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As a child, I was taught we are inherently unworthy of God’s love. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” I would intone at Sunday mass, along with the other parishioners. I was imploring God, not just to overlook my theft of the last cookie in the pantry, but for something more fundamental. I asked him to remove the heavy weight of shame from my eight-year-old shoulders.
I had absorbed the doctrine of “original sin” into the marrow of my bones, even though it was hard to square with another key teaching of my church: God is love. Surely, I reasoned, a loving God would not send me to hell if I failed to believe in Him?
Eventually I left the religious institution of my childhood, but core ideas have stuck to me like burrs on the back of a (sacrificial) lamb. Looking for a way to live an ethical life outside religion, I ask myself: is there utility in a doctrine of sin?
In the Christian faith, sin can be broadly understood as twofold: original sin and actual sin. Actual sins can be named and listed, as in the Ten Commandments. In many Christian traditions, original sin is the foundational state of being human. It refers to a broken state of being. The remedy is understood to be singular: God, the source of salvation, is humanity’s only hope of returning to a state of grace.
Many religions have ethical codes that outline acceptable behaviours without the doctrine of original sin. For example, Muslims believe that humans are born untainted (fitrah), with the potential to move towards God and goodness, while the Jewish tradition and some Christian sects teach that humans enter the world innocent.
In these contexts, the idea of sin can still become problematic. For example, if the religion condemns a person’s gender or sexual orientation as sinful, this can cause significant personal shame and trauma. It can also lead to the punishment and exile of a person from their families and communities.
Chet (חֵטְא) or chata, (חָטָא), a Hebrew word for sin, and hamartia (ἁμαρτία), the biblical Greek term for sin, are translated as “to miss the mark”. This might be a more useful understanding of sin than being inherently wrong, or doing the wrong thing. It reminds me of the Buddhist term dukkha, commonly translated as suffering, but which can also be understood as being off-kilter, like a wheel off its axis. Perhaps sin is a sense that the world is spinning slightly out of alignment with a benevolent universe.
Sin understood as disharmony could be personal, communal or cosmic. I might feel the need for more balance in my life, perhaps between work and play, or generosity and self-interest. Relationally, I might feel a disconnect between myself and others, or between me and nature, or me and my sense of something bigger than myself. At a societal level, I could conceptualise sin as the issues that I and my community must take responsibility to change, like systemic racism in the law, or the ever-increasing gap between the rich and poor. At the universal level, I can seek to co-create goodness and positively to influence the way my species affects the direction of the cosmos.
Perhaps the idea of sin has utility when it encourages what the Buddhists term “right action”. If I feel a sense of not-quite-rightness, rather than assuming it means there is something wrong with me or humanity, I can understand it as a cue to act.
Shame arising from a sense of deep unworthiness pushes me into the fetal position, rather than into action. But a sense of things being out of whack could be inspiring. With a little help and the right tools, I could fix a wobbly wheel. I could set it true and start driving.
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Jackie Bailey is an award-winning author whose latest book is The Outrageous Good Fortune of Living (HarperCollins). Jackie works as a funeral celebrant and pastoral care practitioner, supporting people to navigate death and dying
