We’re going back to the beginning for this episode as we dive into Genesis 1–3 to unpack how dominant Christian narratives of “the fall” and “original sin” have shaped theology, politics, and our sense of human worth. Reflecting on our evangelical upbringings, we explore how starting the story with human failure robs us of agency and fuels passivity which can be religious or political! But what if we contrast that with an alternative framework rooted in original goodness or original blessing? The narrative changes and so does how we approach conversations about scripture, ritual, social justice, and the stories we tell about ourselves and about the world. How we interpret these ancient texts deeply affects how we treat ourselves, one another, and our collective responsibility to create a more just and compassionate future.
Takeaways
- The concept of original sin has shaped many religious teachings.
- Traditional narratives often emphasize humanity’s flaws over its potential for goodness.
- Agency is crucial; waiting for salvation can lead to passivity.
- Shifting perspectives can empower individuals and communities.
- Stories we tell ourselves influence our understanding of the world.
- Recognizing inherent goodness can change how we view ourselves and others.
- Accountability is important, but so is recognizing humanity in all people.
- Political narratives can mirror religious ones in their impact on agency.
- Interrogating historical narratives is essential for progress.
- A new story can lead to a better future for all.
Chapters
00:00 Exploring Genesis: The Foundation of Faith
08:27 Agency and Salvation: A Shift in Perspective
11:44 From Original Sin to Original Blessing
18:11 The Power of Ritual and Community
25:15 Reimagining Stories: The Path to a Better Future
Resources:
- Learn more and join the Community at https://www.queertheology.com/community
This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions.
1 (10s):
Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy.2 (13s):
And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts from1 (17s):
Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how2 (23s):
Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here.3 (32s):
Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the Queer Theology Podcast. Today we’re gonna kind of talk about Genesis one through three, but obviously that is a, that is a large swath of scripture, so we are not gonna read all of it, but I’ve been thinking a lot about how I grew up being taught kind of the purpose of, of Christianity, right? And, and how so much of it was rooted in the beginning of Genesis, and specifically in the idea of like the fall and original sin, right? This, this idea that everything was good and then humans screwed it up because, you know, we did bad things.3 (1m 15s):
And like that is why everything else happened after that. Like, that’s why we need Jesus. And, and there’s this sense that basically all of human history begins with the fall. And, and that really shapes then how, how faith plays out, how religion plays out and how church plays out. And, and so this idea, I feel like we spent a lot of time in my church growing up talking about Adam and Eve and the apple in the garden, right? The quote unquote fall and, and the entrance of sin into the world. I’m, I’m curious for you, Brian, like what, did you have a similar experience with these first couple Chapters of Genesis?3 (2m 2s):
Or like how, what was the, the vibe in your growing up?1 (2m 5s):
Oh, yeah. I definitely grew up believing that Adam and Eve were like real people and that like everything was perfect. There was no death. They lived in harmony with God. And like had they not fucked up, had they not sinned, like all humanity would’ve been able to live in the garden of Beeden in paradise for forever, and also like a guest be immortal and that they disobeyed God. And in doing so, they sort of like cursed all of humanity for the rest of time. And so like, not only were we separated from God, like, was I Brian separated from God because I had sinned in my life, but also it was like literally an impossible for anyone ever to not be separated from God.1 (2m 54s):
Because like from the moment we were born, we had where there was like some original Sid already in our nature that like a would sort of like force us to mess up and to go against God over the course of our lives repeatedly, that we would like never be able to be perfect. But even like if we somehow like, but it didn’t even matter because even from like the very first moment that we were alive, we were, there was already some sort of like separation, just like at our first crying breath, which is like kind of weird and morbid and, and ungenerous And I don’t love. But at the time I was just like, oh, yeah, that’s how it’s, and it wasn’t until college that I started to, like, when I started, started studying religion, and this, this passage is actually like one of, was we, we looked at this at the Croatian story in both Genesis and as told in different peop Christian books in the New Testament and in the Quran.1 (3m 48s):
And that was when I started to realize like, oh, maybe there’s a different way of understanding these, these stories.3 (3m 54s):
Yeah. It’s so interesting. As you were just talking about, you know, original sin being a part of us from the first breath that we take, it reminded me of all of the like really, really terrible parenting things that come out of evangelical Christianity, like focus on the family and all of that, which is like, you need to punish your infant because your infant is trying to manipulate you by crying. Oh,1 (4m 21s):
Yeah.3 (4m 22s):
