Hi Everybody,
My issue that I struggle is this: Why would God create humans defective?
To help explain, I will borrow a few thoughts from CS Lewis.
In Mere Christianity, Lewis writes that we are all as a man caught in the current of a river; being pulled under, no doubt, by the weight of our sins. Elsewhere, he writes that we all are on a slippery slope, always having a force pull us away from God (and further into sin): that sinning is a sort of default position that we are in, and that even with considerable effort, most of us do not conform even to the basic rudiments God’s moral law (and [almost?] no one can conform perfectly, even with monumental effort).
Now there can be no doubt that we are all drowning; but why would God have us be born, as it were, caught in the undertow of a river? We all are indeed on a large and slippery slope, but we were placed there from birth and without our choosing. To slide down and away from God would to me seem rather like placing a beloved pet on a wall of ice and then to watch it unsuccessfully struggle toward its master. Now the master, to be sure, has a plan for its rescue; but the poor helpless creature does not like where it is, and can hardly be blamed for its present slide toward the precipice below.
Why would we be forced into such a dreadful predicament? For it seems very much that we are forced into it; pushed onto the terrible slope from which we must then be rescued. There is real evil that comes from each of our hearts: but what to say to the objector who points out that we were made that way; that we can no more choose to have evil thoughts and impulses than to have sweat glands or hair. Now we need not, and should not, act on these impulses; but to me the whole thing looks horribly cruel - rather like a parent dropping his child in a pool of mud, and later chastising the child for being dirty. No doubt it would be high foolishness not to take the offer to become clean; that is not the issue.
I can honestly say that I made real efforts to find an answer, but found nothing satisfying.
Thank you, and may God bless you all.
Appendix
One can of course answer our predicament by the often cited (and traditional) answer that humans were initially made right, and they freely rejected perfection in favor of its opposite. This is a fine defense for the first humans. They were given God’s presence and the unspeakable delights that came with it: in the face of all of that, they still turned away. For their idiocy we are all living in the shambles of a fallen world. But we still have the problem of the evil impulses (to lie, cheat, steal, lust, etc.) coming from our own hearts; it makes no sense (to me) that these should be inherited as well. Why not be given the same chance as the first humans were? We are told God loves us no less, and yet keeps us bound in original sin.
Perhaps for now there is no answer, and the best that can be done is to “Keep on. Do what you can” until our rescue is complete (after purgatory).
