Now he walks these empty rooms

I had the great good fortune of discovering Bruce Springsteen around my early teenage years. Everybody has a band or a singer that they fell in love with back then and maybe cringe over now. Maybe not, but that group will always have a place in your life and you can’t ever, ever change. Maybe if you knew what you were doing, you would have chosen more Elton John and less REO Speedwagon. Too late now.

Sometimes we don’t even get that much choice. The fact that we are born imperfect and tend to drift toward the unhealthy things can, and has in fact been, described as “Original Sin.” Now, hold on. Before you get all “Patriarchy” and “repression” on me, consider that an atheist on public radio got me thinking about it. Ok, now get all “Patriarchy” and “repression” on me. It’s the sin I’ve inherited: an essential conservatism that doesn’t want to chuck an idea that might still have utility.

And what, pray tell, are we supposed to do with a crusty old chestnut like “original sin?” Well, redemption I guess. Maybe the reason I am more nervous than a public radio atheist when it comes to using a word like “sin” is that it almost always gets used as an instrument of fear and a call to repentance. There’s plenty for me to be uncomfortable with in these words because, to quote Kanye, “I know what I’ve been doin’, G.”

That kind of has its own arrogance though, does it not? Being guilty is a fact, but feeling guilty can be an perversely self-centered way of accepting the possibility of redemption (read: “change.” We fear change.) Rather than embracing the vision of Edward Burne Jones described by Austin Rios in a recent post from Rome, I could choose to feel guilty and ashamed of my life and the world in which I live it, hoping that things will be better if I can make it to the right hereafter. What if, instead, I embraced that new life now, here? What if I stopped wallowing in all that guilt?