Right. Like from the very beginning. And if you’re, you know, you need to, there was this thing called blanket training of like, you need to put your baby on a blanket and when they crawl off of it, like spank them for getting off of the blanket because like that is them trying to exert their will. Not like a toddler being curious. Curious. Right. Or like, yeah. Rolling. And so I think that like this idea that we are fundamentally flawed and particularly that it goes back not just to Adam and Eve, but like, let’s be real, the evangelicals are blaming all that shit on Eve Sure. That it goes back to like women, right.3 (5m 3s):
Getting out of their quote unquote place. It absolutely shapes then how the rest of theology plays out and, and how like our ideas about humanity and the world play out. Because I, I, I think that what, what I was struck by as you were talking, it’s like we do have this sense of everything was perfect and everything was, was paradise in the Garden. And yet, like we never start there. We always start with the the, we messed it up part, right? There’s this sense of like, oh, sure, like paradise.3 (5m 44s):
Yeah, yeah, whatever. But like, it was, it was like we were destined to mess up even when we weren’t destined to mess up. And I think that that’s such an interesting take. And I, And I think that that shows how prevalent the evangelical reading of scripture has become, even within progressive spaces, right? Like that, that we, we haven’t often done the work to really unpack all of it right. To, to figure out where it’s coming from and how it, how it influences everything else.1 (6m 21s):
Yeah. I’m, I mean, so like one of the things that was fascinating for me was that the way, like that how, how it metaphor and description like shapes our understanding of things. And so like into Genesis, right? Like the phrase original sin is like not there right into Genesis. There’s like into Genesis, kind of like the serpent was first of all into Genesis, the serpent is not necessarily the devil it into Genesis, the ser was kind of right. Like they ate and they like didn’t die.1 (7m 1s):
And so it’s like that like gets like added in later on a little bit in Judaism, certainly a lot more in Christianity, like these like additional layers get like get of meaning get added onto it. And that, I would say that like doesn’t necessarily mean that like one interpretation is like that you can sort of like get back to sort of like, oh, we just got back to like the original version of Genesis that we would find like this like pure egalitarian, non-toxic version of God. Like I think like Christianity is like, keeps some extra shit onto this. I mean, we don’t need, like, and also like all sacred stories are always like, the meaning is made through wrestling with the text and how the community understands it.1 (7m 45s):
And, and so like, it says something about like us when we put this like extra meaning back onto it that like, we’re inherently flawed and sinful. And it also, I think like as we to think about this, like this particular political moment, like it robs us of our agency, like, you can never do anything, right? You’re hopeless. You’re like, you need us some external salvation, just like sit around and wait. Like there are some like really sort of like pernicious messages that it takes that that sort of take can take hold if we play those out to their logical end results. And so I think that’s part of the reasons why we’re so invested in a, looking at these stories and telling them in new ways and also like storytelling, the, the power of story in general to sort of like shape our beliefs about like what’s possible for the world and what’s possible for ourselves.1 (8m 35s):
And we write new stories that like sometimes like these stories like get into our bodies and spirits without us even realizing. And, and so to your point, like what then shifts if there’s like another idea, like, And I know in Sanctuary Collective we talk about this all the time And I know you got some, some great, some great insights on it. So like what shifts, if we go from a place of we’re fucked up and beyond repair and you know, like total totally depraved to some other way of understanding humanity and God relationship to God.3 (9m 10s):
Yeah. I I wanna go back just for a second before I tackle that is like, I, it’s so interesting that you talk about the lack of agency because I’ve been seeing that all over Facebook right now as folks post about like Minneapolis and whatever. There are evangelicals in the comments that are like, yeah, well your problem is that like you’re looking for the government to save us. Like no one can save us, but God. Or like, we’re in the end times, we just have to wait for the rapture. Or like a savior is gonna come and save. Right? There is, there is this real sense of, well there’s nothing to be done, someone else supernatural.3 (9m 52s):
Right? Like something else supernatural is gonna come and like intervene. And I think that there is like, that is one very specific worldview which is shared by like, I think a lot more people than many of us would like it to be.Mochi Health (10m 6s):
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But I do think that there is also this sense on the left sometimes1 (10m 40s):
Yes.3 (10m 41s):
Of the same thing of like, some democratic president is going to save us, like if we just vote in the blue wave, like we will be saved if we just wait and follow the laws, like we will be saved. Right? And I, And I think to like what we were talking about when we talked about Matthew, the, the gospel of Matthew a couple weeks ago, the sense of like legality and the system writ large to, to quote unquote save us is like also a way of robbing us of our agency. It’s also a way of like keeping us passive. It’s also a way of keeping us in line and, and not quote unquote acting out.3 (11m 27s):
