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, existence, for a start, which is the precondition for any other good, 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 privations, 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.

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 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

Original sin caused us to lose our relationship with God, which is the worst evil that could happen to a creature. And yet, when we’re born, we’re born estranged from God. Also, our psychological character is compromised. 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 have birth defects and horrible illnesses. We fall apart with age, and we get tired easily, 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

A Better Father

This is what we mean when we say we’re all born in Original Sin. It doesn’t mean we commit sin as soon as we’re born, or that we’re born guilty for something we didn’t do. It means we’re born into the humanity that was damaged by Adam’s original sin. Of course, we should honor Adam and Eve, as we should honor all our parents, since they are the source of our lives, and life, even wounded life, is a great and beautiful good. But we also have to acknowledge that we suffer because of their failings as parents, which should come as no surprise, because that’s also the case with our immediate parents.

But here’s something to remember: we are all ultimately made for a relationship with God, the Heavenly Father. Which means that nothing any human parent could give, no matter how great a mother or father they are, would ever be enough for our happiness. The incompleteness of what any human parent can offer, whether they’re great parents or lousy parents, should just serve as an incentive for us to go beyond our human parents and seek the Divine Parent who is the source and supplement of all human parenthood. 

Don’t give in to resentment towards Adam and Eve. Don’t give in to resentment for the limitations of your own parents. And don’t give in to discouragement about your own failure as a father or a mother. God used Adam and Eve’s sin as the occasion for the coming of the Savior, and He uses every parental failing as the occasion for drawing all Adam’s children to Himself. Rejoice that God has supplemented for the failings of human fathers and mothers. And respond to those failings with forgiveness and a newfound resolution to build a relationship with the Father who never lets His children down.

Suggested Resolutions:

Choose one resolution for today to help you grow closer to God, or create your own. Here are some ideas to inspire you. 

• Original sin impacts all of us, which is why it’s important to be forgiving with our brothers and sisters, even our parents. When you feel resentment this week, remember that we all have shortcomings.

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