Original Sin/Original Virtue

What do you think that belief in original sin is designed to explain?

This is one doctrine that I’ve never felt to be stumbling block. It doesn’t just explain why the world is so broken; it also tells me so much about who I am and why following Jesus is a conscious decision rather than something that is the privilege of those born naturally “good”.

But it’s only a liveable doctrine when paired with the fact that we’re also born with the natural ability to reflect our Creator.

I recently spent just over a year working in a secular job in a prison. I used to say to the guys on my course, “You know, before I came here, I thought this place full of criminals.” They’d laugh and say, “It is!”

But it isn’t – it’s full of people, some of them kept in cells and others who arrive for work and go home again. Sometimes the “bad” men in the cells acted better (ie did more for the Shalom of the whole community) than the “good” people.

Over the year, in every course, someone would say something like, “It’s all right for you Trish; you don’t have a criminal mind.” And I’d have a great time trying to explain that I could have a criminal mind without trying too hard at all – that I actually have to make daily decisions in order to be the “good” person that they think I am. And even then, I get it wrong morally, if not legally, all the time.

The “reflected Creator” side of the doctrine goes a long way to explaining why these guys could be kind and generous and honest when they chose. One of the lifers explained how they’d all get different ingredients off the canteen list and cook up meals for everyone to share. Community.

There were times when I couldn’t see anything in a person other than malice, greed, and an arrogance about their ability to profit from the vulnerable, (yeah…..drug dealers aren’t my favourite people). But then I’d be confronted by the enormity of God’s grace and the ability of his love to encompass these guys – not on the condition that they become “good” but on the condition that they acknowledge their state of sinfulness and turn to the one who can redeem that. In other words, they are exactly like me and everyone else who reads this.

Original sin means we are reliant on God’s grace – no matter where society places us on its scale of good and evil. Without a doctrine of original sin we could chose to exclude people from that Grace.