The Human Problem

Human beings are made in the image of God, but how do we account for the way we fail to reflect God in our lives?

Early Christian theologians in both the West (Catholic) and the East (Orthodox) recognized that something happened to the image of God in human beings (it is lost or marred). I will concentrate on the way this has been expressed in the West, as this view has shaped most of the ideas that exist in the context of the United States. This Western theology has become extremely problematic for modern people, and it is known as original sin.

First, why talk about a human problem at all? Can’t we just say that humans are good because God made us that way? This is certainly the starting point for any thinking about human beings from a Christian theological point of view, and it secures the need to recognize the dignity of every human being. It is also evident, though, that human beings do many ungodly things. Not only are there many horrors of human making, but also even ordinarily “good” people fall short of the life God intends for us. Christian theology recognizes that all of us are touched by the human problem in some way. The problem needs to be acknowledged, but Christian theology also looks to how God’s work heals and restores.

To understand the problem, we need to know what God intended for humans in the first place. Augustine reflected on this matter in The City of God, and his reflections inform much of Western theology. God created Adam in a state of integrity (original righteousness). In this state the human will could function as God intended. Righteousness is keeping human will in accordance with God’s will. Adam could choose to conform his will to God’s or not, There was genuine choice. Adam could sin or not sin. When he ate the fruit Eve offered, he chose doing his own will over doing God’s will. Because Adam made that choice, something about human nature itself (contained in Adam) changed and was passed on to all the humans that followed. Even though Adam initially had the capacity to remain in alignment with God’s will so as not to sin, human nature after that first sin lost the ability to remain aligned and so is now, according to Augustine, unable not to sin.

So in the West, the goodness of our creation was understood to be compromised in Adam so that all of us are now in a state of corruption rather than a state of integrity. The word “corruption” needs to be understood in the sense that we use it for corrupt files on a computer. It’s not that corrupt files are morally evil, but they no longer function as they should. Our human nature no longer functions as God intended it to function, and because of this malfunction we have lost our ability to truly and completely conform our wills to God’s will. Augustine’s idea is that none of us can avoid sin because our nature has been corrupted in this way.

This account of the human problem is problematic for many people for many reasons. In our time, many find it no longer credible to think of Adam and Eve as actual existing humans in the past. The way of explaining transmission of this corrupt nature through sex has twisted attitudes about sex. For women, the role of Eve (seen as temptress) has had devastating effects. The idea of inherited corrupt nature seems far-fetched. Equally disturbing is the way the church has related the problem to inherited guilt so that parents fear their children will be damned if they are not baptized.

These are questions and problems that press for reconsideration of how to think of the human problem. In addition to these more modern questions, the body of Christians in the world do not all hold the same view. The trajectory of the Western church (historically Latin speaking) on this topic is different from the trajectory of the Eastern church (historically Greek speaking) This difference is due partly to translation problems regarding what Paul says about sin in Romans as the Bible was translated into Latin from Greek and partly due to the Pelagian controversy that influenced Augustine. For all these reasons, the long assumed understanding of the human problem deserves renewed reflection. Thankfully there are scholars engaged in such work (see Tatha Wiley Original Sin: Origins, Development, Contemporary Meanings).

We do not have to think exactly as Augustine did in order to recognize universal need for God. Nor do we have to use the language “original sin.” The founding theologian of my tradition (John Wesley) sometimes used the term “inbeing sin.” Despite alternate language, he did think the concept of a human problem was essential. In his sermon on original sin, he says “Know your disease! Know your cure!” Christian theology is built on the idea that we need something that Jesus Christ provides. We have to recognize our problem in order to look for help. Figuring out what Jesus provides will be covered more in the Jesus Christ posts to come.

Augustine attributed Adam’s sin to pride, and the Western theological tradition has maintained this idea that pride gave rise to sin. In recent years, theologians have explored other sources of sin. For instance an insight from feminist theologians in the 20th century is that a lack of a sense of self may lead people into sin as much as pride can. Liberation theologians point out the oppression of communities is a category of sinfulness that goes unnoticed in the individualistic pride model of Western theology. Some theologians now are exploring a way to expand the human problem beyond sin itself to include the sinned against. The Korean word han draws attention to the sorrow, shame, and pain experienced by people who are victims of a perpetrator’s sin. Han is also an aspect of the human problem, but it has been mostly unrecognized by Christian theologians. (See The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin by Andrew Sung Park).

Original sin is not just about the first sin of Adam. It is also about the origin of sin in each of our lives, that is, how various sins that we commit originate from our condition of not being who we were created to be, that is, not righteously aligned with God (the term “inbeing sin” aptly captures this problem). One of my teachers suggested using Sin (singular and with a Capital S–the condition of not being right with God) and sins (lower case and plural–the behaviors that follow from the condition). Those behaviors may range broadly. Protestants have even recognized that good actions can be sinful, for instance good deeds tainted with self-interest, because they do not arise from true saving faith (fiducia–see previous post on Faith). In this view, if we have divided trust instead of full trust in God, then the deed, no matter how noble and helpful, does not have the character of true faithfulness. All too often we focus on the behavior instead of the underlying condition of not being aligned with God. That is a little like trying to cure a disease just by relieving the symptoms. The sins that we commit are a symptom of the deep problem Sin, our condition of being out of alignment with God. The human problem is so serious we cannot correct it ourselves. We need God’s saving and healing work in our lives. Christians look to Jesus Christ for this work.

Despite the many problems that deserve ongoing attention, the heart of the doctrine of original sin is to convey that human beings fall short of what God intends for us and that Jesus Christ enables us to fulfill God’s intention. It tells us we have a deep need for God and this need must be filled in order for us to be who we were created to be. There may be many ways to talk about and address this human problem, but acknowledging its existence is the starting point for understanding the good news of Jesus Christ.