Original Sin

A Chicago theology lesson.

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My parents were sixteen and seventeen when I was born. They divorced two years later. Who could have seen that coming? Technically their relationship was only supposed to last four minutes in the back of a rusty Buick but nine months later I showed up.

They didn’t know much, but one thing they knew for sure was that they did not want me baptized. Gram, my mother’s mother was furious. So when my teenage parents went on a weekend trip to Michigan in one last ditch effort to save their failing courthouse marriage, Gram snuck me down the street to Ascension Church and had me baptized anyway.

I found all this out when I was seven. Which was also the time I started living with Gram on the weekends. I didn’t know what a “baptism” was and asked why it was such a big deal?

Gram explained, “When unbaptized babies die, they go straight to hell. And let me tell you something Mister, imagine the worst thing you can imagine, can you picture it?” she asked.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was the conversation we were having, so I just nodded my head ‘yes.”

“Good, now times that by a million and that’s hell. Fire. Death. Punishment. Misery,” how does that sound?”

“Not good,” my seven-year-old voice chirped.

On Sundays she took me to church, the alleged house of the guy who dunks unbaptized babies into the fiery pits of misery.

Rich wooden pews faced a large marble altar with lit candles. Somebody called a priest wore flowing colorful robes and swung pungent incense. Pastel light poured through stained glass windows and drizzled over the statues lining the wall.

Then my eyes landed on the scariest thing I'd ever seen in my life (up to that point.) There was a naked guy in his underpants hanging off a large "T.” He wore a headband made of thorns. Blood dripped down his face and chest. He had a shank wound in his side with spikes driven through his hands and feet.

"Who is that guy," I whisper/shouted at Gram?

"Lower your voice. That's not a guy. That's Jesus Christ. The son of God. He died for your sins," Gram whispered.

 "What's a sin," I whispered back?

"Everything you do wrong. Even if you only think it, it's still a sin and God knows."

"God or that guy," I said pointing at the guy on the cross, "I thought you said that's his son?"

"Doesn't matter. What does matter is that you understand whether you do it or not, it's a sin. But if you ask for forgiveness, God will forgive you. Jesus didn't just die for your sins. He died for all our sins.

"You sin?"

"We were all born with original sin."

"I was born doing something wrong?"

"Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden, the most perfect place ever created. God said it's all yours except you can't eat this one apple. Eve ate it so God banished them from Eden to the earth we live in now."

"I thought you said Jesus forgives?"

"He does."

"Then why didn't he forgive Eve?"

"Don't be a smartass."

"And if he died for my sins, how am I born with sin? Didn't he already die for that? And why not just be mad at Eve. I didn't do anything. I hate apples. Is he the same guy that sends dead babies to hell?"

"Knock it off or we're leaving."

"How did he die?"

"They killed him."

"Who killed him?"

 "You'll learn all about that at your new Catholic school in Berwyn called St. Odilos."

After mass, Gram stood out front chatting it up with the other old ladies from the block. There was a grumpy old timer who sold Chicago Tribunes off to the side of the steps. Rolls of fat swaddled him like a mummy. Most people were scared of him but tough guys never scared me. It's the “normal guys” you gotta worry about. They feel fraudulent and unearned. So I walked over and started chatting up with The Mummy selling The Trib. 

"You know what goes on inside there," I asked pointing at the church?

"Yeah. Why?"

"Who killed that guy hanging from the roof?"