Original Sin

Original sin is often misunderstood. Sin is an impediment. An obstacle. Most of the sin we hear talk about, the sin is by our own free choice. Sin: anything you knowingly choose to put between yourself and God, is sin.

Original sin is different, but easy enough to understand. Original sin is also an impediment, an obstacle between us and God. What's misunderstood is the nature of the impediment, because it is one we were created with, rather than one we chose. How is this so?

Original sin is very simply: the natural consequence of God's gift.

God's gift to us is life. "God's gift" means - that life is ours. It is no longer God's. God's gift is a gift fully given. From the moment the gift is given, it is fully ours. God doesn't gift with strings attached!

All original sin means is that God gave you your life. So you could make your self, so you could choose and grow into who you will become, God gave you your life. What original sin means is that God won't force you to give yourself back to God, not if you don't want to. That choice-as-yet-unmade is the separation, and the impediment.

Once we give ourselves fully and freely back to God - if we choose to give ourselves back to God! - we are then fully our own and fully God's. The impediment of original sin is gone. We are still fully our own - because we have not rejected God's gift! But we are now fully God's, as well. We have brought God's gift of life full circle, by adding our own life to it - the life we are making, and have made - and giving it as a gift to God.

We are fully ours and fully God's, because each of us has kept what the other has given.