God, What Is Wrong With Us?

I first approached the question 'what is sin, and what does it mean to be a sinner' as a theological problem when I was a seminary student back in the early 1990's. A logical place to begin such an inquiry for the most part my concerns, at least at the beginning were intellectual ones. I wanted to know what was wrong with us as a human race. What was the substance of our tendency to stray so far away from what was 'good' or 'right' or 'true' such that violence, degradation and the perpetuation of systems of social injustice -- on a large and small scale -- seemed to be the recurring and inevitable theme of human existence? Why God, I queried, are we like this? WHAT is wrong with us?

At that time the desire to understand if not alleviate the grandest injustices of human existence fueled my interrogations. Racism, classism, sexism, homophobia -- these obvious distortions of our individual and collective capacities to recognize, engage or cultivate the full humanity of ourselves and one another -- these sinful-'ims' begged for a critical spiritual analysis of their causes and continuations. And while my liberationist commitments animated my belief that such queries could make a practical difference in the struggle to interrupt their worst social and political effects, still I recall approaching the question from a decided scholarly remove. The facts, apostle Paul, St. Augustine, Martin Luther, and because I was trained at a liberal seminary - James Cone, Rosemary Ruether, Gustavo Gutierrez -- just give me the theological facts.