Right? And I think that that, like, that is really dangerous. It’s really dangerous on both sides to like be believing that something or someone is going to come save us, as opposed to like, we gotta save ourselves.1 (11m 41s):
Yeah. And I I think also, even if you’re not looking, I think this hospital happens on the left liberals, Democrats, leftists, like, who aren’t looking for the government to save us, right? But like they’re, we’re waiting for like the next, next MLK or the next Malcolm X or the, or like who’s our cat? This everdeen gonna be to like sweep in and save the day. Or like, we also see like end times theology in, in leftists. Like, well if we just, like, instead of waiting for the apocalypse, we’re waiting for like accelerationism for like to all get so bad that it all collapses and we’re not waiting for Jesus to come back. We’re waiting for like the glorious revolution. And it’s like we just like keep waiting for like, things to get so bad that like Jesus comes back or the revolution hap quote unquote, like the revolution happens, right?1 (12m 29s):
Like I read some quote recently that was like, what do you mean? Like, I’m like, you’re like learning how to, like, we need to like joke, people joke like, oh, I need to like learn how to like hunt. So like when the apocalypse comes and the quote was like, the apocalypse is here. Like we’re in it. Yeah. Like, like you gotta, like, it’s not, it’s not someone from on a high is not gonna come in neither like communism nor Joe Biden is gonna like save us from this. We like, we save us.3 (12m 57s):
Yeah. Yeah. And so when, you know, when you ask the question of like, what happens if we think differently? I, I’m just so struck by if, if we shift from a space of humans are all bad and there’s nothing we can do about it, and so therefore we need as a savior this sense of like the, the fall and original sin. If, if that’s our starting point, we, we can’t see where we get to, but what happens if we shift to that sense of original goodness and original blessing? You know, there, there, there are some folks that talk about instead of original sin, original blessing and this sense of Community and communion with God and with divinity of a place of paradise, of a place where we lived in harmony with the land with each other, that that as a guiding principle starting there suddenly gives us a very different perspective and a future to dwell out of and to then say, okay, well if that’s where we started, well what happened, right?3 (14m 7s):
What happened to us that we got away from that? Right? And also, how might we get back there as is such a different conversation than, well, we can’t get back there, there’s nothing we can do because we were destined to, to be ups from the start. Right? I think that that is a, that is a drastically different perspective on life and on the universe. And, and it is one that we see in scripture, right? Like there is a sense of in the, into Genesis one, right, that creation story where everything is good and everything is in harmony and humans are in, in communion with the divine and with each other and with the land.3 (14m 52s):
And like that is the vision that we start from. And I think that for me, looking at the arc of scripture for all of the bad rap that and bad readings of revelation that exist, there is a sense, if you read that text correctly, of getting back to a place where we’re at in harmony with each other. We’re living in communion with the divine. There we are back in the garden, right? And, and that, that is the arc of human narrative and like, that’s what we’re aiming for.3 (15m 33s):
Not the sense of we’re gonna get like raptured and taken to a new planet and like let this one burn and most of the people on it, right? That is a very different conversation than saying like, oh no, we’re trying to get back to the sense of original goodness. And like, what does it do? I think in myself, I I I am a bit of a perfectionist. I can be really hard on myself. It is very easy for me to be like, I can catalog my faults, right? Like, I can give you a list today itemized and ready to go. And, and that even though like I don’t believe in hell and impede substitutionary tonin anymore, like that sense of there is something inherently wrong with me that I need to fix is like still in my psyche.3 (16m 22s):
So what does it do for me as a human to say, oh no, like you were born with a sense of original blessing and, and how do you then tap into that in order to be in communion with the divine and with other people? I, that like totally changes the game and totally changes the way that I think and conceive of myself and how I move through the world.1 (16m 49s):
Yeah. Also, just like a quick spoiler alert, our book, our, our new book, which comes out later this year is called Reading the Bible through Queer Eyes, good News for L-G-B-T-Q, people from Genesis to Revelation. And the last chapter in the book is about queering revelation. And so keep an eye out for that later this year if you want some more querying of revelation and, and, and the good news that is found there with this idea of like original blessing. And I, like a, a few years ago I read a book by Desmond Tutu and his and his daughter Mofo Tutu called Made for Goodness. And I think about like, it is, it is easy to forget that or to stop a believing that or to let other ideas about yourself and your inadequacies and your insecurities like sort of creep in.1 (17m 37s):
