Original Dysfunction

Quote of the day:
“As my prayer became more attentive and inward, I had less and less to say. I finally became completely silent…. This is how it is. To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking. Prayer involves becoming silent, and being silent, and waiting until God is heard.”
--Soren Kierkegaard

Yesterday I mentioned the two creation stories. I want to touch on the second one again, because one doctrine that originates there has been intensely controversial for quite some time. You guessed it. We’re talking original sin.

The traditional Christian teaching is that human sin (that is, disconnection from the sacred) began with Adam’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden. The doctrine developed that this “sin” was part of each human being at birth.

One of the most vocal opponents of this teaching was Rev. Matthew Fox, who in the 1990s developed an alternate view he called “original blessing.” He based this on the first creation story (in which God calls all of creation including humans “very good”). Because this story precedes the Adam and Eve story, he considered it primary, and the most-basic view of essential human nature.

I have always found the source of the original sin idea a bit opaque. Saying that Adam was disobedient to God may or may not be true, but to me it is singularly unhelpful. What exactly does “disobedience to God” mean? How exactly does a person know if he is disobedient to God? There is a great deal of interpretation needed from various authority figures, some of whom may have their own disobedient-to-God agenda.

I prefer to think in terms of the original, and subsequently universal, human failing. It may be the root of all human suffering. It does not begin with an act of disobedience, but with what happens afterward.

The Adam and Eve story illustrates this perfectly. When God asks Adam if he ate the apple, Adam says yes he did, because Eve told him to do it. When God turns to Eve and asks her the same question she says yes, she did tell Adam to eat the apple, because the snake told her to.

This is called passing the buck. We all carry the impulse to do this. This failure to take responsibility causes pain, sadness, dysfunction and even violence. From this impulse all kinds of evil springs.

If there is original sin, this is it--alive and all around us.