The Original Sin, The Original Wound

In my journey from Pentecostal Protestantism to Catholicism (which is a whole other story), I made a detour in the world of the Eastern Orthodox Churches.  The story of how the early church splits into the Eastern and the Western churches is fascinating, but today I want to focus on the difference in how the two traditions approach Adam and Eve's misadventure in the Garden.

Western Christians (Catholics and Protestants) tend to describe the consequence of the Fall as our natural inclination to sin and rebel against God.  Eastern Christians, on the other hand, tend to talk about the woundedness of human nature as a consequence of the Fall.  Both concepts are important and are not mutually exclusive.  The two concepts are like having two speakers so that we can hear stereo sound.  The problem is that one of the speakers has been turned off in the Western world.  And that is unfortunate with sometimes tragic consequences.

One difference is that being a sinner is active, while being wounded is passive.  We do actively rebel against God, but that is not the whole story.  We are also wounded in our capacity to do right and we are truly powerless to change that.  In my previous post, I pointed out the obsession of hard core reformed christians to constantly qualify that grace is unmerited.  That association is inevitable if we can only see ourselves as actively rebelling against God.  I can't quite explain why that follows at this moment except to point out that to think of ourselves as being active sinners feels like being trapped in a prison cell of sin, opposed to being in a hospital bed having our wound treated by a loving physician.

A respected (protestant!) theologian once pointed out to me that while protestants critique catholics for believing they can earn their way to heaven, in actuality, it is the protestants who are obsessed about being saved.  This seems like another consequence of seeing ourselves as active sinners.  Despite the conscious proclamation that we are dead in our sins and we are powerless to change but for the (unmerited) grace of God, believing that we are active sinners unconsciously drive christians to want to get rid of our sins.  And since this is an impossible task, what christians end up doing is hiding our own sins from ourselves and projecting our sins onto other people.

I think the goodness from seeing our wounded nature is it allows us to be more compassionate toward ourselves and others and allows for a compassionate God who is okay with our sickness.  This also leads to a more realistic and grounded view of holiness.  Yes, I can grow in holiness, but I can also hold my own sickness at the same time.  Believing in God does not magically change me.  I want to do good and I can do good.  But I also want to do bad and I can hold that reality as well.  And by not repressing and projecting my own badness to others, I actually have a better chance of letting the medicine do its work.