And I also, I don’t know, like perfectionists that like have high standards also. Like I wanna make the world a better place And I feel like I, like social justice is really important to me. And so I can see all the ways in which I’m like could be doing more, more, more, more, more. Right? And I think that like one of you And I Shea both really appreciate the power of ritual and spiritual practice. And one of I think the key, well a few, a few, there’s a few like reasons for that. We go into all of it in our resistance and resilience workshop, which is inside of Queer Theology. But like quickly, a a few of the main things are, there’s like something about imagining the way that the world like could and should be through the power of ritual and also like reminding our ourselves of our deepest values and our, our place in all of the sort of like the cosmic drama and, and who we are.1 (18m 26s):
And as like folks listening like may or not know, I converted to Judaism a few years ago and one of the practices there is is like daily prayer. And I go through periods where I do it every day And I go through periods where I do it like a few times a week And I do go through periods where I spend a few weeks, but for the past, like, like month or two, I’ve been really like diligent about doing it every, at least every morning. And there’s like a few like prayers and blessings in it that like I have been finding like really speak to me and like there’s one about it goes, my God, this whole you’ve given me is pure, you created, you shaped it, you breathed it into me and you protect it within me. It goes on, right? Like this was like remembering that like I’ve been given a pure soul. There’s like a blessing that says like, like plus you Ed And I are God created over the universe who like has made me the image of God.1 (19m 12s):
There’s things about like working for peace and being humble and working for justice and taking care of the sick. And so like sometimes I like need those reminders of like, oh yeah, like we’re, I’m starting from a good place, which does not mean like there’s no work to do that I like neither, I like, like neither that I like can’t like quote unquote like improve myself nor that I can just sort of be like, oh, okay. Like I’m good, you’re good. We’re all good. There’s like nothing to do. Like, no, like we’re all good. And also there are still hungry people, there are still homeless people, there are still sick people. You still gotta like show up for your community to like celebrate with them and warn with them. Like people are still gonna be born and they’re gonna die and they’re gonna get married.1 (19m 53s):
And so like there’s still like work, always work to be done. And also I think we can be more effective when we come from a place of like, oh yeah, humanity is good and worth saving And I am good and have agency than a sort of like fatalism of like, everything is always has been fucked and always will be fucked.3 (20m 14s):
And I think that, you know, this is, this is maybe the more difficult piece is like once we can get that for ourselves, this idea of starting from goodness, then we also have to extend that out to other people, right? And I think that in the, in the moment that we’re living in, that can sometimes be hard to be like, yeah, oh, they too are good. And also like something has gotten warped. Right? Or like their, the behavior is not, yeah. But I do think that that allows us to enter into a space of saying we can still see the humanity of the people that are acting in really inhumane ways, right?3 (21m 4s):
It it keeps us from othering them in such a way that it excuses and allows violence to happen. And, And I think when we look at the history of, of how genocides happen, right? So often it starts with a with being able to completely dehumanize1 (21m 24s):
Mm.3 (21m 25s):
Whoever it is that is our target at the that particular time. And so I think that this sense of, of internal goodness of starting from a place of goodness is also a preventative measure that it it keeps us from going to those places where people’s humanity is, is up for grabs. Which is not to say that like we can’t hold people accountable or call them on their bullshit or say like that their behavior and beliefs and actions are actively hurting people. Like that’s not what it’s about. But it is saying like, we see the humanity underneath all of that.3 (22m 8s):
And, and that’s hard, right? There are people who I don’t really want to see their humanity right now who I would rather,ClickUp (22m 19s):
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They’d be relegated into the realm of like evil or fallen or unsalvageable, right? Because that is easier than thinking about their redemption too. And it’s complicated, right? I I think of, you texted me the other day like, there’s room in heaven for Fred Phelps and sometimes you gotta punch a Nazi and, And I think there’s right, like we hold the tension and, And I like, but, but it is a tension, right? But I think it’s an, it’s an important tension to be holding and to be sitting with and to be grappling with. And I don’t have easy or comfortable answers there, but I I just think it’s important to me.1 (23m 33s):
Yeah. I’ve forgotten that I said that. I, I think I stand by that. I, I think one, one of my hot takes is that I don’t really believe in like good people and bad people. And I think for many of the reasons that you laid out here, like there’s something about which is not that people don’t do bad or harmful things and don’t do like noble or helpful or virtuous or useful things, right? Like, but that there’s something about like when we talk about good people or bad people, it gets into this sort of like intrinsic inherent like part of them, which is just like protestant predestination, like played out in sort of like pop morality that like, I, I don’t find it useful for truisms.1 (24m 16s):
