Original Sin

[OneSheep]

Since I do not believe that God simply resents us, I could not figure out what kind of “mystery” you were referring to. Thus, no answer.

The mystery I was referring to is here:
CCC
404 How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man”.293 By this “unity of the human race” all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state.294 It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” - a state and not an act.

There it is. “a mystery we cannot fully understand”. I have no problem with mysteries, but if the mystery is such that it conflicts with God’s unconditional love and forgiveness, in which the God in the story of Adam and Eve does indeed conflict with in the eye of any ordinary human, then there is a problem that has to be clarified. The “mystery” is put into even more of a negative light when Jesus has to come and die as a matter of “justice” or expiation.

Where does this leave the “mystery”, other than that God simply resents us (had not forgiven Adam) and Jesus had to come and die in order to erase the resentment?

In re-thinking this question, I may or may not resent someone for doing something I do not like. I am sure that in junior high, I resented certain classmates. I remember a specific high school teacher that I really resented. I got over that when I discovered she was right in her recommendation of a university for me. I never apologized to them nor asked for their forgiveness because I never shared my thoughts with them. Thus, they were not hurt.

Currently, I don’t bother with resentment, I deal in anger.

So, you eventually forgave your teacher when you found her good intent. Have you found the good intent of those classmates?

Perhaps I use the word “resentment”, and you are separating it from anger. Anger and resentment are somewhat interchangeable. When you are angry at someone, do you actively seek to forgive, or do you wait for life to hand you awareness, as it happened with your high school teacher?

In context, it is Adam who scorned God.

I am not privy to all of God’s actions.

“scorn” could be part of resentment.

Sheesh. Great point. So, let’s turn it around. Did Adam actually think to himself, “God is worthless and despicable, I hold contempt for Him?” Well, I suppose some “contempt” is possible. God was saying “don’t do this”, and Adam may have had some contempt for God for limiting his freedom. When someone, including our parents, limit our freedom, we do have some feelings of contempt, our desire says “get outta my way!” and our conscience may say “that is wrong, to limit my freedom”. We have our autonomy, and God made us that way, and loves us that way. Why would God punish man for behaving in such a predictable way?

As for the voice of our conscience, is that the same conscience that “loves” in post 548? Is that the conscience or maybe the soul where some philosophical wizard speculated its physical location in or near the human brain? I was going to comment on post 548, because it sounded different from Catholicism, but couldn’t quite remember all the nitty-gritty details about Cartesian extreme dualism.

To set the record straight. I am the Queen of Cherry Pickers. I am also known as the glamorous Queen Mum Granny.

Okay, Glamorous Queen Mum Granny. I will think it, but it may be a bit much to type. What I mean is that the conscience doesn’t exactly “love” us. The conscience says “you are a good Glamorous Queen Mum Granny when you behave”. Love is much deeper than that.

Cognitive science does support the notion that the conscience operates with some different circuitry in the mind. If that is “dualistic”, so be it. To be whole, we are to love and accept all the parts of ourselves. Wholeness is holiness.

 

[simpleas]

Adam was influenced by a rebellious angel. The Angel did not want to praise and worship these creatures that God had made in his own image. So the Angel tempted the Human creature Adam into believing he could be like God by himself.
Adams trust in his God had died and he fell into the temptation, hence O.S.

This is what my PP explained to me today. It was after I had made reference to the fact the Christ was divine, he had grace already inside him and that is how he could be the perfect human.
My PP explained that was how it was with Adam, he had grace and immortality, but letting trust in God die, he went along with satans lies.

I did want to ask more, especially when he said he didn’t believe the story of Adam and eve and creation like the way it is explained in Genesis, but I had some others issues to discuss with him.

I know this is nothing new to anyone here, for me I love reading others posts on this subject, but I needed to speak face to face with someone to try and help with my understanding.

Thought i’d share!

 

[vames]

It is sadness to watch the subtle attacks against the goodness of the Creator at the beginning of human history.

