Episode Transcript  

One

What we get from our parents

It’s amazing the influence parents have on our lives. Each of us receives good things from our parents, life, but also traits, looks, and manners of speech. Usually, our parents give us food and clothing and care, education, affection, skill-sets, and countless other resources. But it’s also true that our parents fail each of us in some way. And they fail us by not giving us certain things we have a right to expect. They fail us by not giving us proper care or education. They sometimes fail us by not bringing us up in the faith. They certainly fail us whenever they fail to give us a good example. And these things our parents fail to give us often start us out in life with a sort of handicap.

Well, the doctrine of Original Sin is basically just the first and most universal case of our parents not providing us with something they should have. It’s the story of our first parents, Adam and Eve, squandering what should have been our inheritance. That causes us to start out in life with a kind of existential handicap. But, of course, that isn’t the end of the story. Jesus Christ comes to restore what Adam lost, and to give us even more than we lost.

Two

The Original Sin

The first sin was committed before the human race ever entered the picture. It was committed by Satan and his followers. But Satan’s sin, by itself, couldn’t have damaged us if Adam and Eve hadn’t listened to Satan in the garden. But they did listen to Satan. They listened to him and decided they wanted to become like God without God. They turned their back on the creator of all things so they could have what they wanted when they wanted it. 

It was a sin of pride, a sin of worldliness, a sin of disobedience, a sin of disordered desire, as every human sin would be ever after. And the thing is, God is the source of all goods, including the good of our own human nature. So you can’t cut off your relationship with God without it having negative repercussions throughout your whole life. And that’s exactly what happened to our first parents. They became wounded in every aspect of their humanity. And then they passed that wounded humanity down to us.

Three

Internal Wounds

By original sin, Adam and Eve broke their relationship with God and lost sanctifying grace, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the participation in God’s own divine life that made them His children. And because you cannot hand on what you no longer possess, they could not pass this grace on to the human race. So we are born loved by God and made in His image, but without God’s divine life in our souls. That life must be restored by Baptism.

Also, the powers of our soul have been wounded. Our intellect is weak, and knowing the truth, especially the most important truths, is difficult. Our will is weak, and doing what we’re supposed to do, especially when it comes to pursuing the perfection of virtue, is really difficult. And our feelings are all over the place. Sometimes we have a real hankering for things that are totally destructive, or we have a real distaste for the greatest goods life has to offer.

Finally, our physical character is damaged. We get tired easily, and we get horrible illnesses. We fall apart with age, and eventually, we die. God didn’t make us like this. He didn’t make us estranged from Him, or psychologically and physically broken. Our first parents broke our humanity. And then that broken humanity was all they were able to hand on to us.

Four

External Damage

We should also point out that the first sin of Adam and Eve didn’t just cause us internal damage, it also damaged the way we relate to things outside of us. Right after their sin, Adam and Eve couldn’t even look at each other right, so they had to put on clothes. Adam blames Eve for offering him the apple in the first place, and God says that the relationship between Adam and Eve will be strained from here on out. And then, of course, when they have kids, one of their sons kills the other one.

So after sin, our relationships with other people are a mess. Men and women, husbands and wives, parents and children, siblings and strangers. All those relationships are subject to a strain, and it takes effort to keep them from turning into all-out hostility. And even our relationship with the natural world is damaged. God says that the ground won’t bear food easily, which is a symbol of the whole way the human person has become out of sync with nature. Floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, and natural disasters of all kinds show the disconnect between us and our environment.

The animals, too, which before the fall came to Adam without fear so he could name them, these flee in fear or, sometimes, attack us lethally. 

Why did all this happen? Because God is the source of all order, and you can’t damage your relationship with Him without throwing a wrench in the gears of the world and getting off-kilter with everything else. And this, too, is part of our heritage from that first sin of Adam and Eve.

Five

Go to the Father

Adam and Eve failed us. They lost the life of grace, the indwelling of God. And they hand on a wounded human nature. In this way, Adam and Eve are not so different from all parents. Our parents gave us many good things: life, care, protection, affection, education, and countless gifts. But they also failed us in some way. And we fail our children, too. Why? Because no human father or mother is the source of divine life. No human parent is the source of perfect love, mercy, healing, forgiveness, and happiness. Only God the Father is.

That is why Jesus tells us the story of the Prodigal Son. The son is wounded, lost, ashamed, and far from home. But the Father is watching for him. The Father runs to him. The Father embraces him. The Father restores him. So do not remain trapped in resentment toward Adam and Eve, toward your parents, or toward yourself. Go home to the Father. He alone can restore what was lost.

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