We call Adam and Eve’s transgression in the Garden of Eden Original Sin. Obviously there is no such thing as a “good” sin, but if we were to rank order sins in terms of their deadliness, original sins are much better than the alternatives. Sinning is, unfortunately, an unavoidable part of life. We may to a greater or lesser degree seek to learn by observation or study from the mistakes of others, but at the end of the day, we will have the painful privilege of learning from plenty of our own mistakes. We all have an imperfect understanding of the world and our place in it, and yet we have no choice but to boldly march into the mists of darkness, and each time that we fall into a new pit, it is because we have committed an original sin. We thought we were walking on solid ground and we then found out that we were wrong. None of us like falling into the bottom of the pit, and sometimes the struggle to climb out can seem worse than simply staying put. Therefore, if we are wise, then we update our map of the world and we learn from our mistakes and we mark off that pit so we don't fall in again. Then we keep on walking forward. The thing is, we are going to accidentally fall into other pits. We are going to find new, original sins. Some of these may in fact be worse than the ones we've faced in the path. We may decide that it is preferable to continue to jump into the old pits of familiar sins rather than run the risk of pushing ourselves to keep marching forward and potentially falling into even worse pits. We may start to spend so much time in our familiar sins that we start to convince ourselves that the bottom of a deep, dark pit is where we truly belong. Falling into the pit of an original sin is no fun and it hurts every time going in and clawing our way back out. But original sins only lead us to Hell when they start to lose their originality. We are often weak and stupid and, relatively speaking, mostly blind and ignorant. This does not excuse but does help explain why we are so prone to original sins. But after we've made a mistake once, we are not condemned to repeat it. We can keep that original sin truly original by never getting near the edge of that pit again.
