And that's where it all started to go wrong...

Right now we are doing a course on autobiography in my Humanities program. Our courses all start out with a BIG question. This time the question is: "Is autobiography a literary genre?" Now that seems like a simple, non-threatening question, quite reasonable actually. But already we are having issues. And it started with Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine to some). Our first text is Augustine's Confessions. The discussion today was pretty lively and wide ranging.

But I have already encountered what I see as an essential flaw in Augustine's thinking and it is one that has shaped not only Christianity but Western thought ever since - Original Sin. Now many people (well Roman Catholics really) like to claim this one of the inherent premises upon which they base their entire religion. Now you may like to think that this idea goes right back to the whole Garden of Eden incident but no it took a reformed sinner to claim that we are all intrinsically flawed at birth, defective and hardwired to do wrong, to sin.

Now you can see where this presents some problems for ordinary people in their everyday lives. It is as if you were born owing money. Before you are out of diapers the vigor is building up and you have got an upward struggle just to break even. Fact is you are not even going to manage that, at least without some divine intervention. Of course the whole idea here is that you need the church to talk to God and God to solve your problem of being a sinner.

Augustine lived in a time when the emerging Christian church still had some serious competition from schisms and of course from the established pagan religions of the Roman Empire. Of course they did not think of themselves as being pagan. That came from some historical revisionism the Roman Catholic Church pushed through once it got control of Western civilization.

So with a power struggle going on (think of it like an ancient version of the Cola Wars) the Christian leaders were looking for a good angle to establish a solid market share. Well Augustine had a doozy with the Original Sin. I mean, talk about franchise contracts and product branding. All of a sudden we all have a problem and guess what, Christianity has the solution. Dare I say it - a match made in heaven!

Trouble is it didn't end there. It never does. After a few years of monopoly other groups wanted in on the action. First they tried a few internal takeovers, you know stack the board and dump the chairmen. At one point it got downright silly with two Popes, one in Rome the other in Avignon. When that failed, Luther decided it was time to start a whole new strategy and the Protestant brand was launched.

It got really ugly after that. Lots of religious wars. Heresy trials and burning at the stake. Now through all of this no one even thought of throwing out the whole Original Sin concept. It was just way too powerful. Not every culture really bought into it of course. There seems to have been some resistance in England but more acceptance on the continent. Take a look at the legal systems based on British Common Law versus the model used in France. One says that the accused is innocent until proven guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt. The other requires you to in some measure prove your innocence.

So here we are in the 21st century still debating the issue, still divided over just exactly how we are supposed to make it out of this life in one piece when we start out behind the eightball. Personally, I rejected the whole idea of sin a long time ago. In the end none of us may know but at least my idea does not get anyone burned at the stake or vilified in the press.