IN AMERICA,

WE ARE FREE

TO CHOOSE

HOW WE BELIEVE

BORN A SINNER

“My God is a loving God,” Peter repeated.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Zach.

Peter explained. “I mean what I said. God looks after me and helps me see the light. He takes care of me and my family. I give my love to the Lord, and he will show me the way.”

“So,” said Zach. “It kind of makes your life a lot simpler. Just put your faith in God, and whatever happens happens.”

“Right. He will take care of me. I put my life in his hands. His son came down and died for our sins so that we might live.” Peter so believed what he was saying.

“What sins had you committed, Peter? You seem like a good guy to me,” questioned Zach.

“We are all sinners, Zach, including you and me. Since Adam ate the apple, man has had a sinful nature. We were born sinners. Only through the grace of God can that sin be washed away.”

“Let me get this straight, Peter. Thousands and thousands of years ago, some guy named Adam ate the wrong fruit, and because he did, I am a sinner. I didn’t do anything to deserve being labeled a sinner because of what one of my supposed ancestors did long ago,” said Zach. He never had bought into the idea of Original Sin.

Peter countered. “We were all created by God, and are all a family of God, starting with Adam and Eve. The sins of Adam became the sins of all mankind.”

“So, if my great-great-great grandfather killed a man in cold blood, then I am also guilty of the crime of murder? People should look at me and say, ‘You must suffer for the sins of your ancestor many years ago?’ That would be crazy.”

“Well, that’s different,” said Peter.

“How is it different?” asked Zach.

“It just is.”

“Okay, Peter.” Zach asked, “Why do you believe this story about Adam and Eve anyway?”

“Because it says so in the Bible,” Peter said matter of factly.

“And everything in the Bible is true?” asked Zach.

“Of course. It’s God’s word,” answered Peter.

“So I guess you believe in the idea of Original Sin.”

“Of course,” replied Peter.

Zach remembered his own thoughts on the shakiness of the doctrine of Original Sin, and recalled reading some passages in Atlas Shrugged that had stuck with him.

“Peter,” Zach asked, “have you ever read Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand?”

“No, can’t say that I have.”

Zach pulled out his well-worn paperback copy of Atlas Shrugged, and searched for those passages. He found one passage he had marked that dealt with Original Sin, the idea Christian – and other - churches pass on that, because Adam ate the apple, man is a sinful creature and can only be cleansed by the glory of God. Zach read part of what Ayn Rand had written in Atlas Shrugged:

“Peter, listen to this.”

Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accept his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not.

…

The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.

…

A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man’s nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, just and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code... (p. 942-3)

…

What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge - he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil - he became a moral being.....

…

Man’s fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin, his evil, they charge, is that he’s man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives. (p. 943)

*****

Of course, the whole business of organized religion would not work unless the church leadership created a need for religion in the first place. It reminded Zach of a joke someone had sent him on email.

There were three young scouts who were raising money for their scout group. The den leader was asking for each person to report how much money they had raised and how they had raised it.

The first little boy said he had mowed yards to earn money. "I raised $150." Great, said the den leader.

The second young man said, "I raised $254 by selling candy." Good job, said the den leader.

"How about you, Johnny?" he asked the third little boy.

"I raised over $10,000 selling toothpaste and toothbrushes."

"$10,000! How did you do that?!" asked the den leader incredulously.

"Well, first, I sat up shop on a busy street corner and gave away chips and dip."

"How can you make money giving away chips and dip?"

"Well, people would eat the chips and dip, and then they would spit it out and say, 'This tastes like shit!"

"It is shit, I'd tell them. Then I asked them if they would like to buy a toothbrush and some toothpaste. I made a killing."

Zach thought, that's how religions work.

They tell you your soul is dirty and tainted. They tell you about original sin and how evil and corrupt and unworthy all men are. In a word, they tell us our souls are covered with shit, and they conveniently have the toothbrush and toothpaste - their god and their religion – we need to clean our souls.

*****

Zach scribbled down one of the thoughts he had always wondered about when he heard the story of Adam and Eve:

According to Genesis, Adam and Eve were the first two humans put on the earth by God. They had two children, Cain and Abel. That means all the humans on earth at this point were Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel.

Then, Cain and Abel had children. Who were the mothers of these children?????

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