What if the Christian idea of Original Sin isn't what we think it is?
Original Sin According to my Catholic upbringing, every child is born with original sin that has to be forgiven. That we are not pure and innocent at birth, we are tainted with the sin of Adam. That is why we must be baptised as soon as possible before birth, so that if we die as babies we can go to heaven. The sin of Adam was of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The infamous apple that cast him and all his descendents out of a heaven of peace and plenty. I have always found this difficult. Both for the obvious reason that babies cannot be anything but innocent. And the more abstract one that if we are doomed from the start then it sets off a whole punishing and self-punishing cycle of judgement and guilt that can never be satisfied and which does nothing to make us a better or happier species . It is easy to see that clashes of world views and behavioural expectation are the cause of so much of the conflict around and within us. And it is also easy to ...