Atheism 20 - Original Sin and Why All This Matters

 After all this typing, we finally come to the question, "Who cares?  My life is going along pretty good all on my own; why do I need to subject myself to the all-seeing gaze of some omnipresent Supreme Being?  I control my own destiny.  What need have I of God?"

This is not an unreasonable position to take in 21st Century Western society.  After all, as we will see, our whole civilization is built on the concept of self-reliance.  Some take the concept to a further extreme than others, but the basic idea is embedded in all of us, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist and Atheist alike.

Much of what is to follow is a very brief condensation of the ideas expressed in The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis (I'm currently reading my way through Lewis' works).  If my statements fall a bit flat, I recommend the book for a more thorough examination of the concepts.

In a way, I rather feel sorry for modern Christians in relation to their First Century counterparts.  When the apostles were preaching the good news at Pentecost - that Jesus has provided a way out of the self-inflicted damnation of our sin - they had a ready audience among both Jew and Gentile.  An acknowledgement of humanity's separation from the Almighty, and the subsequent need for restoration, was a near universally understood truth, taught by no less than Zarathustra, Jeremiah, Socrates, Gautama, Christ and Marcus Aurelius.  Nowadays, in order to deliver the Good News of Christ's salvation, Christians must first convince their would-be converts of the very bad news of humanity's own depravity, specifically that of the listener.  This is no easy task in a world driven by the ideas developed by Freud (and added to by virtually every psychoanalyst since) that guilt is a wholly bad thing and life's greatest efforts should go toward the eradication thereof.

Nor is this belief in guiltlessness held exclusively by the pagan.  Christians buy into it as well.  As hard as I myself try to remember my total dependence on God for my salvation, I must confess that, almost without fail, I start each morning in silent meditation in which I fully intend to commit the day ahead wholly into my Lord's hands, to live fully in the grace and love of my Creator.  By the time I put razor to chin, I've already started to think of the day as mine and out of which I intend to carve a certain percentage in dedication to God.  By the time I've arrived at the office and put on the communal coffee pot (which, in itself, I consider a herculean feat of charity towards my coworkers) I've already begun to think about all those tasks which I must accomplish before day's end with little thought at all for God, so that, by the time I am again in my pajamas and have begun my evening prayers, I find myself rather smug and self-contented if I have done no more than gotten through the day without having said or done anything to summarily embarrass myself or my Maker!

This, I believe, constitutes the original sin.  As I have pointed out in previous posts (and with apologies to my Scriptural Purist brethren) I do not actually believe that the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden involved the ingestion of a magical apple which had been forbidden by God.  I believe the apple to be an allegory for pride.  Not necessarily the sort of pride that goes before a fall, if you've forgive the pun, but just the normal pride felt by all of us everyday that convinces us of our own self-sufficiency and self-worth.  "I may not be perfect, but I'm no worse than most, better than some."  I do not believe, however, that life is intended to be a competition.  If I take as my point of comparison, not my level of morality as compared to someone else who's moral compass I can see or at least, through observation, intelligently guess at, but the morality of a Supreme Being whose very nature is goodness, from whom the very concept of goodness is derived, then I am left to admit that, even at my most pious, I fall woefully short. While I must agree with Herr Freud that an obsession with guilt can be harmful and may lead to many psychological issues, I've come to understand that the total removal of guilt can do the same, allowing a debilitating sense of pride to come between us and the acknowledgement of our own depravity and our need for salvation, separating us not only from God, but from one another as well.  Guiltlessness turns each of us into our own little gods whom we can happily worship without obligation to worship any other and with little to no sense of responsibility toward the good of the whole.

And, so, why is that a bad thing?  What's wrong with a little self-love?  Nothing, unless that "little self-love" is allowed to become consuming.  Surely there exists between these two extremes a point of moderation, a middle ground as it were, wherein a certain level of guilt is both healthy and desirable to keep us all from falling into traps either of neurosis to the left or narcissism to the right. Look around you.  Unless you've lost all sense of decency altogether, you find a world crowded with despotic individuals, all blissfully worshiping at the altar of self with little to no regard to the plight of others.  Or, if that plight is acknowledged, only taking so much responsibility for it as may still be convenient to oneself.  I may (begrudgingly) give the panhandler a dollar, but take him inside the store and buy him some food?  Drive him to the employment office and help him find gainful employment?  Perhaps even just stand with him on the sidewalk for a moment and pray with him?  Get real!

"Well, okay, Jeff, maybe I'm no angel, but I'm no Hitler, either!"  Sorry.  Foul.  Not only is this simply re-wording the fallacy of competition cited above, but more to the point, while there may indeed be a difference between my apathy and Hitler's active evil, they both spring forth from the same fountain and, if there is any difference at all, it is a difference of degree, not of kind.

Pax