Mormonism and Original Sin

Morrmons often pride themselves on the rejection of the Catholic/Christian doctrine of “original sin.” We think that in rejecting the idea that all men are born into sin because of Adam’s transgression, we focus on the innocence of new life. A wealth of other Mormon doctrines stem from the rejection of original sin, including the idea that children don’t need to be baptized until the age of eight, which we deem the “age of accountability” and even the idea that special needs children who never reach a mental age of accountability are automatically accepted into the celestial kingdom upon death. I spent most of my life holding fast to the importance of the idea of original innocence. But a few years ago, I began to question it.

A few years ago, I was recovering from a deep faith crisis and returning to God. At the same time, I was also experiencing a creative crisis. The career I had built as a young adult fantasy author had crumbled. My big publisher dreams died as my sales tanked and it seemed I would never publish under my own name again. My agent sat down with me at a conference and told me he wished that somehow he could give me back my confidence of my early years. I thought that was what I needed, too. But when we sat down together to look at a list of book ideas, he pointed to “The Bishop’s Wife” and said, “Whatever you do, don’t write that.” And I went home and wrote that book in a few weeks.

What I realized, looking back at the situation, was that it was important for my agent to tell me not to do that thing in a way not dissimilar to Adam and Eve’s commandment not to eat of the tree of good and evil. Not because I was a contrarian, but because I needed to do a thing that was just for me and not for anyone else. I needed to do something that would not get me any approval because I needed to figure out who I still was, behind the success and security of my author name. I needed to go back to the beginning, before I had been “branded.” I needed to accept that I was probably going to be bad, that the book I was writing was probably going to be unpublishable. And I needed to do it anyway.

Does that sound at all like original sin? Well, to me it does. It does because I think Mormons often see original sin as a burden, a weight that keeps us from God. But my experience in talking with other Christians about this important doctrine is that they see it as the opposite. Original sin is freeing because it means that we can stop worrying about being good. Of course we’re not going to be good. We’re not going to know what divinity is like. We’re not going to be kind and loving all the time. How could be possibly be like that? We’re human. We’re mortal. We’re messy and flawed. And we need grace. So God provided it for us.

As a writer, giving up the idea that I was going to write something publishable was freeing. My original sin was being a bad writer. And embracing that was freeing. It wasn’t a weight. It was the opposite. It meant I could try new things. I could fail. And it didn’t matter. No one was watching me anymore. I was a nobody again. And that was a great gift. It’s the gift that original sin gives me theologically.

Mormonism taught me that I was a good person inherently, that I had the light of Christ in me, that I was born innocent. But the doctrine of original sin teaches me that I am going to fail and fail often. I’m going to hurt people, especially the people I love. It teaches me that God knew I was going to do all this, and that’s why Christ was sent. I don’t have to feel bad that I added to Christ’s suffering. My little tiny addition matters nothing against the whole of humanity’s evil. I’m just a natural part of all of that and I don’t need to feel embarrassed about it.

Original sin allows me to get over myself, to stop worrying about being so bad. Because duh, who do you think you are? Better than other people? No. You’re human. You’re mortal. You are part of this system that we were all born into. There’s no getting out of it. It’s corrupt. It’s outside of Eden. It’s what our parents chose for us, to live with the knowledge of good and evil, but only after we see the consequences of having chosen this fruit or that fruit.

The gift God gave us was telling us not to do that, so that we could do it freely, and we could see what happened. We could be mortal and flawed and full of sin. It is a gift, not a burden. It is freedom.