The best refutations of the idea of a good God come precisely from the text of Genesis, and they are not subtle at all.
Let’s see again.
You say: the Original Sin has serious consequences. What consequences are you talking about?
According to the Genesis, BECAUSE of the Original Sin, women are explicitly cursed by God (the pains of childbirth), men are explicitly cursed by God (they should “eat their bread in the sweat of heir face”), all the living creatures are explicitly cursed by God (they suffer and die, even the dinosaurs and mollusks who lived long before Adam and Eve) and the earth is cursed (it became hostile towards human beings: “thorns and thistles”, famines, storms, earthquakes).
Are these proofs that the God of Genesis is good, loving, forgiving?
Can you explain the logical relationship between committing one act of disobedience and all the women being punished with the pains of childbirth, until the last woman who will live on this earth?
Can you explain the logical relationship between two human beings committing one act of disobedience and the suffering and death of all animals and plants, even the ones that lived before Adam and Eve?
When I was a kid and someone (usually an Orthodox) said “Poor X (a woman), she almost died giving birth - well, she paid for the sin of Eve”, one of my Catholic relatives used to reply: “Nonsense, God is good, this has to do with the laws of nature, not with a punishment ordered by God!”. I could never bring myself to believe that suffering and death are punishments ordered by God because of a sin of our ancestors. I could never bring myself to believe the second account of Genesis, with a God that punishes all the human race for a mistake of our ancestors. I stronlgy believe in the goodness of God. That’s why nobody can force me to believe in a God who curses people (Genesis 3) and who committs genocide because He “was sorry that He had made humankind on the earth” (Genesis 6-7).

 

[vames]

Adam was influenced by a rebellious angel. The Angel did not want to praise and worship these creatures that God had made in his own image. So the Angel tempted the Human creature Adam into believing he could be like God by himself.
Adams trust in his God had died and he fell into the temptation, hence O.S.

This is what my PP explained to me today. It was after I had made reference to the fact the Christ was divine, he had grace already inside him and that is how he could be the perfect human.
My PP explained that was how it was with Adam, he had grace and immortality, but letting trust in God die, he went along with satans lies.

I did want to ask more, especially when he said he didn’t believe the story of Adam and eve and creation like the way it is explained in Genesis, but I had some others issues to discuss with him.

I know this is nothing new to anyone here, for me I love reading others posts on this subject, but I needed to speak face to face with someone to try and help with my understanding.

Thought i’d share!

Yeah, I think I know what you’re talking about.

Some time ago I was so scared of Purgatory, not because of the concept per se, but because some terrifying old books about Purgatory that I have read (souls crying in pain and begging for release, “visions” and “private revelations” about little children burning and suffering inimaginable tortures, unfortunate souls having to be tortured until the end of the earth for a few mortal sins). There’s a Catholic church near the cemetery where my mother is buried. I attended many Masses there. I asked that priest about those “visions” and he said: NOBODY is privy to what is happening to souls after death. There is a Purgatory, but the Church doesn’t have any teaching about what Purgatory actually means for the souls, because nobody is privy to what happens to souls after death. NOBODY has ever come back to tell us what happens: all that others say is just the product of their imagination. He didn’t say that to console me: I have read Pope Benedict’s thougths about Purgatory and I understood that all these “visions” are nothing but expressions of fear or attempts to instill fear in people who don’t believe in Purgatory. Pope Benedict says: “Purgatory is not, as Tertullian thought, some kind of supra-worldly concentration camp where one is forced to undergo punishments in a more or less arbitrary fashion. Rather it is the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God {i.e., capable of full unity with God} and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints”. A loving God doesn’t need to subject souls to inimaginable, lenghty tortures. As Pope Benedict says in his enciclical Spe Salvi, Purgatory simply may be the very encounter with Christ and its real meaning is liberation, not torture: “Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves.”

If your priest says he didn’t believe the story of Adam and Eve and creation like the way it is explained in Genesis, I think he’s right. We don’t need the influence of a rebellious angel to commit sin; the rebellious angel is simply the projection of our exacerbated pride and lack of empathy that pushes us to neglect and objectify our neighbor and to forget that every creature is unique and intrinsically worthy because God created him or her that way. Who is our neighbor? An unborn child, a disabled man, a woman who aborts her child because she is convinced that a child with Down syndrome born into a poor family doesn’t stand a chance in our competitive society, a Muslim who was educated to hate Christians, an atheist who despises us Catholics as deluded people believing in an imaginary friend, a Protestant who was educated to think that we Catholics are the blind slaves of the whore of Babylon, a racist who was educated to believe that God commanded him to kill or enslave all the black people, a Catholic who was educated to believe that all the heretics must be killed. We don’t have to inherit a “fallen” nature to be able to sin. We only have to misuse our God-given natural gifts and talents: we only have to think that we are better than everyone who is not a member of our “ingroup” (Catholics, Christians, white people, males, Americans, first world people and so on). This is pride, this is “wanting to be like God”, translated as “I know better than God”: let’s discard what Jesus said, we know better. Pope Francis repeatedly says: “this is Chist’s flesh” when he encouraged priests and laypeople to learn to know and help people, any kind of people. There is no other path towards perfection. I think everyone should read and understand this post:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=11392629&postcount=5

