Born Beautiful!

Even the obviously UGLY new born baby is beautiful. The head can be distorted as a result of coming through the birth canal. Red smudges may show themselves for the same reasons. There can be no hair, too much hair, you name it. That the child has arrived and is healthy is all that matters. What a beautiful baby! Praises to God for such a miracle of life. Original sin? Give me a break!

One of my favorite ex-communicated Catholic priests is Matthew Fox, not to be confused with Quaker, George Fox, or mystic, Emmet Fox. Matthew said, “We enter a broken and torn and sinful world- that’s for sure. But we do not enter as blotches on existence, as sinful creatures, we burst into the world as “original blessings“.

His book that was entitled Original Blessing got him the ax by Ratzinger, who is now the Pope!

I just finished reading a most remarkable book by Herbert Haag (Is Original Sin In Scriptures). Of his many arguments against such a concept is this quote on page 107, “No man enters the world a sinner. As the creature and image of God he is from his first hour surrounded by God’s fatherly love.”

That’s GOOD NEWS!

We are NOT the object of the wrath of God. We never have been and certainly are not at birth. We are the object of God’s love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness. A man becomes a sinner only through his own individual actions.

I don’t need an “original sin” concept strapped to my birth to know why SIN is in the world. The world is corrupt. Duh! Man has the choice to sin or not, and the pressures to do so are great!

Original sin or “hereditary sin” is not supportable by either Genesis 1-3 or Romans 5, but we strain at gnats, or at least St. Augustine did and handed us the baton of a hole we have to dig ourselves out of by all kinds of religious rules.

For me, we’re all are born beautiful. But it doesn’t take long after that to mess things up. Hey, after all, we are humans and this is the third dimension, not the fourth. What do you expect?

God’s grace through Jesus, that’s what I expect!