#mostlyvoid stars

Hey there!

For anyone reading this who isn’t sure what Original Sin is, it’s the belief held by many Christian traditions that after Adam and Eve ate the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, all humans after them have been corrupted with sin – you might think of it as sinfulness being passed down in our DNA, so that even newborns are tainted by sin.

This concept was first proposed by Saint Augustine, who developed it from Paul’s statement that “Therefore just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned…” (Romans 5:12). 

I’m with you on pondering whether the traditional concept of original sin is quite right – I still have not discerned for sure what I think on the subject, but I can say that the concept of Original Blessing strikes a much richer chord in my spirit.

“Original blessing reminds us that we are in a relationship with God, and God started it, and God is sticking with it.” The above article is sort of long, so see this post for my favorite quotes from it if you don’t have time for the whole thing. 

I am torn when it comes to this idea of original sin because on the one hand, it is true that all human beings do some or many bad things in their lives – no one but Jesus (and if you believe as I and Catholics do, Mary) has ever lived a sinless life, perfectly in line with God’s will.But on the other hand, do our sins mean we are evil at the core? or are we good at the heart of ourselves, underneath whatever sins we’ve committed (or, says original sin, we are born with)? 

Original sin implies that humans are bad at their core (look up the concept of “total depravity” or “inherent evil”) – but one of God’s first descriptions of human beings was to call us (and all Creation) “very good” (Genesis 1:31). It is as the above article on original blessing says – how can we dare to consider that any human action, such as Adam and Eve eating the fruit, could “undo what God has ordained”? 

Rabbi Avner Zarmi agrees (as Judaism rejects the concept of original sin): “At every stage of the world’s creation, G-d pronounced it tov [good] before proceeding to the next stage. On the creation of mankind, He pronounced it tov me’od (‘very good’), and there is no indication thereafter that He changed his mind.”

Moreover, Genesis does not have any point where it explicitly states that Adam and Eve brought sin into the world with their actions (it does not even say that before “the Fall” they were incapable of sinning, though I do think “then their eyes were opened” in 3:7 can be interpreted as implying that).  

In the end, whether or not original sin is a real thing does not change what God has called us to do: to love God and neighbor, to act with justice and love mercy, to glorify God with our lives. So I think it’s okay to be unsure on the matter – to keep pondering it but not to become too anxious about the answer. We can have faith that whether or not original sin is real, God is with us, God calls us good, God liberates us from sin. 

I also have found for myself that it is better to think of human beings as capable of good, rather than to think of them as inherently evil. When I focus on the former, I am inspired to do good, and I am able to see the good others have done; when I focus on the latter, I tend to become cynical and bitter towards myself and my fellow human beings.

I do believe that all goodness comes from God and so we rely on God for any goodness we can do; but as we are in God’s image, and as God has declared us good, that goodness is inside us, at the heart of us – not evil.