 

[grannymh]

The mystery I was referring to is here:
CCC
404 How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man”.293 By this “unity of the human race” all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state.294 It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” - a state and not an act.

There it is. “a mystery we cannot fully understand”.

The “mystery” in CCC, 404 is based on the “mystery” in CCC, 355 which says in part that we occupy an unique place in creation because our own nature is an unification of both the spiritual and material worlds. We are one nature, soul and body. The contracted state of Original Sin is spiritual which means that it is not a genetic defect of some kind. Yet, this state of deprivation of original holiness is ours, transmitted through propagation. Exactly how the spiritual can be passed on to descendants with material decomposing anatomies becomes a “mystery” which we accept.

As for other questions, I do not answer those which I consider personal.

 

[grannymh]

The best refutations of the idea of a good God come precisely from the text of Genesis, and they are not subtle at all.
Let’s see again.
You say: the Original Sin has serious consequences. What consequences are you talking about?
According to the Genesis, BECAUSE of the Original Sin, women are explicitly cursed by God (the pains of childbirth), men are explicitly cursed by God (they should “eat their bread in the sweat of heir face”), all the living creatures are explicitly cursed by God (they suffer and die, even the dinosaurs and mollusks who lived long before Adam and Eve) and the earth is cursed (it became hostile towards human beings: “thorns and thistles”, famines, storms, earthquakes).
Are these proofs that the God of Genesis is good, loving, forgiving?
Can you explain the logical relationship between committing one act of disobedience and all the women being punished with the pains of childbirth, until the last woman who will live on this earth?
Can you explain the logical relationship between two human beings committing one act of disobedience and the suffering and death of all animals and plants, even the ones that lived before Adam and Eve?
When I was a kid and someone (usually an Orthodox) said “Poor X (a woman), she almost died giving birth - well, she paid for the sin of Eve”, one of my Catholic relatives used to reply: “Nonsense, God is good, this has to do with the laws of nature, not with a punishment ordered by God!”. I could never bring myself to believe that suffering and death are punishments ordered by God because of a sin of our ancestors. I could never bring myself to believe the second account of Genesis, with a God that punishes all the human race for a mistake of our ancestors. I stronlgy believe in the goodness of God. That’s why nobody can force me to believe in a God who curses people (Genesis 3) and who committs genocide because He “was sorry that He had made humankind on the earth” (Genesis 6-7).

How very sad. I am truly sorry.

I do not mean to be rude, but my Catholic education started with Catholic doctrines without studying the first three chapters of Genesis. Landing on CAF, I was surprised by the “Tree of Life” and all its various symbolisms. Maybe that “Tree of Life” refers to the Beatific Vision, which I did learn about. I learned that Jesus Christ, True God and True Man is the “goodness of God”. Now, I find Genesis 3: 15. Genesis 3:15 is not the complete Catholic doctrine regarding the goodness of Jesus Christ. It is more like a hint of Divine Revelation to come.

Please do not think that I consider starting with Genesis is wrong. Starting with the first three chapters of Genesis is like going back in time to find the truth. Because we know that the Resurrection is the outcome, we do not have to get nervous about curses which emphasize the original tragedy.

In my humble opinion, it sounds like you never learned about the kind of relationship *conditions *which exist between a human creature and the Divine Creator Who invites and then seeks all humanity to share in His divine life in joy eternal. Humans, including the first two, are indeed powerful in that they can accept or reject God’s friendship. They are powerful even though they have a decomposing anatomy, which, by the way, was natural to Adam. His freedom from material death was a benefit of his original relationship with his Creator.

Yes, curse is an awful word to hear. Perhaps, it is the only word capable of approaching the seriousness of Original Sin.

