(The 3-Minute
Weekly Insight from Spirituality U.)
The concept of “Original Sin” arises from the story of the
tempting of Adam and as told in “The Book of Genesis” in the Bible.
In that story, God places the first humans in the Garden of
Eden, and warns them that if they eat the fruit of The Tree of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil they will die. A serpent that dwells in the Garden tempts Eve. She and Adam taste the fruit. God finds out,
expels them from the Garden, and saddles them (and the Serpent) with curses.
[NOTE: Genesis does not say that the fruit was an apple or that the serpent was
a snake.]
As a result of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, all of their
descendents bear a stain of sinfulness that is transmitted to them via
procreation (as a sort of sexually transmitted spiritual disease). This makes
all humans prone to sinfulness; even a child is in an inherited state of separation
from the Divine, with a natural tendency toward sin.
In line with this belief, it is taught that only God can wipe
away the stain of Original Sin through Grace, and that Jesus died on the Cross
to free people who believed in Him from sins that would lead them to Hell.
Thomas Merton has a very different way of thinking about all
of this. His concept is sometimes called “Original Blessing.”
The Thomas Merton
Encyclopedia says, “Original sin is not so much an
inherited sin passed on from one generation to the next as it is the loss of
that original blessing (or innocence) in which the human person was able to see
reality as it is. Original Sin, the total alienation from ‘the
inmost ground of our identity’…is the accumulation of veils of
illusion that cover reality and make it appear to be what it is not.
“The fall so alienates us from the Real
that the true God becomes an idol, the true self becomes a false self and
created nature is grasped not in the unity that expresses its true status, but
in isolation and separateness.” In Merton’s view, by devoting
ourselves to a lifetime of contemplative prayer and practices we can recover
our Original Blessing and reconnect with God.
Finally, Mark Twain had an unusual (and amusing) take on the
concept of Original Sin that put the blame squarely in the lap of God. In
Twain’s view, God should have realized that if he forbade Adam and Eve to eat
the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would immediately
munch away. Twain asserted that God should have instead forbidden them to eat
the serpent. They would have devoured the serpent, and there would have been no
temptation, and, thus, no Original Sin. [Smile].
For more information about Original Sin visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/beliefs/originalsin_1.shtml
For more information about Thomas Merton’s concept of
Original Blessing read the item about Original Sin in The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia.
For more information about Mark Twain’s view of Original Sin,
read his novel, Pudd'nhead
Wilson.
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