Our Sinful Nature

We are born broken.

There is no other worldview besides Christianity that bases everything on this fact.

Ask yourself: is there something wrong with your life?

Don’t respond quickly.

Don’t think:

• “Yeah, my money situation sucks” or
• “My job sucks” or
• “My husband is distant” or
• “I should be living in a warmer climate” or
• “My house doesn’t get enough southern light“

I mean – is something WRONG with your life. Like, deep down. As in – existentially unsatisfying.

And count yourself lucky if that’s the only rotten feeling you have – existential dissatisfaction. Much of the world deals with food insecurity, war, disease, political or social oppression. My point is – even if none of those dire problems apply (and they tend not to apply, for us fortunate westerners) – do you still feel broken at the deepest level? Broken in a way that the most outwardly pleasant and “#blessed” life does not ameliorate?

Maybe you don’t. Then I invite you to listen to / watch a popular comedian who may speak to you:

Who hasn’t been stuck in the shower, shouting to oneself in embarrassment at a failing or shame that is years or decades old? It hits me all the time. A close friend of mine even admitted to me that it hits him in the shower so badly that he had to go on antidepressants.

How absurd is all this? Why are we ashamed? Why do we literally howl out loud at our shame?

Because we realize we are broken but powerless to fix it.

We know the right thing to do – yet we howl in shame at our continued failure to do it.

I’m not talking here about the unregenerate narcissist or utterly selfish person here. I’m talking about the regular person, who tries to do well as much as he or she can, yet constantly comes up short – and is bothered by it. This is the type of person who Henry David Thoreau referred to when he said “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.“

St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans:

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

Romans 7, 14-20

What is life but a struggle, to overcome and achieve. But to overcome what? And to achieve what?

Why would humans be put on earth to struggle? Why aren’t we born to equanimity and peace and virtue? Why is it a struggle to do good and to avoid shame, from the moment of our birth? Why do we live with a constant cognitive and spiritual dissonance, knowing the right thing to do, but constantly failing and incurring shame over it? And why do we exalt and beam with joy at the smallest and most fleeting victories of goodness in our selves? Why is goodness a rare and celebratory event?

There is no other explanation that satisfies besides the fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden.

I don’t understand the historicity of the story of Adam and Eve. I believe that something like it happened in the literal past. I don’t know if it was 10,000 years ago, or 1,000,000 years ago, whether it was Homo Sapiens or Homo Habilis, whether other people lived outside of The Garden, whether foreign worlds in the universe have Gardens of their own with un-fallen creatures also made on God’s image (as CS Lewis speculated), or what.

But something approximating the story in the book of Genesis happened to us. Our race was clearly created with a good instinct, a good orientation. But it was corrupted. Forever more, we – the descendants of that first “breeding pair” – have been tormented to know the good, as St. Paul said, but constantly fail to achieve it except in elusive fits and starts. Our original good was corrupted by an original sin. And the two have been at war ever since.