The most serious consequence of Original Sin is that it destroyed the original relationship between Adam and God.

That unique relationship had many benefits including freedom from pain. Once that unique relationship was destroyed, the benefits were lost. The beauty of childbirth lost its immunity to pain often caused by the material anatomical features of the mother. The harmony of material earthly creation was broken when Adam, who originally cared for the environment, left the presence of God via his willful disobedience. Adam’s dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth, depended on his living obediently. Once he made an informed decision to not obey God, Adam’s benefits,* intended for all humankind*, were lost.

God did not change. Adam changed.

 

[OneSheep]

The “mystery” in CCC, 404 is based on the “mystery” in CCC, 355 which says in part that we occupy an unique place in creation because our own nature is an unification of both the spiritual and material worlds. We are one nature, soul and body. The contracted state of Original Sin is spiritual which means that it is not a genetic defect of some kind. Yet, this state of deprivation of original holiness is ours, transmitted through propagation. Exactly how the spiritual can be passed on to descendants with material decomposing anatomies becomes a “mystery” which we accept.

True, such a transmission mode itself could be a mystery that does not in specifically indicate a wrathful God.

Please, these following questions are not so personal. They are no more personal than what you shared about your teacher. Spirituality is very personal.

So, you eventually forgave your teacher when you found her good intent. Have you found the good intent of those classmates?

Perhaps I use the word “resentment”, and you are separating it from anger. Anger and resentment are somewhat interchangeable. When you are angry at someone, do you actively seek to forgive, or do you wait for life to hand you awareness, as it happened with your high school teacher?

 

[OneSheep]

If your priest says he didn’t believe the story of Adam and Eve and creation like the way it is explained in Genesis, I think he’s right. We don’t need the influence of a rebellious angel to commit sin; the rebellious angel is simply the projection of our exacerbated pride and lack of empathy that pushes us to neglect and objectify our neighbor and to forget that every creature is unique and intrinsically worthy because God created him or her that way. Who is our neighbor? An unborn child, a disabled man, a woman who aborts her child because she is convinced that a child with Down syndrome born into a poor family doesn’t stand a chance in our competitive society, a Muslim who was educated to hate Christians, an atheist who despises us Catholics as deluded people believing in an imaginary friend, a Protestant who was educated to think that we Catholics are the blind slaves of the whore of Babylon, a racist who was educated to believe that God commanded him to kill or enslave all the black people, a Catholic who was educated to believe that all the heretics must be killed. We don’t have to inherit a “fallen” nature to be able to sin. We only have to misuse our God-given natural gifts and talents: we only have to think that we are better than everyone who is not a member of our “ingroup” (Catholics, Christians, white people, males, Americans, first world people and so on).

:clapping:

This is pride, this is “wanting to be like God”, translated as “I know better than God”: let’s discard what Jesus said, we know better. Pope Francis repeatedly says: “this is Chist’s flesh” when he encouraged priests and laypeople to learn to know and help people, any kind of people. There is no other path towards perfection. I think everyone should read and understand this post:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=11392629&postcount=5

I still don’t think it is a matter of “pride”. We all have the God-given drives to dominate, attain status, attain power, and be in control of our destinies (freedom). To say “I know better than God” is a statement from ignorance. Studies with infants show that ingroup/outgroup thinking involves an automatic blindness. To me, there is nothing, including “pride”, to hold against the human. I know, this is probably the same way you are thinking, but it was difficult to discern your tone in that section.

Thanks for the link to that post.

 

[grannymh]

True, such a transmission mode itself could be a mystery that does not in specifically indicate a wrathful God.

Please, these following questions are not so personal. They are no more personal than what you shared about your teacher. Spirituality is very personal.

So, you eventually forgave your teacher when you found her good intent. Have you found the good intent of those classmates?

With that theory that all forgiveness is unconditional, what would be possible reasons for the assumption that I eventually forgave my teacher? And what would be the reasons to assume knowledge of the “good intent” of others? With that umbrella of unconditional forgiveness, I do not understand the point of personal questions.

Perhaps I use the word “resentment”, and you are separating it from anger. Anger and resentment are somewhat interchangeable. When you are angry at someone, do you actively seek to forgive, or do you wait for life to hand you awareness, as it happened with your high school teacher?

