacent to each other, so that while remaining in their original sequence, they can trade partners with other genes in an attempt to accommodate environmental conditions. This is amazingly similar to dendrite reconfiguration within the brain as we mentally adapt to our environment, suggesting that genetic change can effect changes in the brain, and even more significantly, dendrite configuration can change gene functioning. This means, how we think and act can have a bearing on genetic function. Since there are so many similarities between processes of DNA and dendritic function in the brain, it begs the question if they are indeed interrelated. Just as the eye is the window to the soul, so the brain is the window to our DNA. Perhaps our DNA has the ability to observe the changes that take place within the brain and use that information as a blueprint for its own genetic function. Perhaps the regulating forces of epigenetic change are looking to the brain as a model to tweak the somatic DNA molecule before it reproduces in the next cell generation to reflect the way we live, and these changes can be passed to our children. For example, it is a known fact that psychopathy is heritable. 

How we view the world around us and ourselves slowly builds over a course of millions of decision points by accepting or else rejecting messages that petition the brain. We think in terms of on and off, yes and no. This physiological process that governs the way we make choices on a moment-by-moment basis is happening just below our conscious ability of discernment, about 350-milliseconds faster than we can think. Our perception ability begins at around 500-milliseconds; this means that the brain is making most of the decisions for us. Scientists performed an experiment that kept track of these tiny particles of time and allowed scientists to see the brain light up in their MRI machine before the individual being tested had a chance to make a conscious decision to act. They have shown that instead of our brain responding to us, we are responding to it by accepting or else suppressing the brain’s petitions that it presents to us. [Brain] activity leading to [moving your hand, for example,] is well under way before the subject makes what he thinks is a conscious decision to act. The neuronal train has indeed left the station. If free will exists, it seems to be like a late passenger running beside the tracks and ineffectually calling, “Wait! Wait!” (Schwartz, p. 306). 

Such research findings are barely palatable to the ego. This means that we are not the ones initiating our own actions, but the brain is suggesting what to do next! Since that is the case, it makes us wonder who (or what) is in charge? If it is our brain, then what role do we play in our own life or even in the formation of our personality? What does our brain know that we don’t know? 'Who am I, now that I find myself second in command?' We appear to be merely agreeing or else disagreeing with a lot of minuscule atoms and molecules suspended in aqueous solution. In that case, what sense of ownership do we realistically have in our own perception of reality?

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There is a well-known story about a Russian man named Dmitri Belyaev, who bred silver foxes for tameness in Novosibirsk, Russia. Prior to his breeding efforts, these foxes were afraid of people and would snarl at anyone who came close, or would hurt themselves trying to get away. Some would overheat or suffocate from fear. Although they had been raising these foxes for eighty years, they still had not become tame, and people who have attempted to raise wolves encountered the same problems. Belyaev, in the process of taming some of these foxes classified them in four groups: 40 percent were aggressively fearful, 30 percent were extremely aggressive, 20 percent were somewhat fearful and 10 percent, “displayed a quiet, exploratory reaction without either fear or aggression.” Belyaev separated the ten percent based on their flight distance, which was measured by two attributes: 1) how close he could get to the foxes before they ran away, and 2) how far away they would run. It only took eighteen generations to tame these foxes, after which they would look for their keepers and jump on their laps to get petted; they would let people rub their bellies, would let the workers give them their shots and answered to their names. They even began to look like dogs by developing totally unexpected physical attributes outside of Mr. Belyaev’s selective control as byproducts of selection.

Their tails turned up at the end, like a dog’s. Their coats were often piebald [black and white spotted or patched], their ears drooped [floppy], and the females came into heat twice a year instead of once. Belyaev noted, “They even sound like dogs.” (Coppinger, P. 64)

… but for the most part, while the dog is in its first few weeks of life, and growing its brain, it is making the cell connections and rearranging them in a specific way, according to the signals that are coming from outside. This development predetermines its adult behavior. In other words, imprinting changes the dog forever. (Coppinger, P. 105)

Understanding brain growth should dispel the nature/nurture controversy once and for all. It is never, ever either nature or nurture, but always both at the same time. But liver cells make more liver cells because that is the environment they respond to. Behavior is always epigenetic—above the genes—an interaction between the genes and the developmental environment.  (Coppinger, P. 113)

Dogs are man’s best friend, because their only goal in life is to please their master. Dogs are by nature highly social creatures, so we took advantage of their social predisposition and bred into them the will to please people, which is no doubt our greatest triumph in dog breeding. 

Jeffrey M. Schwartz, the author of The Mind And The Brain, had Mindfulness Training as the theme of his book, the most popular non-drug therapy for OCD patients worldwide. Schwartz was solely responsible for discovering this therapy technique, which is based on the fact that we can rewire our brains, but the therapy works only when the patients are concentrating on the subject at hand. We have had such tremendous success in dog breeding for the very same reason. Once we bred into dogs the desire to please their master, we were able to breed any desirable behavior into them after that, because we had their attention. The dog was predisposed to taking on the key traits of social status and submission from their experiences in the wolf pack. The cat breeder, though, would probably not be nearly as successful instilling social traits in them, because cats did not come from a legacy of social interaction. This implies that there is a direct connection between Mindfulness Training and epigenetic inheritance, suggesting that the animals’ must be mentally engaged for epigenetic inheritance to occur, since these molecular changes of behavior are taking place within the brain.

