Has there ever been a bigger crock of shit than the idea of original sin? That because the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) ate of the Tree of Knowledge (Good and Evil), they were not only banished from Paradise, but humanity as a whole was forever enslaved by a sinful nature? Give me a break! Lets go to the text and find out what really happened.
Genesis 2 verse 16 and 17; And the Lord God commanded the man saying, "Of
every tree in the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it,
you shall surely die.
So they did and God exiled them from the garden. But reading Genesis 3:22 and 23 tells the true motivation God had for banishing them: "Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become
like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also from the
tree of life, and eat, and live forever--therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken."
There is a troubling inconsistency here. God said man could eat of
every tree except the tree of good and evil. Why should eating from the 'tree of life' be problematic? Why didn't God want us to "live forever?" Wasn't the idea that we were going to live forever already tacitly implied, so long as we didn't eat from the tree of good and evil? God seems worried that we might actually become 'like one of Us.' Isn't that the WHOLE purpose of life? Be sinless, become godlike, and thereby obtain the Kingdom of God forever and ever? As to, 'the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die,' is just another example where you can't take the Bible literally. (so don't)
The lunacy continues with the flood story (Genesis chapter 6 and 7) where God wipes out humanity with the exception of Noah and his family. What, exactly, was the point? If man now carries "original sin," what good did it do to eradicate them? And why such a standard of perfection if one third of the angels in heaven (higher than man [Hebrews 2:7] and BASKING in the glory of God) rebelled against Him? (Revelations 12:4-9) Didn't the angels have an unbelievable advantage, yet they fell as well?
Here's the caveat--the escape hatch for God. Free will. He gave man and the angels "free will." So we made our bed and have to sleep in it. Nonsense! Adam and Eve had NO CONCEPT of good and evil in the first place. (inside joke, first place: Eden) They didn't know
UNTIL they ate of the tree of knowledge of GOOD and EVIL that they were doing something evil. If you tell a child that it is wrong to eat a cookie before dinner, but the child doesn't KNOW right from wrong, how do you condemn him for eating the cookie? It's absurd. The text collapses in on it's own fallacy. It really came down to God enforcing a--don't do it because I said so--ultimatum, which totally invalidates the idea of "free will."
Bottom line? You aren't inherently bad--quite the contrary. God loves you. You get to experience Him through interaction with Life. However that manifests itself, God will continue to love you. Above all, make that your fall back position.
