Sinless

Last year, I was chatting with a friend around my age who, like me, grew up tightly ensconced in evangelical Christian culture and, like me, figured out how to escape its grasp in adulthood. I can’t remember exactly what in our conversation triggered the thought, but it occurred to me that some people in this world are raised without the idea of original sin — that some lucky folks actually have childhoods where they aren’t told, from as far back as they can remember, they are inherently bad and in need of forgiveness for simply having been born.

When I voiced my revelation, this friend and I tried to imagine what that would be like. It seemed baffling. We understood intellectually this must be an option, a thing that people have experienced as normal, but it was — and still is — impossible for me to even conceive of what it would be like to live without the notion of sin. Not to live without making mistakes or doing harm, mind you, but to live without the concept that you are supposed to be perfect and every time you miss that mark it is not only a manifestation of your inborn corruption but also a personal affront to the entire cosmos.

It’s been over a decade since I decided to leave Christianity and even still it is a daily practice for me to chip away at the hard core of self-hatred that was instilled in me from the most tender age. It keeps me from being able to accept myself as I am. I am constantly working to convince me that I am good. I have been trained to police and judge myself before a vengeful, all-powerful deity gets His chance to, and I am very skilled at it.

But what if I didn’t? What if I figured out how to stop my brain from perceiving any mistake I make as proof that I am hopeless, despicable, naturally unworthy of acceptance and love? What if I learned how to trust that there is and should be grace and forgiveness for me on the other side of my mess-ups — not because a guilt-tripping God sent his own son to be killed to cover up my imperfections, which are apparently so bad they require a blood sacrifice, but because being imperfect is not in and of itself wrong?

It’s like a science fiction story to me. When I think of what it would be like to exist never having learned about sin, I hear the movie trailer voice-over in my head: “In a world….” It’s a world I would like to live in, but I don’t know how to get there. It’s a fantasy I am trying to make a reality, but building a sinless universe even just inside my own mind involves way more razing of old ideas than construction of new ones, and it is exhausting. All I can think is, why would anyone instill these beliefs in a child? Why would they leave us so much to undo?

I guess they never think you’re going to leave. They assume a sense of one’s own inherent and true goodness would never make its way into the mind of a believer who’s been properly inculcated and immunized against such heresy. They don’t expect that you’ll ever mind thinking of yourself as irredeemably dirty, because you won’t know any different.

Well, a whole lot of us former evangelicals have caught a glimpse of a better definition of love than we were raised with, and it turns out this concept of inherent sin — this sinister, perverse tool that seeks to control people, especially young people, by starving their souls — is not so compelling compared to actual kindness, compassion, grace, empathy…. You know, all of the stuff we were promised but never allowed to taste, let alone feast on?

I may not be very good at loving myself yet, or trusting in my own inborn beauty. The “sin”-free world I want to build inside my head may still be mostly ruins as I continue to deconstruct the tenets that don’t serve me anymore — that perhaps never served me. But maybe the place I’m dreaming of getting to is more than just a fantasy or a nice piece of speculative fiction. Maybe, if I keep trying to believe in my natural sinlessness and keep learning about what it means to start from a place of “I am good,” it will get easier with time. And maybe, if enough of us keep trying simultaneously, some momentum will build, and it will start to become obvious that love is not a thing we have to worry about giving too much of. That love is not what spoils us.

I would love to love myself one day. I will try to keep making it happen.