One is, I think to your point, it’s important that like, even as people do fucked up things that we like acknowledge everyone’s humanity. Like, and also if there’s good people and bad people, we just like spend so much time it’s a distraction like arguing over whether so and so like was a good person or a bad person as opposed, which is like, I don’t know, even if it was true that some people are good and some people are bad people, it’s like ultimately like this, the moral state of their like internal, I don’t know, like soul, like, is fundamentally unknowable and it distracts us from being like, well, who cares if they’re good or bad? Like, did this thing that they do harm people, hurt people, fracture society, bring us closer together, make our lives better, et cetera.1 (24m 58s):
And it can sometimes keep us from acknowledging all the ways in which like we mess up because like, well if I’m a good person then either I couldn’t possibly have done the thing that you’ve said I’ve done or I did do the thing that you said I’ve done, but it doesn’t matter because I’m a good person. And so you should just like ignore it, forget it, like not be upset about it, excuse it. And so like, I think, not not that I wanna get like by any means necessary about it all like the answers to by the means, but like there is something about like, it, like the impact matters. And so like I, I think that it’s much more useful to say like, what if we all, we either we all start from place of goodness or it’s just all sort of neutral.1 (25m 41s):
I mean, I personally like starting from place of goodness, but like if nothing else, a place of neutrality and saying like, okay, well then like from there we can look to see like, does this bring us closer together? And I like enriching my own humanity and the humanity of these people around me. And I think that like we can, we can see, like, I just think about, this is a, maybe a tangent, but like I think about all those Christians who are like, well, there has to be God and there has to be Jesus. Because if there wasn’t, like, we would just all go around murdering each other, right? I would just, I would just be an alcoholic rapist murderer philander if it wasn’t for Jesus. And like the threat of hell looming over me. And I just think like in, in all the midst of all of the terribleness of all of the bad shit that has gone wrong in our country over the past 200 years, and then the course of human molest civilization over the past like 6,000 years, like when bad stuff happens, we, there’s like some sort of like inherent part of us that place that is like, that is original blessing that starts from a place like that is like made for goodness.1 (26m 44s):
It says like, this is not right. And like the outpouring of people into the streets all across the country, like after, after the murder of George Floyd, like in Minneapolis, I see like as far as I can see protests, like we, there’s a sense of like knowing Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists, Hindus, Buddhists. Like there’s a sort of like, we a sort of sense of like, this is not right, things are not as the way they are supposed to be. And I think that’s gets at the heart of the stories of Genesis one, two, and three that like these ancient people are looking around and they have this sense of like, the world is not as it should be. Like we have this sort of internal intrinsic sense of like, it should not be this way.1 (27m 26s):
So then like what the fuck happened and the creation story and, and what genesis well, two and one went into are kind of like two takes on the same story that are, that are different, but like two into Genesis two and three really are sort of like this imagining of like, how did things get so fucked up? And I think that rather than being prescriptive or deterministic and saying like, well we, like we are always flawed, it’s sort of a sense of like that humans could look at the state of affairs and be like, this isn’t right. Something, something must have gone cosmically horribly wrong because like, this is not how it should be. I think points towards our like inherent goodness that like we just sort of know that this is not right and we know not only that, but that, that we like can and should work towards a better tomorrow.3 (28m 11s):
Yeah. And I think it also points to the fact of like, it’s so, so, so important that we pay attention to the stories that we’re telling ourselves about how we got to, to where we are, right? And that’s both a religious story, but it’s also a political story. The political stories that we tell, it’s the stories, it’s our country, it’s the stories, right? Like all of these stories matter and they shape how we understand ourselves and our place in the world and our place in relation to each other. And so this is also a moment where I think many of us need to interrogate the stories that we’ve been handed, both religious stories and political stories, especially as white folks in the United States, but I think also as people who got American history in schools in the United States, right?3 (29m 4s):
Like we need to be interrogating those stories because they shape, they shape our viewpoints and, and they were told for a specific reason in, in specific ways. And I think that like doing that work to understand that and to understand how those stories have been used and how they continue to be used is, is really important and is one of the things that can help us to imagine a new and better future. Like when we understand the story that we’re in and we understand where it came from, then we can start to say like, does the story serve what might be a story that will serve better?3 (29m 45s):
Let’s go chase after that.7 (29m 47s):
Amen. The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at Queer Theology dot com, which provides resources, community, and inspiration for L-G-B-T-Q Christians and straight cisgender supporters.2 (29m 57s):
To dive into more of the action, visit us at Queer Theology dot com. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.7 (30m 5s):
We’ll see you next week.
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