Original Sin

[Buzzard]

Because Jesus was sinless, he was the only suitable sacrifice to redeem Adam and his descendants. So God sent his own son to be sacrificed to pay the price for the sins of all of mankind throughout all history. If the "price" is not paid, God cannot be reconciled with his creation (mankind). Thus Jesus is "the only way".

And thats where I get confused. God is the bank. Human sin is the debt. We racked up quite a mortgage and shit was pretty underwater (but he couldnt do that again lol)... so he needed to send his beloved son to bleed and suffer to pay our debt?

HUH???

If God is the bank why cant he just forgive the debt. Why does it need to be paid in blood, and where was that written in the mortgage? The OT says nothing about the way to pay back sin debt is through blood... and jews woud NEVER sacrifice humans... so where the fuck did that come from?

But lets assume the debt is paid and now we're square with the lender. We're still fucked and maybe even more fucked. Violence, cruelty, hatred and evil abound. So how are we saved again?

[Aurora]

I was taught, and I believe still, that God could have made Adam and Eve like little robots that would never do anything wrong. But God didn't want robots, he wanted living, breathing, FREE people who could make a choice, he wanted them to have the freedom to make a choice to love God, obey God, etc. If there wasn't anything for them to make a choice about, then they still would have been robots basically. So he placed one tree in the garden and instructed them not to eat from that tree. He gave them a choice. It wasn't a set-up, it was so they could be free to make a choice to either obey or not obey. They chose to not obey, thus bringing original sin. And I also don't believe the tree actually gave them any more knowledge except that it opened their eyes to sin and evil, so the knowledge they acquired wasn't something that was good anyway.

I kind of like that explanation, that God wanted to bring choice into the world. But I do think that, as Shirley and Valsa also posted, the fact that evil didn't exist yet, and so A and E had no idea about the consequences of deciding to disobey, made that not a real choice. And therefore it cannot have truly brought about evil as a consequence of original sin. It was not a true sin - they were choosing, as He wanted them to do. If original sin exists, it must have been present already before they made that choice. It must have been created by God and already present with Adam and Eve in the garden.

[mnb357]

And, for the record: My money is on the Blessed Virgin in a God v. Mary smackdown.

[ilovetchotchkes]

And thats where I get confused. God is the bank. Human sin is the debt. We racked up quite a mortgage and shit was pretty underwater (but he couldnt do that again lol)... so he needed to send his beloved son to bleed and suffer to pay our debt?

HUH???

If God is the bank why cant he just forgive the debt. Why does it need to be paid in blood, and where was that written in the mortgage? The OT says nothing about the way to pay back sin debt is through blood... and jews woud NEVER sacrifice humans... so where the fuck did that come from?

But lets assume the debt is paid and now we're square with the lender. We're still fucked and maybe even more fucked. Violence, cruelty, hatred and evil abound. So how are we saved again?

I have no idea. I personally don't. My mother (who has a masters in theology) my uncle (who is a deacon) and several family friends who are priests have tried to explain it to me. Eventually I gave up and went Jewish. What I want to know is why can't you be accountable for your own misdeeds/sins? why hire a middle man? just go straight to G-d and the person you offended ? right? Doesn't that make more sense?

[Buzzard]

I have no idea. I personally don't. My mother (who has a masters in theology) my uncle (who is a deacon) and several family friends who are priests have tried to explain it to me. Eventually I gave up and went Jewish. What I want to know is why can't you be accountable for your own misdeeds/sins? why hire a middle man? just go straight to G-d and the person you offended ? right? Doesn't that make more sense?

Yeah, thats kinda what yom yippur is for! I also dont buy the whole sins of the world being counted against me. Thats some bullshit.

[Kishiria]

Emmiedahl breaks it down pretty well. Most people don't realize, reading the Genesis story, that there are two trees in the Garden, the tree of Knowledge and the tree of Life. God tells Eve that if she eats of the tree of Knowledge that she will die. The Serpent points out that God is lying. Eve eats and sure enough, she doesn't die and neither does her husband.

Interestingly, the Eastern Orthodox churches do not believe in Original Sin the way the western churches do, nor do they believe that the Crucifixion was substitutionary redemption. They have a much more optimistic view of the nature of humanity than the west does.

[bellicosebroad]

I've always been a questioner, and never believed just because any authority figure said "I told you to," even when I was small. But the unraveling really began in earnest with the concept of original sin. What, we're totally fucked even before we do anything wrong? *And* we have to ask for forgiveness *because* we're totally fucked even before we do anything wrong (*and* let someone else take the rap for our total "can't be helped" fuck-upedness besides)? Just, no. No, no, no.

