Original sin? What active part do I have in that? I can't help that. How can I atone for something I can't help? I need to repent for how I was born? What sense does that make?
I think, understandably, this is one of the most persistent errors in understanding Christian doctrine, because we view it so subjectively, and often utterly sentimentally.
Before looking at 'the fall', it's worth noting what the Jews regarded as axiomatic in the affair.
1 — God is Good.
This was a pretty staggering idea, compared to the ideas of their contemporaries, in which the gods are often capricious, if not cruel. Man certainly wasn't created for any kind of 'union', unless a god felt particularly horny, and fancied a shag. There was no such thing as divine harmony, rather there was just a policy of appeasement.
2 — The world is Good.
Now this was staggering. Religions of the region were ambivalent about the world, whilst the emerging philosophical systems assumed the world was intrinsically 'bad' — if not actually evil, then a necessary evil to act as a catch and containment of the falling soul.
3 — God acts in the affairs of men to bring them to perfection
Now this was just patent nonsense. No-one but the Jews believed in a god who actually had man's best interests in mind. For most, the events of human history was just a sideshow orchestrated by the gods for their own amusement, or an arena in which to act out their squabbles and petty jealousies.
I make this point because this determines the backdrop against which any notion of sin has to be understood.
God invited Adam to join Him. He brought him the animals to be named, and made him master of the estate. But Adam got the taste for power, and he became addicted to it, to the point where he hungered after God's power ... he wanted to be like a god ... he was hooked.
He wanted Quahom's choir to sing to him.
He wanted to taste the love with which the Kosmos sang of God's glory. Not just be part of it, he wanted to possess it. He wanted to be adored.
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And we are the children of an addict, and we are born with that addiction.
We want a love we cannot have.
Whether the fault is mine or not really is immaterial. I've got the problem, I am addicted. Part of the addiction is to seek to blame everyone else for the condition I'm in, rather than actually doing anything about the condition.
Part of the adddiction is denial.
And the problem is we seek to deny our addiction by appeasing it ... by feeding it ... service to self ... and we make it worse ...
We are addicts, born into the addiction of willfullness, determined to shape the world according to ourselves, to determine our own good, our own freedoms, our own destinies ... our own cure ...
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We're addicted to self-love.
So the simple answer is to go to the Doctor of Life and say 'I'm not very well", but the reality is we have voices in the wilderness crying out that we are sick, and we say "No I'm not" or "I know, but I can sort it out myself, thanks."
Addicts don't recover because they realise intellectually that they are sick ... the recover when they realise in their very being that they are sick of being who they are ...
You can't help someone until they want to be cured.
And we know when we can, because they say 'help me'.
And that's what He means by repentance.
And when they do, He is there waiting ... and He says "you have to let go" and we say "I don't want to" and He says "Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls" (Matthew 11:29).
But that sounds too much like rehab, and all too often we say, "No, I'm OK, really ... I can manage it myself."
Thomas
