Sin, indeed, is a miscarriage, not a quality of human nature: just as disease and deformity are not congenital to it in the first instance, but are its unnatural accretions, so activity in the direction of sin is to be thought of as a mere mutilation of the goodness innate in us; it is not found to be itself a real thing, but we see it only in the absence of that goodness.
“It wasn’t me.”
What Is Sin?
If God made humanity and declared our creation “very good,” then why are we so messed up? Humanism may argue our inherent goodness and propensity to do good, but Christianity (especially Protestant Christianity) declares humans to be “totally depraved.” This generally means that from birth, we are completely incapable of doing anything good. In Western Christianity, following Augustine, we get the idea of original sin, a concept explaining our guilt before God simply for being born descendants of Adam, the original sinner. Theologians have gone to great lengths to explain how sin is biologically passed on from generation to generation, or how our souls or bodies existed in Adam’s sperm and therefore we participated in the first sin with Adam.
That sounds like some Qanon conspiracy theory if you ask me. What if I don’t believe in a literal Adam and Eve? What if the idea that we are born incapable of doing any good on our own doesn’t ring true with my experience as a parent, raising two kids who, sure, make a ton of bad decisions, but also do some beautiful, amazing, selfless things? What if Protestant emphasis on the shamefulness of my physical being has created in me self-loathing? Does God want me to literally hate my body in order to save my soul? What then of the incarnation?
While Wesleyan Christianity still leans heavily on the language of total depravity, John Wesley was more interested in our personal responsibility than in why sin exists. Scripture assumes universal guilt based on universal action. “ Just as through one human being sin came into the world, and death came through sin, so death has come to everyone, since everyone has sinned” (Rom. 5:12, CEB, emphasis added). We are responsible for our sin. It is a universal experience for each individual to sin against God, against one another, and against creation…whether intentionally or accidentally. We are limited, finite creatures. Our knowledge is limited, our love is limited. Even when we make what seems to be the most right choice we may end up hurting others. Even when we are at our most altruistic, we are probably still innately making a decision that we believe somehow benefits us. And don’t get me started on systemic sins. To have a strong doctrine around sin is to simply talk about reality: humans are fallible, and even the best of us bear guilt for the ways we have wronged others.
Universal Weakness
Eastern Christianity has emphasized the human experience of sin as a weakness and a disease. Far from being born guilty, we are made in the image of God, but are too weak to cooperate fully with God in perfect love. Gregory of Nyssa (4th c.) emphasized the innate goodness of humanity, that we are created in the imago dei, the image of God. Sin is likened to covering oneself in filth, covering over the good image of God. We are too weak in ourselves, too diseased on our own to cooperate with God’s grace on our own. In Nyssa’s view, our purpose is to participate in the God-life, eternal life, Christlikeness. Because we were made originally good in God’s image, Christ’s redemption frees us to cooperate with God’s goodness at work in the world.
I’m going to be honest with you. Talking about sin is super tricky and I’d rather just let the comic stand by itself this week! I do believe that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. I personally struggle to use Adam and Eve language around why we sin. As someone who believes the first humans were cavemen, I just don’t take the Garden of Eden story literally, but as something that poetically tells what is universally true of the human experience with God. I don’t need my definition of sin to reach back to the first humans. I just know from experience that we all fall short. I think we have to take sin seriously, we have to understand our responsibility to reconcile and make things right. For me, Gregory’s language around weakness and disease rings more true to me for how we talk about sin.