The Consequences of Sin
Christianity emphasizes the sinfulness of human nature. This may seem a harsh way of thinking about human beings. After all, there are good reasons to believe in their essential goodness.
Of course, Christians do acknowledge the human capacity to do good things. But they are equally aware of the human capacity for evil and the fact that people are often destructive in their thought and behavior. Christianity teaches that sin is universal; everyone sins. It also insists that the tendency to sin is far more serious than an acquired habit one might overcome through greater self-control or moral effort. The inability of human beings to rise above sin—to be as loving, humble, generous, and righteous as they should be—suggests that something has gone wrong in the perfect world God created and, perhaps, even within human nature. As we will see later in this chapter’s section on theology, Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians, on the one hand, and Orthodox Christians, on the other, understand this issue in different ways, though they agree that, because human beings cannot overcome sin on their own, they stand in need of salvation from its power over them—a power that cuts them off from God, the source of all good things.
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