Born July 22nd, 1822 in Hyncice, Moravia (now Czech Republic), Gregor Mendel is known as the founding father of modern genetics, who understood his subject before the term (his name) was invented. He published his controversial paper in 1865 regarding his crossbreeding experiments with garden peas, and in the early 1900s only after he died did Mendel’s discoveries become cemented in scientific history as the core of classical genetics. Mendelian genetics is a simple concept that has greatly improved our understanding of natural selection by controlling the selection variables that are normally controlled by the environment and then studying the outcome. Mendel discovered that if you want pea plants that produce pink flowers, you match pea plants that already have pink flowers, which increases the likelihood of producing pink flowers. From there you continue to match pink flowered pea plants until your garden is full of pea plants that all produce pink flowers. At the same time, you inhibit any non-pink flowered plants from reproducing, called culling. The limitation of Mendelian genetics is that it cannot account for novel traits, but can only select for traits that already exist. This works for any trait of the pea plant, including the size of the pea pod, the size of the peas in the pod, the number of peas, etc. This is called hybridization, and in the animal world they call it breeding. The best example of breeding is the dog.

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Coupled with Mendelian genetics, this epigenetic mechanism allows us to create the many breeds of dogs that are in the world today. Using Mendelian genetics to control the anatomic traits of the dog and Epigenetics to control the behavioral traits, there is a definite look and behavior of tameness in the canine family. Is there a definite look and behavior of tameness in humans—Tameness being tantamount to civilization and human domestication? The short answer is yes. What are the byproducts of domestication for humans? Dogs go into heat twice a year instead of once and have smaller skulls than wolves, suggesting that being more sexually active and less intelligent are natural byproducts of tameness. Any creature that is tamed no longer relies on its wits to survive, and if food is abundant, populations will naturally increase. There may be many other negative byproducts of domestication, but the loss of intelligence I would think trumps them all.

Mendelian genetics cannot account for novel traits, including tameness in Belyaev's foxes. Pure Mendelian genetics simply modifies physical traits that already exist, giving the geneticist more of the same, but Epigenetics is the road that leads to novel behavioral traits. This is why Mr. Belyaev not only selected for tameness in the foxes (Mendelian Genetics), but also worked with them from pups during their critical period to increase the characteristic tameness in them (Epigenetics). In the process of raising these foxes from pups Mr. Belyaev encouraged the epigenetic connections in their brains to form around the characteristic tameness, and then selected the tamest foxes from the litter for mating. In this way he combined Mendelian genetics with Epigenetics to increase tameness in the foxes. This well documented account makes it crystal clear that some of the epigenetic information that the foxes acquired during their critical period was passed to the next generation and accumulated in the foxes’ genome through the course of selection. We humans have a critical period, between the ages of 0-5, and we also have a selection regimen: culture. This critical period is when we develop epigenetic connections within the brain that transmits adaptive information to our DNA as the first step in transcribing those traits to our offspring. 

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In times of desperation people can change overnight. For example, the German nation in the 1930s and 40s changed as though someone flipped off a switch and the lights went out. In the brain, something analogous to epigenetic switches that control genetic modules suddenly reverted to a more primal mode of survival, directing them to take on characteristic traits of narcissism and psychopathy. We saw that these modules are bundles of genes created from the epigenetic past that work in concert with each other to create a certain physical or behavioral expression, but have been shelved from disuse. They are like replacement parts that can be deactivated and reactivated through a process called reversion, and are triggered into service usually by an outside stimulus. In a crisis such as a global economic collapse, leading to another great depression, food shortages, famine, panic and rioting in the streets will be commonplace. This will cause certain switches to activate in the brain that control inclinations of narcissism and psychopathy, causing a social disease outbreak in a process similar to our genes, only having a much faster reaction time. Our genes change through the course of our lives and between generations, but dendrite switches can ignite in a matter of moments. 

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This may sound like science fiction, but we already have a historical example of this kind of social behavior in the Third Reich, illustrating an instance of genetic reversion simultaneously affecting individuals of an entire country. Germany was suffering under serious oppression after signing the Treaty of Versailles, which rightly vilified the German people responsible for WWI, so when they voted Hitler into power, Germany was ready to shed their guilt and oppression imposed on them. Hitler offered Germany a way to believe in themselves again as the “greatest nation in the world,” and they embraced it with raw insanity. Does that sound like something America would do? Lust for power and selfish ambition for glory and national pride turned Germany into monsters almost overnight. The seed of malevolence was germinating just under their skin, so when Hitler came along and watered the seeds of vengeance, they blossomed into a field of bloodlust among those who suddenly lost the ability of feel compassion for their fellow man. The United States has placed itself in the position of Germany; we are in debt to our ears, and one day the world economy will collapse, and a man will arise promising to deliver us from oppression. Will we take the bait with the same motives of greed, lust and pride? 

