I don't believe in original sin as something to be ashamed of or equivalent to being a crime; rather I believe that sin is shame, the fear that we do not deserve love just as we are. By truly understanding that we are worth everything including the life of God himself we lay down that burden of shame, the conviction in our own fundamental unlovability, and know the myth of deserving love for the lie that it is. That is how we become truly free to love each other and create communities of compassion and courage.
While I appreciate the overall sentiment here, I'm not sure I understand the point about sin being shame. I think you're conflating sin in general with the legacy/consequences of Original Sin, but the Original Sin was the actions of Adam and Eve (which I know are up for a lot theological and philosophical debate), and sin itself is an action. It's funny you mentioned Terry Pratchett the other day, because I think he summed up the basic concept behind sin better than anything else I've ever seen, via one of his best characters: "And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is."
The reason sin is against the religion is because God wants us to love Him and love each other. Granted, there's also the whole Obey God thing in play, but I like to examine the root behind a given sin being a sin: why did God tell us not to do that? (Which is where I get skeptical of a lot of the Catholic Church's rules around sexuality. I'm not convinced that Jesus had a strong opinion about birth control within marriage.) To me, there's no real reason to attach shame to sin, other than the usual reason of feeling bad for hurting people, which I don't think is unreasonable, but that shame is still something that one should eventually get over. (Which gets into the Reconciliation process, the form of which is one of those things I think the Catholic Church really needs to have a long think about, but that's another discussion.)
I may be misinterpreting what you're saying, but I couldn't really find another meaning.
Overall, I admit that as a religious type (an a very unusual type of religious, I think), I find the concept of a culture derived from a religion that becomes separate from the religion itself is rather odd. However, I'm mystified in general by Identity as something external, or built on external elements or labels. Shared culture does nothing for me, and I sometimes wish less people liked to do the things I like to do; that might be the engineer in me. But lots of people seem to take really comfort from it, so I'm not inclined to condemn it, and I'm happy that people at least take a sense of morality from those religions. I'm a big fan of humanism, whether or not it's attached to a religion.
Hm, there's a label I might be able to take on: Engineer Christian. We tend to ask lots of annoying questions, but then we go on to try to improve things using the answers we got. And sometimes things explode if they aren't built to our specs.
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While I appreciate the overall sentiment here, I'm not sure I understand the point about sin being shame. I think you're conflating sin in general with the legacy/consequences of Original Sin, but the Original Sin was the actions of Adam and Eve (which I know are up for a lot theological and philosophical debate), and sin itself is an action. It's funny you mentioned Terry Pratchett the other day, because I think he summed up the basic concept behind sin better than anything else I've ever seen, via one of his best characters: "And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is."
The reason sin is against the religion is because God wants us to love Him and love each other. Granted, there's also the whole Obey God thing in play, but I like to examine the root behind a given sin being a sin: why did God tell us not to do that? (Which is where I get skeptical of a lot of the Catholic Church's rules around sexuality. I'm not convinced that Jesus had a strong opinion about birth control within marriage.) To me, there's no real reason to attach shame to sin, other than the usual reason of feeling bad for hurting people, which I don't think is unreasonable, but that shame is still something that one should eventually get over. (Which gets into the Reconciliation process, the form of which is one of those things I think the Catholic Church really needs to have a long think about, but that's another discussion.)
I may be misinterpreting what you're saying, but I couldn't really find another meaning.
Overall, I admit that as a religious type (an a very unusual type of religious, I think), I find the concept of a culture derived from a religion that becomes separate from the religion itself is rather odd. However, I'm mystified in general by Identity as something external, or built on external elements or labels. Shared culture does nothing for me, and I sometimes wish less people liked to do the things I like to do; that might be the engineer in me. But lots of people seem to take really comfort from it, so I'm not inclined to condemn it, and I'm happy that people at least take a sense of morality from those religions. I'm a big fan of humanism, whether or not it's attached to a religion.
Hm, there's a label I might be able to take on: Engineer Christian. We tend to ask lots of annoying questions, but then we go on to try to improve things using the answers we got. And sometimes things explode if they aren't built to our specs.