If I screw up (especially intentionally via laziness or ego, etc.), I'd better be responsible for my actions, own up to said screw up, and fix it or at least apologize, mean it, and learn from it so that it doesn't happen again. The focus should be on learning from what happened and on fixing what I did if I can, and on asking for forgiveness from the person I hurt, nothing else, IMO. Jesus doesn't have to help me with that (and since he couldn't outsmart the Romans, I'm not sure he'd be capable anyway). And if I don't screw up? Why not just be proud of that instead of constantly feeling guilty as a perpetual sinner who must always wear that mantle regardless of actual behavior? Makes no sense to me.

[Sola]

The story of Jesus Christ actually is very similar to the messiah stories of religions that were well-known to Palestinian Jews at the time of Christ. The theology of Christ borrows heavily from Greek and Egyptian myth, in fact it is more similar to these than to the messianic prophesies of the Old Testament.

Some info here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Chri ... _mythology and there is a better website that I cannot think of, but will post when I remember it.

Was it this one http://paganizingfaithofyeshua.netfirms ... _chart.htm

Looks like it's down anyway, I'm just getting a 404. But anyway, it had some really good information on the comparative mythology.

Ah, the wayback machine has a snapshot. http://web.archive.org/web/201002102017 ... _chart.htm

[godlytomatosoup]

I read the Bible all the way through this year, and the forbidden fruit is just the beginning of God being a dick. Over and over and over, he says "I did all this nice stuff for you, but you sinned, so now I'm going to bring you to the edge of destruction, then when you're humbled I'll forgive you and we'll be reconciled and it'll all be like before (until you screw up again.)" It's a classic abusive relationship. With a bonus of one of the prophets (I think Jeremiah, but I can't remember for sure without looking at my notes) actually describing Israel as an abandoned child which God adopted in childhood and raised to be his wife (what?) and then when she starts acting out the way adopted children do he publicly exposes her to punish her for being a whore.

This is one of many reasons I can't be a Bible-based Christian. (Technically I'm not a Christian at all, although I do attend church, and might become a Christian sometime in the future, I don't know.) I can deal with some asshole man writing that about God. I can't deal with the idea that God is like that, or wrote that about himself.

And another thing: Jesus. He's just like us, right? He was part of the godhead, but came down to earth to be a smelly, squishy, hurting, fragile human being just like us, to show us that he really does understand what we're going through, right? And he's also the Perfect Penitent who was an appropriate sacrifice for our sins because, unlike us, he was completely sinless, right? How do you reconcile those two statements?

It reminds me of this flash game I found online one time. It was about a family in the developing world, and you get a budget to buy animals and crops and education and medical care, and every year some catastrophe or other occurs and undoes all your hard work, and you win by getting as many family members educated for as long as possible, only they have to work on the farm to avoid dying. Anyway, I played through the game and was horrified by how all but impossible it was for people living like that. And then I searched for reviews of this game, and found a walk-through by someone who'd played it a million times through to find the perfect technique to 'win' at the game.

That person missed the point of that game, which was that in real life you don't get do-overs. And it's a lot harder to see the right thing to do if you can't search for a walk-through online because you don't have electricity, let alone a phone, let alone internet, and anyway, this isn't a game.

I think a sinless, immaculate Jesus who didn't fart or poop or vomit or have inappropriate erections or a gigantic bloodstain on the back of his skirt misses the point of humanity just as badly. He never fucked up, but we're supposed to believe he knows how it feels to be fallen and mortal and broken from up there on his cross saying "Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do?"

[Rosa]

I'm a pantheist, so it makes perfect sense to me that different parts of the universe are at odds with each other. The oak tree, trying to reproduce, and the squirrel, trying to survive, are at odds; both are equally divine; so there is suffering.

It doesn't really help the Christian question but you wondered how other religions handle it.

Non-monotheistic myths about how sorrow entered the world are often predicated on conflict between deities, or between deities and humans; if you take omnipotence out of your theology, there's a lot of room for that kind of conflict. You probably know the story of Pandora, the first woman created by the Greek Gods (also the source of all troubles in the world except sexual jealousy and strife among the gods): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora

[gustava]

I went to a fairly conservative church tonight to watch a children's Christmas story musical, which I enjoyed, heathen though I am; children of various cousins were in the musical. (BTW: Steve Maxwell would have had a heart attack if he'd been there!) At the end of the program, the preacher talked about "the reason for the season" and brought up three children (under age 10) who'd just recently "asked Jesus into their hearts." Then a little talk about those in the room who might not yet have asked Jesus into their hearts, who were not born again into Jesus. Then a prayer and while our eyes were closed, an altar call. As I listened to all this, I wondered why I needed to be saved. What had I done that required Jesus to die so horribly and then for me to call him into my heart so he would save me? Why had the choice of Adam and Eve become something for which I, personally, must atone? I resisted the altar call and left as much a heathen as when I'd entered.

