how awful goodness is

notes on sin

A basic premise of Christianity, as I understand it, is that sin makes us less human, not more.¹ That is, when we say “I’m only human” about something we’ve done that’s a bit shameful, we are speaking incorrectly, because in those moments we are in fact being something less than human. When we indulge in spite or hatred or or indifference or rejoice in the misfortune of somebody we don’t like, we are less than human. And when Augustine talks about evil as being a privation of good, I take this to be the same thought put more broadly. Doing wrong is always diminishing. It is the absence of something else.

This is not how we think of these things, partly because our image of the person who is not “only human” is that of a person who is obsessed with not doing wrong rather than a person who is motivated by goodness. We envision a life defined by restriction and …