In my neighborhood, there is a tad difference between resentment and anger. However, it is understandable that in other neighborhoods, it is possible to interchange resentment and anger because all forgiveness is unconditional. I do not live in “other neighborhoods.” I like my own neighborhood where a spade is called a spade.

 

[grannymh]

True, such a transmission mode itself could be a mystery that does not in specifically indicate a wrathful God.

Please, these following questions are not so personal. They are no more personal than what you shared about your teacher. Spirituality is very personal.

So, you eventually forgave your teacher when you found her good intent. Have you found the good intent of those classmates?

With that theory that God’s forgiveness should be unconditional, I cannot imagine the possible reasons for the assumption that I eventually forgave my teacher? I also cannot imagine the reasons to assume knowledge of the “good intent” of others? With that umbrella of unconditional forgiveness, I do not understand the point of personal questions.

In addition, I accept human’s intellect and free will. That is why I said “may or may not” in post 551:
“In re-thinking this question, I may or may not resent someone for doing something I do not like. I am sure that in junior high, I resented certain classmates. I remember a specific high school teacher that I really resented. I got over that when I discovered she was right in her recommendation of a university for me. I never apologized to them nor asked for their forgiveness because I never shared my thoughts with them. Thus, they were not hurt.”
With that theory that God’s forgiveness should be unconditional, it is understandable to overlook the free will possibility that I could “resent” someone for doing something good.

Perhaps I use the word “resentment”, and you are separating it from anger. Anger and resentment are somewhat interchangeable. When you are angry at someone, do you actively seek to forgive, or do you wait for life to hand you awareness, as it happened with your high school teacher?

In my neighborhood, there is a tad difference between resentment and anger. However, it is understandable that in other neighborhoods, it is possible to interchange resentment and anger because God’s forgiveness is thought to be unconditional. I do not live in “other neighborhoods.” I like my own neighborhood where a spade is called a spade.

 

[fhansen]

:clapping:

I still don’t think it is a matter of “pride”. We all have the God-given drives to dominate, attain status, attain power, and be in control of our destinies (freedom). To say “I know better than God” is a statement from ignorance. Studies with infants show that ingroup/outgroup thinking involves an automatic blindness. To me, there is nothing, including “pride”, to hold against the human. I know, this is probably the same way you are thinking, but it was difficult to discern your tone in that section.

Thanks for the link to that post.

We also have God-given free will which can potentially allow us to override any normal, God-given drives, virtues, etc. And that’s basically what the doctrine of OS maintains. Plain old everyday humdrum human pride is, in essence, the exaltation of self over everything else. It’s a step out of place, a disjunction, a foreign object that, ultimately, is the cause of the greatest-and least-sins in the world and the suffering that ensues.

You mentioned Hitler, an extreme example. His motivation for the holocaust and WW II was more than a desire to improve the lot of his people coupled with a blindness to the humanity of Jews. The primary motivation behind his strange ideas and everything they led to, the main cause of his finding a way to rationalize inhumanity-was blind ambition: the petty desire for power, self-glory. Separation from God, made evident by lack of faith in, and, even more importantly lack of hope in, and, most importantly, lack of love for God, as well as neighbor, constitue an injustice in man, regardless of whether or not he’s directly responsible for it. What we are responsible for, the choice we can make, is to come to find God and turn to Him, rectifying this injustice. The reason Jesus emphasized the supreme value of humility in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere is because its the pathway to God, to peace and harmony, and away from the discord and destructiveness of pride, away from the wedge it seeks to place between us and Him.

 

[OneSheep]

With that theory that God’s forgiveness should be unconditional, I cannot imagine the possible reasons for the assumption that I eventually forgave my teacher?

You have me confused, granny. It sure sounded like you forgave your teacher. And what does that have to do with what I know in my relationship with God?

And as far as “a theory that God’s forgiveness should be conditional”, please, read my posts. I have never presented God’s love as theory. Love is unconditional. And forgiveness, because it is an act of love, is also unconditional. I know as a fact, a fact grounded in my own relationship with God and verified by many other people, that God’s love and forgiveness are unconditional. It is not a matter of “should”. It is a matter of “is”. However, if you want to call it a theory, that is acceptable to me.

I am guessing that unconditional love is not part of your experience. But then again, that is an invalid assumption. I am assuming that you love God unconditionally. On the other hand, God is in the least of His people, so your unconditional love of God would have to include unconditional love of others. I am confused. Please straighten me out here.