[jaelh]

I have no idea. I personally don't. My mother (who has a masters in theology) my uncle (who is a deacon) and several family friends who are priests have tried to explain it to me. Eventually I gave up and went Jewish. What I want to know is why can't you be accountable for your own misdeeds/sins? why hire a middle man? just go straight to G-d and the person you offended ? right? Doesn't that make more sense?

Except it *is* God who came and died for these sins. No middle man involved. Just because jesus was called son of god doesn't mean he was separate from God: he was indeed, God itself come to atone for our sins (that, God had a direct part in creating).

Agree with Krishna that the Orthodox model is so much healthier. The western church went way off track with Absolom of Canterbury, who postulated (and remember this was mid-dark ages so was solid reasoning for the time...) - a sin committed by a pesant against a master was of greater magnitude than if it were against another pesant. Ditto a master to a Lord; Lord to a King etc... Ergo; the sin committed by Adam and Eve, as it was a sin against God was the WORST THING EVER. It required a blood atonement.

The Orthodox church (and K, please correct me if I go wrong here) says - eh, when AandE ate the fruit they were moving away from God; they became less like God. Thus, pain and suffering is an expression of this distance. Jesus wasn't an atonement; Jesus, God personified, was a necessary link in getting us back to being more like God. He showed us how we might get there; the missing link as it were. More like Jesus = more like God = closer to God = better!

I'd take me VersionOrthodox any day in preference to the western doctrine of original sin.

[QAF_Rocks]

Forget original sin; I don't understand the concept of "sin" at all.

What I don't get is why people would assume it exists. From what I understand, sin is supposed to be an offense against a deity, which renders it supernatural.

So it's not just something vague like "hurting people." It's specifically hurting a deity, and you have to assume that this deity exists in the first place to believe in sin.

[BravaAmica]

Here's the basic story:

1) God created Adam because he wanted to have fellowship (I'm not sure where the Son and the Holy Spirit were, but anyhoo) and thought that Adam should have a companion, too, so then created Eve. These people were created as perfect and were to live forever.

2) He hooked them up in a nice garden and told them they could eat any delicious fruit that grew there, except for one particular delicious fruit.

3) They ate of the forbidden fruit.

4) Sin entered the world and all of mankind at this moment, which is the cause of eveything bad such as death, destruction, disease, misery, and feminism. (Okay, I made up that last one.)

5) God got pissed because they did the forbidden thing and threw them out of the garden. Now they had to work to eek out a living and Eve would be miserable bearing children and they would both die, as would all of their descendants. They could never be reconciled to God because God cannot tolerate sin. Someone would have to pay.

6) A couple thousand years go by and God gets mad at his people who were all born to be world-class screw-ups many times, destroying them by floods and plagues and in general has a troubled relationship with his creation.

7) God sends his Son, who is qualified to make said payment, as he was perfect and part of the Trinity. Son dies a terrible death on the cross and thereby redeems all of mankind.

Damn. That's a lot of mental gymnastics.

Steps 2, 3 and 4 remind me of Pandora's Box: Zeus was smarting over Promethus giving mankind fire. He never meant for mankind to have fire, so he created the first woman, Pandora and presented her to the leader as his wife. She was the perfect example of all the feminine virtues: beautiful, gentle, kind, nurturing, patient. And then Zeus says, "Here, Pandora, I'm going to give you a beautiful box, covered in jewels but don't even think of opening it. Damnit, woman, you opened it- now there's all kinds of evil in the world." In other words, a myth that explains two things- why things suck now and why it's women's fault. And not much difference between Yaweh and Zeus, IMO.

[Mais Pourquoi]

Forget original sin; I don't understand the concept of "sin" at all.

What I don't get is why people would assume it exists. From what I understand, sin is supposed to be an offense against a deity, which renders it supernatural.

So it's not just something vague like "hurting people." It's specifically hurting a deity, and you have to assume that this deity exists in the first place to believe in sin.

I've always thought of "hurting people" as sinful because, in effect, you're hurting God's creation when you do it. Righteousness to me is things like being kind to others, being thankful for the food you have (because most of the time it had to die to become your food), and not polluting the earth. When we experience feelings of happiness and love, that's God's work; abuse/violence/etc go against God and so must be part of some evil force. I don't consider myself Christian but I do think looking at the Bible (and many other religious texts) allegorically is useful, and it's how I came to my personal understanding of sin.

