Original Sin

There is a story in Genesis that I think is beautiful in many respects, and also quite disturbing.  It involves God’s discovery of the brokenness that had transpired in the Garden, that the serpent had misled the man and the woman and that the man and the woman had hidden themselves from God as a result.  Separation, after all, is the very root of sin. 

 

They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.  But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”  He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”  (Gen. 3:8-10)

Theologians often describe this as being the root having something known as original sin, the idea that the human actions in the Garden have infected humankind at the deepest level.  All subsequent human beings, it is said, share in the sin introduced by Adam and are inherently sinful because of it. 

I have always rebelled at the idea.  Until now. 

What has changed for me is a new understanding of exactly what the sin of Adam was.  It appears on the surface to be disobedience. God had commanded the human couple, after all, not to eat of the tree of knowledge.  They disobeyed.  And all the bad consequences flowed from that.

   

Something never seemed quite right about that to me.  After all, God had to realize from the beginning that disobedience was going to happen.  And disobedient or not, knowledge always seemed like a strange source of something so calamitous. 

But now I’m seeing the sin differently.  It is not disobedience.  It is shame. 

The man and the woman do not separate themselves from God because of their disobedience or even shame at their disobedience.  They separate themselves from God for shame at their nakedness, which is to say for shame at their humanity, for shame at themselves. 

It is shame and not disobedience at which God is displeased and also apparently surprised.  I’m not sure even God saw coming that the creation, indeed the part of the creation most like Godself, would be ashamed of its own nature.  It is a sin, I think, that is unique to human beings.  And it is profoundly disturbing to think of a creature ashamed of itself as God had created it.  And that fundamental sin, shame, has led to most of the other sins of the world.

Disobedience is something human beings have long since learned to overcome, as every human parent knows.  Shame, though, is a much more difficult thing.  Its remedy seems quite beyond us.  The doctrine of original sin says it can be overcome only by God.  On this point I wholeheartedly agree.

Original sin or not, shame is a sin that human beings do seem to just come with.  It takes us a while to grow into it, but grow into it we inevitably do.  Its only antidote is the message implicit in the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.  Humanity’s shame need be no more. God has proclaimed its sanctity, shame is defeated.   Just as we are, naked as the day we were born.

Peace,