Original Sin Revisited

On one occasion, I do not recall exactly the topic we were discussing, but I remember vividly the question of a student who raised his hand flagging me down while I was in the middle of discussing our need to be thankful to God for helping us to perform good deeds. “Sister, Sister,” the student called out, waving me down. He asked, “Why is it that when we do something good, you always say that it is with God's help? And when we do something bad, it is only us? Isn't God involved in both cases?”

At once, I realized the question was a reverberation of the primeval sin of pride, the sin that caused the fall of our first parents, wounded our nature, and brought about suffering and death. My response to him was that God is the source of all goodness, therefore, all the good that we do comes from God. However, we are responsible for bad actions because they are the results of the misuse of our free will, that is, our refusal of the good and ultimately our rejection of God and His help. The student who posed the question did not seem very satisfied with my response but did not object so I did not pursue it either.

Yet his question and implicit assertions (unconscious on his part, I'm sure) oddly capture the age-old sin of man present throughout history, beginning with Adam and Eve. Two observations can be made from the assertions. First of all, there exists an implicit denial of God's grace in aiding us to do good, reminiscent of the heresy of Pelagianism which St. Augustine contended with and vanquished in the fourth century. This assertion boldly claims that I can do good, including attaining salvation, on my own without God's help. I am in charge and the good that I do is all me, all my doing. In this way I can be independent of God and can decide for myself the good I need to do to achieve my salvation. Ultimately, I don't need God and I am going to decide what is good and what is evil: “The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it” (Gen.3:6) Once again, it is the sin of pride, asserting one's autonomy.

The second observation concerns a different type of pride. It can be stated as follows: if I am to credit God with helping me in performing good deeds, I must also make Him party to my evil deeds as well since He enables me to act at all. A different form of pride, but pride nonetheless. This kind of pride asserts that I cannot really be held responsible for the evil that I do, for God is behind all my actions by enabling me to carry out actions. Again it is the shifting of the blame, not admitting my culpability and capability of doing evil. We can hear similar words resounding from primeval times, “The woman whom you put here with me—she gave me the fruit so I ate it,” The woman in turn replied, “The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it” (Gen.3:12-13).

We can deduce from the two observations a lack of humility, or a failure in knowing the truth about God and man. We do not know God to acknowledge our need of His help in our daily lives in order to do good and persevere in doing good. Likewise, we do not know ourselves to admit our guilt in choosing to do evil deeds and not to shift the blame to someone or some circumstance. Only when we own up to our sinfulness can we realize our need for God and His graces. Knowing God and knowing ourselves in relation to God constitutes humility. Who can boast of anything while being aware of his lowliness in the presence of God who is infinite, perfect in all ways? So long as we fail to recognize God and our need for God, we will most definitely persist in our sins and sinful ways. This persistence in sin is a direct rejection of God who by His nature is completely opposed to sin.

In conclusion, it is our rejection of God that manifests itself in our bad actions and God, who by allowing us to exercise our free will, in no way is an accomplice in our evil deeds as my student had tried to claim. So yes, when we do something good, it is only through God's help. But when we do something bad, we are on own and thus have only ourselves to blame.

Sr. Anne Frances Le, OP