I recently became aware of a fascinating little animal called the fahaka pufferfish (also called the Nile puffer). There have been videos floating around of how this pufferfish eats - and more interestingly what it eats. You can find a lot of videos of people feeding their puffers all kinds of things - including mostly crayfish and little crabs. One video showed a pufferfish even eating a scorpion and a snake. That particular video reminded me of the importance of your environment. If you had taken the pufferfish out of the water and dropped it on the ground next to a scorpion or snake, things would have gone very differently. But water is the fish's domain, so the snake and scorpion didn't stand a chance. Environment matters. This is true in our own lives, and the concept of "environmental engineering" is helpful if you want to change your behavior. By environmental engineering, I mean arranging your environment - the space around you and what is in it - so that you are more likely to do the things you want to do, and not do the things you don't want to do. For example, if you want to exercise in the morning, a good way to engineer your environment is to put your running shoes by your bedroom door so that you won't help but see them and be reminded to exercise. Or, if you want to get to sleep earlier, a good way to engineer your environment is to not keep your smartphone on your nightstand, tempting to keep you awake. In a more spiritual direction, if you are struggling with bitterness, jealousy, and gossip, it might be good to remove social media from your phone so that your environment won't feed those particular sins. Changing your environment can assist to changing behaviors. Of course, this isn't the only piece of the puzzle, as our actions are ultimately and essentially a matter of our hearts. Our hearts cause us to sin, not our context. But, if we want to fight sin and grow in holiness, we want to use every tool available to us. And a crucial tool is engineering our context so that we are more likely to act in holiness. Jesus teaches this principle when he says that we should figuratively cut off the hand or gouge out the eye if they cause us to sin. The point is to help your heart and soul pursue holiness by eliminating what might lead us to sin. Remember what we might call the principle of the pufferfish: environment matters. How might you engineer your environment to assist you to pursue Christlikeness?