The fact that sin accumulates in the human genome is the reason God had to start over many times throughout history. Had God not intervened during these times, man would have continued in his wickedness until he destroyed himself before the time. Following is a list of historical beginnings:

1. Noah’s ark

2. The tower of Babel

3. God raised up Israel to destroy the wicked nations of Canaan (our modern-day Middle-East terrorists: Deuteronomy 9-4,5) 

4. Jesus interceded for mankind by dying for our sins, giving the world an opportunity to launch into a new, positive direction

5. The end times – it is not the end of time, but the beginning of a new age

Jesus said in Mat 23,29-36, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, 'If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' So you testify against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell? Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation."

Jesus accused the Pharisees of being sons of those who murdered the prophets, but the ancient prophets were ancient even to the Pharisees, so there was no way the Pharisees learned by example the murderous ways of their fathers. The Pharisees’ great, great grandfathers who murdered the prophets had an indirect influence on them. How can people act like their ancestors whom they have never met? Rejecting the truth and killing Christ came naturally to them through genetically instilled predispositions, similar to instincts.

Jesus sentenced the Pharisees to hell based on their genealogy, which is what partially determined their behavior. He accused them of murdering Zechariah, who lived hundreds of years before they were born. The Pharisees did not murder Zechariah, but Jesus held them personally responsible for his blood. When Jesus posed the rhetorical question to them, “How will you escape the sentence of hell?” He based His judgment on their sin, not the sins of their forefathers. Therefore, Jesus was saying that their ancestors pushed down their sins to their offspring, while the Pharisees were simultaneously tugging them from their own chromosomes!

Jesus spoke as though they were inherently guilty of being sons of their fathers, as though being born into their respective families made them guilty of murdering the Son of God, saying, “Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!” There must be some truth to this, otherwise Jesus would not have said it. He was referring in part to ancestral sin, which doesn’t predestine anyone to act a certain way, but it does predispose them to certain behaviors. Born and raised to mirror their genetic past, by reflex, as though trusting a voice that reverberated in their flesh, feeling a destiny to explore their corrupt desires, they move impetuously on command, having learned obedience to their carnal impulses from childhood.

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A more accurate interpretation of this verse might be that He held the generation of the Pharisees personally responsible for all the blood spilled on the earth since the beginning of time, saying, “I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation” (Mat 23:36). Jesus was speaking to the spirit of murder and prophesying about His own crucifixion. God intended to heap upon Him the sin of the whole world committed since the beginning of time, so that He might destroy the power of sin and break the chains of ancestral regression perpetuated by demons off those who would believe in Him for eternal life by faith in Him. In other words He offered the world a new beginning, and it worked for a while, but now man has slumped back into a deep spiritual apathy where religion has replaced a true faith in Jesus. This has led to a rise of narcissism and psychopathy in society. 

Job was feisty in his suffering and poses a question to God, “ [It is said,] `God stores up a man's punishment for his sons.' Let him repay the man himself, so that he will know it! (Job 21:19).” Pharisees were by no means innocent, so it seems that God judges the sons for emulating their fathers’ sin. The Pharisees confidently boasted they were better than their forefathers because they understood the prophets to be martyrs, yet in their own hearts they believed that the only good prophet was a dead one. It is one thing for the Pharisees to speak well of the prophets, but quite another thing to stand in the presence of Jesus Christ, who epitomized the prophets and murdered Him for telling them the truth, just like their fathers treated the prophets before them. The ancient prophets were eventually exonerated, but while they were alive, they “were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated- the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and in mountains and in caves and holes in the ground” (Heb 11:37-38 NIV).

Jesus has already died and paid the price for man’s sin, but man has continued in his legacy of depravity as though God never bestowed His mercy upon us. It says He died once for all (Heb 7:27), so that, “If we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment, and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries” (Heb 10:26-27). Let’s go back to Job’s statement (Job 21:19); “God stores away a man’s iniquity for his sons.” The way Jesus spoke about sin from Able to Zechariah, He made it sound like it accumulates, inviting us to ask: what if all the sin of man from which he has not repented has been accumulating in the human genome since the crucifixion of Christ to the present day? 

When God judges the sin of the world in the last days, He will make man pick up the tab, since Jesus picked it up last time. Man has responded to the gospel throughout the centuries by “trampling under foot the Son of God, and have regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which [they were] sanctified, and have insulted the Spirit of grace” (Heb 10:29). “For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins” (Heb 10:26). What else can God do after we have rejected the offer of His Son? The fact that man has rejected the work of the cross is the very cause of God unleashing judgment against an unbelieving world in the last days. 

James R. Wuthrich

www.jeansbiblestudy.com