CC--Christianese 19: Original Sin/Fallenness

--For many days now, we’ve been talking about sin, but it’s natural for someone to wonder what Christians mean when they talk about “original sin.” Is that something different from the sin Andrew’s been explaining all this time?
Yes, and no.
--If you understand that sin isn’t just breaking some rule, but rather the entire disordered condition of being human as captured in metaphors like a burden, a stain, a disease, a debt, a defacement, and a blindness or lostness, then you are prepared to realize that sin is literally the entire condition of humanity these days, what Christians call being in a “fallen state.”
--And so sin is a condition we all share by nature. And just as I have a brain and arms and a consciousness and the ability to reason because these are things I have inherited from my parents, so too do I have a sin-filled (usually called sinful) nature inherited from them. Every human being born from two sinful parents will have this basic sin nature.
--And the reason we have it is because our entire race was ruined by the disobedience of our ancestral parents, Adam and Eve.
--When they chose to disobey God in the Garden of Eden, they lost the condition of innocence and perfection they had been enjoying up until that point and became sinners.
--As a result, they lost the approval and immediate companionship of God and were cast out of the Garden with lots of other consequences.
--Since every human being was born after this event, all of the rest of us are born with this same basic defect. Some will say the defect is a total ruination, others will say it is something less than this. But the basic idea is that all humans are born defective, contaminated by sin, and therefore in need of being restored or redeemed or saved or whatever term you prefer to use.
--Christians also believe that although salvation delivers us from some of the consequences of this sinful condition, it does not necessarily deliver us from the condition itself or other of its consequences. That is why Christians still do wrong or lead lives of moral imperfection.