I also cannot imagine the reasons to assume

Finding people’s good intent is a means toward forgiveness. As I have been hammering away, here (literally, for sometimes I think about your posts while at work), I am encouraging you to forgive others. When you forgive everyone, including yourself, you may have a different view of the “theory”. Are you afraid to forgive others, because you might come to see Original Sin in a different way?

I am sure that in junior high, I resented certain classmates. I remember a specific high school teacher that I really resented.

Okay, let’s break from the personal a little. Let’s say you have a daughter who comes home from school angry at her high school classmate Kate. She tells you what an awful person Kate is, and tells you all the terrible things that Kate did. Would you encourage her to forgive?

[/INDENT]With that theory that God’s forgiveness should be unconditional, it is understandable to overlook the free will possibility that I could “resent” someone for doing something good.

In my neighborhood, there is a tad difference between resentment and anger. However, it is understandable that in other neighborhoods, it is possible to interchange resentment and anger because God’s forgiveness is thought to be unconditional. I do not live in “other neighborhoods.” I like my own neighborhood where a spade is called a spade.

You’ve lost me in this last section. Do you still resent someone for doing something good? Did you ever resent someone for doing something that at the time of the act you saw the action as good? I am confused again. And what does the interchange have to do with God’s unconditional forgiveness? Does one will to resent? Like, “I think I am going to randomly choose to resent that person.”? We have some big differences in our experiences and definitions, granny. Fascinating! (And I mean that in a “wonder” way, this is really interesting, and I obviously have much to learn about your outlook.)

So, in my neighborhood, anger is a quick reaction, unsustainable after a minute or so unless the act triggering the anger is repeatedly thought about. Resentment is a sustained negative feeling/perception toward someone or something. Resentment is “holding something against someone”. What are the definitions in your neighborhood? Is forgiveness called for, in your neighborhood, in either or both situations?

 

[vames]

How very sad. I am truly sorry.

What is the link between OS and what I wrote earlier about Purgatory, loving our neighbor and the meaning of childbirth pains? The artificial segmentation of our thinking and an unresolved cognitive disonance.

On the one hand, we try to live according to our idea about a good God, to trust and to follow this goodness as Jesus taught us. For example, to curse someone is a sin, to torture someone is a sin, to refuse to forgive someone is a sin, to desire vengeance in order to do evil to someone is a sin, to apply death penalty “if non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor” is a sin. We say that these things are sins because we want to imitate God’s goodness and we know that He can’t do such bad things, right? And we know that man can’t be better and kinder than God, being held to higher moral standards than God, right?

But on the other hand, if we are sincere and read Genesis with fresh eyes, in that text we encounter an unforgiving God, behaving not like a father, but like an ancient tyrant, committing all the sins mentioned above. Such vengeance towards A&E and all humankind surpasses even the ancient law “an eye for an eye”. If we didn’t know anything about Genesis before reading it and if instead of “God” we’d read “an Oriental unknown deity”, we’d simply laugh at the pettiness of such deity. So if we want to reconcile the image of our good God with this image of a vengeful God, we have two options:

1. To cling to the belief that Genesis offers us a true image of God. So we need to deceive ourselves: ignore some verses… justify God’s curse by pretending that A&E were inimaginably bad and ungrateful… deny that what God did was to take revenge against powerless creatures… demean and accuse ourselves and our neighbors (the whole human race) as “fallen” and “broken” and “deserving hell”. Hey, why should I love and forgive my neighbor if God needed such a cruel sacrifice to forgive us and even this sacrifice couldn’t move Him to lift the curse against the whole human race? Why should I care about a woman who dies in childbirth, since all women deserve to pay for what Eve did? “I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing” clearly shows a deity who takes pleasure in torturing people, in applying random punishments (are childbirth pains a JUST REPARATION for the disobedience of Eve?), just because he can. Can we pretend that childbirth pains are just a minor thing? Or a sign of God’s love? Or a sign of God’s justice?
2. To see the text of Genesis for what it is: a primitive explanation about suffering and death by attributing them to a divine curse. But the pressure to accept Genesis as literal truth is strong - if one rejects it as incompatible with everything that we know about God’s fatherly love, it means that he or she is badly catechized, dumb or a heretic. Oh, but we don’t want to become heretics, right? So even if we believe in God’s goodness, deep in our minds there remains a residual fear of a capricious deity who can crush us anytime and who doesn’t hesitate to “greatly increase our pangs”, in this life or in the afterlife. That’s why, for example, my mind clouded by grief could fall prey to those sadistic representations about Purgatory, with souls screaming in pain and imploring a divine mercy that sometimes refuses to come until the end of the earth. Jesus, what Jesus? Burning fire and hundreds of years of torture!