ETA: Something like sex is not sinful in my view because it is natural and feels good- this is where I cannot reconcile myself with fundamentalism!

[ilovetchotchkes]

Except it *is* God who came and died for these sins. No middle man involved. Just because jesus was called son of god doesn't mean he was separate from God: he was indeed, God itself come to atone for our sins (that, God had a direct part in creating).

Agree with Krishna that the Orthodox model is so much healthier. The western church went way off track with Absolom of Canterbury, who postulated (and remember this was mid-dark ages so was solid reasoning for the time...) - a sin committed by a pesant against a master was of greater magnitude than if it were against another pesant. Ditto a master to a Lord; Lord to a King etc... Ergo; the sin committed by Adam and Eve, as it was a sin against God was the WORST THING EVER. It required a blood atonement.

The Orthodox church (and K, please correct me if I go wrong here) says - eh, when AandE ate the fruit they were moving away from God; they became less like God. Thus, pain and suffering is an expression of this distance. Jesus wasn't an atonement; Jesus, God personified, was a necessary link in getting us back to being more like God. He showed us how we might get there; the missing link as it were. More like Jesus = more like God = closer to God = better!

I'd take me VersionOrthodox any day in preference to the western doctrine of original sin.

But why does G-d have to do that? that just makes things unnecessarily complicated. The theology of Christianity gives me SUCH a headache, I just seriously don't get it.

[jaelh]

But why does G-d have to do that? that just makes things unnecessarily complicated. The theology of Christianity gives me SUCH a headache, I just seriously don't get it.

(shrug) God doesn't [i[have to do anything. This is what God chose to do. Who knows the mind of god etc.. using an internal reference it's logical, it just requires the initial internal reference

Anyway. Not all Christian's (see the rest of my previous post) accept the doctrine of original sin as posited by the op. so it's not christian theology you're finding complicated, it's the western version. orthodox deals with this so much more easily.

[Linnea]

I just have to say, this thread is fascinating. And the FJian hive mind (err, vagina) knows more about religion, history, and logic than all those "Because God said so, that's why" fundies put together.

[Guest Anonymous]

In other words, a myth that explains two things- why things suck now and why it's women's fault.

QFT. And sheer awesomeness.

[treemom]

I was taught, and I believe still, that God could have made Adam and Eve like little robots that would never do anything wrong. But God didn't want robots, he wanted living, breathing, FREE people who could make a choice, he wanted them to have the freedom to make a choice to love God, obey God, etc. If there wasn't anything for them to make a choice about, then they still would have been robots basically. So he placed one tree in the garden and instructed them not to eat from that tree. He gave them a choice. It wasn't a set-up, it was so they could be free to make a choice to either obey or not obey. They chose to not obey, thus bringing original sin. And I also don't believe the tree actually gave them any more knowledge except that it opened their eyes to sin and evil, so the knowledge they acquired wasn't something that was good anyway.

Oh I don't know...it seems like knowing what sin and evil are seems to be pretty important knowledge.

[treemom]

Well, I know that there are other similar creation myths that actually pre-date the writing of Genesis. I need to study that more.

This is the one thing we have noticed a lot with all our travels...is that we visit temples or what have you and low and behold the myth behind it seems vaguely familiar...you know like all those other religions (christianity included) we have heard about.

[Beb]

If God is perfect, unable to even look upon sin, and if he is responsible for the creation of everything (because there was nothing initially), where did this sin come from? Is it self-creating?

This entire thing reads like one giant fairy tale ................ and how to make sense of it? hmmmmm

[debrand]

But why does G-d have to do that? that just makes things unnecessarily complicated. The theology of Christianity gives me SUCH a headache, I just seriously don't get it.

It has always seemed complex to me also. I've heard some pastors preach on how simple Christianity is. you ask god for forgiveness and he forgives you. However, it is only simple if you don't ask too many question than it is like trying to untangle an intricate knot

[debrand]

The whole reason that we were given free will is so we can choose to love god. It wasn't because god wanted us to be free. So, the tree, hell, sickness, old age, his son's suffering and all the bad things in the world are set up so that god can get assurances that someone really loves him. That sounds narcissistic

This is a fascinating thread. Thank you to everyone who is having this discussion. Also, thank you to the Christians who aren't taking offense but are answering questions

[smittykins]

ETA: Something like sex is not sinful in my view because it is natural and feels good- this is where I cannot reconcile myself with fundamentalism!

Of course, *they* would say sex isn't sinful either, as long as it fits their conditions(heterosexual, married, and procreative).