Maybe I’m getting old, but the world seems to be crazier now than it was a few decades ago. Just a few week ago there were two mass shootings in one night in the US. It used to be that mass shootings were a rare occurrence but nowadays they are commonplace. Any psychotic who has a beef against someone goes and buys a semi-automatic rifle and then protests whatever he has a problem with by shooting twenty or thirty innocent people. I find that depressing. Even more disheartening is that this type of psychotic behavior is encouraged by some government leaders either through their tweets, public statements or lack of action to deal with danger presented.
Perhaps over the years I’ve placed too much faith it human nature being good at its most basic core. After all, Genesis tells us that we’re made in the image and likeness for God. If that is the case, then we have to be good deep down. Because God is good. The problem is that I keep forgetting (or wanting to forget) about original sin.
Original sin is one of those church teachings that I had trouble with during my college days. It made no sense to me. How could a just God inflict the burden of one man’s sin upon me. Even if Adam was the prototype human being, where was the justice in making me suffer for a sin committed by another?
It was only later when I began to study Scripture and theology that I realized that the Genesis story of Adam and Eve and their fall into sin, as well as the concept of original sin, was not talking about some event occurring at the dawn of humanity. Rather, it was trying to explain about the human condition.
St. Augustine helped to popularize the concept of original sin. He used the analogy of a mirror to explain the concept. When we were created by God, we were a perfect image of God, like the image one sees in a particularly clear mirror. As we reflect and do the will of God, the mirror shines with the divine image. The Kingdom of God is alive and among us. Virtue, justice and compassion are the norms. All is good. All is as it should be, as God intended it to be. Further, reflecting and doing the will of God is not something we are forced into but I something we do because we desire to do it. It is what make us happy. It is what makes us fulfilled.
Sin takes a sledge hammer to the mirror and destroys it, smashing it into a million little pieces and totally distorting the divine image. We may try to reflect the divine image and occasionally do so to a degree but we cannot achieve the perfection that God created in human nature because that perfection was so distorted by the fall that we are incapable of realizing it again. Jesus took on the burden of sin and paid for our atonement with God though his sacrifice on the cross, but we still must deal with the consequences of sin in the world. Original sin refers to the consequences that still echo through history.
What are these consequences? The mass shooters are among these consequences. The hate and fear that fuels the cowards who promote and carry out these shootings are consequences. The addictions that destroy people’s lives are consequences. The lack of compassion and empathy that allows some people to view others as objects to be manipulated and used, as with the sex trafficking that has also been in the news. I could go on but the point I that all those headlines that I find so depressing are part of the fallen human condition. While God created us to be higher than the angels, sin has corrupted us and distorted all that we do. So, I shouldn’t be too surprised by the cruelty and evil encountered in the world, even in our nation and community. However, I shouldn’t lose hope either. The essential message of the Gospel is that God has not left us in the depths of despair but has redeemed us through Jesus Christ and shown us the way out of the mess into which we have gotten ourselves. We jut need to follow the path that Jesus has laid out for us. Of course, it is not an easy path and it leads through Calvary, but the path is there.