 

[simpleas]

The best refutations of the idea of a good God come precisely from the text of Genesis, and they are not subtle at all.
Let’s see again.
You say: the Original Sin has serious consequences. What consequences are you talking about?
According to the Genesis, BECAUSE of the Original Sin, women are explicitly cursed by God (the pains of childbirth), men are explicitly cursed by God (they should “eat their bread in the sweat of heir face”), all the living creatures are explicitly cursed by God (they suffer and die, even the dinosaurs and mollusks who lived long before Adam and Eve) and the earth is cursed (it became hostile towards human beings: “thorns and thistles”, famines, storms, earthquakes).
Are these proofs that the God of Genesis is good, loving, forgiving?
Can you explain the logical relationship between committing one act of disobedience and all the women being punished with the pains of childbirth, until the last woman who will live on this earth?
Can you explain the logical relationship between two human beings committing one act of disobedience and the suffering and death of all animals and plants, even the ones that lived before Adam and Eve?
When I was a kid and someone (usually an Orthodox) said “Poor X (a woman), she almost died giving birth - well, she paid for the sin of Eve”, one of my Catholic relatives used to reply: “Nonsense, God is good, this has to do with the laws of nature, not with a punishment ordered by God!”. I could never bring myself to believe that suffering and death are punishments ordered by God because of a sin of our ancestors. I could never bring myself to believe the second account of Genesis, with a God that punishes all the human race for a mistake of our ancestors. I stronlgy believe in the goodness of God. That’s why nobody can force me to believe in a God who curses people (Genesis 3) and who committs genocide because He “was sorry that He had made humankind on the earth” (Genesis 6-7).

When you say about someone saying a woman nearly died in child birth, that one person says she’s paid for the sin of Eve, and another person says its natures law, this got me thinking.

Do we see ourselves as always paying for the O.S and/or our own personnal sin. Do we think when we sin, “that was my own fault”, or would we be allowed to think, “well i did this with my freewill, but i have a stain on me that doesn’t help, therefore i’m a sinner”

Another question :
If we stopped receiving the sacraments, because we no longer see ourselves as the humans that contracted O.S, therefore refusing anymore grace from God, would we become not so good people, who turn to living in a very unchristian way?

 

[grannymh]

When you say about someone saying a woman nearly died in child birth, that one person says she’s paid for the sin of Eve, and another person says its natures law, this got me thinking.

Do we see ourselves as always paying for the O.S and/or our own personnal sin.

The Catholic Church does not teach that descendants pay for the Original Sin. (CCC, 405) The Catholic Church does teach that we “pay” for our own personal sins via the correct *Catholic *understanding of “God’s forgiveness for personal sins.”

 

[grannymh]

What is the link between OS and what I wrote earlier about Purgatory, loving our neighbor and the meaning of childbirth pains? The artificial segmentation of our thinking and an unresolved cognitive disonance.

When personal interpretation avoids Catholic teachings surrounding Adam and Original Sin, I have no clue as to how to answer questions.

 

[grannymh]

You have me confused, granny. It sure sounded like you forgave your teacher. And what does that have to do with what I know in my relationship with God?

When God’s forgiveness is watered down, it is very easy to have confusion with my posts 551 and 599. Don’t worry about it. As far as the question “And what does that have to do with what I know in my relationship with God?” – I have no clue because you are the one in charge of your relationship with God. All I can do is to point out Catholic teachings so you and readers can make your own decisions.

 

[vames]

I still don’t think it is a matter of “pride”. We all have the God-given drives to dominate, attain status, attain power, and be in control of our destinies (freedom). To say “I know better than God” is a statement from ignorance. Studies with infants show that ingroup/outgroup thinking involves an automatic blindness. To me, there is nothing, including “pride”, to hold against the human. I know, this is probably the same way you are thinking, but it was difficult to discern your tone in that section.

