Into the Wardrobe

A Jewish journalist wonders if the Christians might be right about original sin.

"Religion really is a disaster area, a spawning ground for hatred and mass murder. But hold on. Hasn’t anti religion caused just as much trouble. Wasn’t there supposed to be the Brotherhood of Man, the perfect society that Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot all wanted to achieve, equality and happiness for all? How many millions died thanks to them?

I just don’t understand it. The moment people come up with a way to make the world a better place they turn into homicidal maniacs, Jihad, Inquisition, hatred. What is it with us humans?
I’m not a Christian and I do not believe in ‘original sin.’ So why? Is it just ‘freedom of choice’ and we just keep on making the wrong choices? Is it an errant chromosome ? Perhaps the Christians are right after all, ( so long as they don’t insist that I am wrong)!"

I take your point, Karen, but those two impulses are a far cry from original sin--the idea that since the fall people are born fundamentally evil. There's no concept of that in Judaism. In fact, you need Augustine to have that full doctrine (though Paul strongly implies it.)

That's not to say that you can't make a decent Biblical argument for original sin or that individual Jews can't believe in it...it's just foreign to the general framework of Judaism.

No one can control all of their appetites to a perfect degree. The crazy human bus weaves all over the road, no matter how much we wrestle the steering wheel. What's more, often enough and to our shame, we want it to.

The yetzer tov is too weak to subdue the yetzer ra. If so, that's a universal evil in my book, one we're born with.

If that's the end of the story, however, if people are fundamentally evil, why are they so often unhappy with that evil? Ashamed of that nakedness?

Suppose I had a magic pill that could cure violent tempers, cure addictions, cure all sorts of dark perversions, hatreds and so on. I can imagine that some would not take the pill, preferring their evil ways. But most would take it right-willingly.

Or would they... Hmmm.

Maybe we're fundamentally human.

[quote="moordarjeeling"

Plato had a metaphor about a chariot with two horses, one good and one bad, and a driver who can (with difficulty) do some steering.[/quote]

But is the driver good or bad? Or is he also pulled along by two smaller horses, and so on to an infinite regress.