Yes, but I don’t know how to refer to it more clearly. Let’s say I’m proud of my city. By this pride I understand the solidarity with the history of my city, the acknowledging of its beauty, refined culture etc, the idea that my city deserves praise and can be an example for other cities. But the same pride can exacerbate until it clouds my mind and I say: other cities are inferior, ugly, backward, their dirty citizens shouldn’t be allowed to enter my city, I have to fight until my city is proclaimed the capital of the country instead of the corrupted and worthless city which is now the capital.

 

[vames]

When you say about someone saying a woman nearly died in child birth, that one person says she’s paid for the sin of Eve, and another person says its natures law, this got me thinking.

Do we see ourselves as always paying for the O.S and/or our own personnal sin. Do we think when we sin, “that was my own fault”, or would we be allowed to think, “well i did this with my freewill, but i have a stain on me that doesn’t help, therefore i’m a sinner”

Another question :
If we stopped receiving the sacraments, because we no longer see ourselves as the humans that contracted O.S, therefore refusing anymore grace from God, would we become not so good people, who turn to living in a very unchristian way?

It depends on whether we have a literal belief in the text of Genesis. There was an old theological dilemma: did the Blessed Virgin Mary suffer the pains of childbirth or not? did she die or not? - knowing that if she was free from OS, then she must have been free of such pains and free from death, as opposed to all of the other women who have to endure the same fate as Eve. An example here in Aquinas (article 6), where he argues that pains of childbirth are linked to “the stain of sexual mingling”.

Happily, now we know that marital relations are natural and good, so they can’t be considered a “defilement of sin” and a “stain of sexual mingling”, so the existence of childbirth pains isn’t explained anymore by the text of Genesis. Likewise, we have now a better understanding of the laws of nature, so the existence of earthquakes, human diseases or the death of dinosaurs can’t be explained anymore as a divine punishment for the OS. Likewise, we have now a better understanding of how our mind works, so we know that we sin because we are imperfect, developing beings who need guidance and experience and not because of a fallen nature that didn’t exist before the OS (again, if A&E were really perfect, unlike us, they couldn’t choose to sin).

The sacraments are necessary, because we can’t aspire towards perfection without God’s grace. This is an objective fact: consider this beautiful meditation of the Pope Emeritus about “Evangelium” (good news) and the primacy of God’s grace in our life: “the first word, the true initiative, the true activity comes from God and only by inserting ourselves into the divine initiative, only by begging for this divine initiative, shall we too be able to become — with him and in him — evangelizers”. My catechism says: “The doctrine of the Sacraments shows us the nature and right use of those means which Jesus Christ has instituted to remit our sins, give us His grace, infuse into and increase in us the virtues of faith, hope, and charity”.

On the other hand, God isn’t bound by His sacraments, which explains why people who are unbaptized or can’t receive the Eucharist can sometimes live in a very Christian way. The same fact that God isn’t bound by His sacraments is reflected in CCC 1261: “the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: ‘Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,’ allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism”.

 

[ynotzap]

Be true to thy self: I know what I’m capable of, and I know first hand what original sin has done to humanity. Even when it was removed by Baptism I and the rest of humanity that were Baptized still suffer from its effects. Ignorance of the truth, weakness of will and concupiscience. After looking into my life and observing the lives of others I knew I ,and others needed help.outside ourselves. It led me to admit the following: I am proud, an egoist, self-righteous, despairing , lazy, murderous every time I hate, distrusting, selfish and a thief. In short I am a sinner. Jesus Christ came for people like me and I have all the qualifications Alleluia! I will always be these things in myself and I must never forget it especially when I am tempted to condemn others. In my sickness , I must learn to glory and accept my greatest cross, Me.

In Jesus Christ I am an adopted son of God, heir to His kingdom, endowed with His Spirit, sharing His priestly, kingly, and prophetic powers, but still a servant son. All of this is merited and freely given to me by my Father through His Son, Jesus, my God-man, brother and Redeemer. As an unworthy sinner I repent and accept my Father’s gift of Love , His Son, Jesus Christ. This blessing and knowledge has lifted me up from depression, discouragement and sadness, life is a war, not of flesh and blood, but of powers and principalities. Satan is always doing his best to bring us down, keep our eyes on Jesus He never fails us, and He gives us indomitable strength. PRAISE GOD!