I grew up in a denomination full of basically decent people who naively expected their neighbors to be just as upright as they were. Which may be why, back in those Norman Rockwell days, we questioned the validity of the Christian doctrine called Original Sin. We just expected everybody to be good.
If you’ve got a minute, let me tell you a true story that shows how wrong we were.
A while back I sold a rent house to a young couple who moved in and made their monthly payments like clockwork for at least a couple of years. Much to my pleasure, of course.
But one month no payment appeared. I wondered why. Had they moved without calling me? When I stopped by the house to find out what was wrong, nobody was home, but I relaxed a bit when I saw that their belongings were still inside and their van was out front.
For two weeks I dialed their number. It rang busy. Then one morning the woman surprised me by answering. “Sally,” I blurted out (the names here have been changed to protect the guilty), “I’m calling to see what’s happened. Your April house payment hasn’t reached me.”
“Oh,” she stammered. “We couldn’t afford the place. Ralph lost his job, so we moved out.” She promised to move the rest of their stuff out by the weekend.
Three days later I went by to check on their progress. The back door of the abandoned house was flapping open and the front door had been left unlocked. When I pushed it open, roaches rained down on me from the jamb.
Inside, even with the back door ajar all day, the smell almost decked me. Food wrappers and assorted refuse covered the floors shin deep. Massive stains on the carpet looked like a montage of spilled beer, splattered Kool-aid, and pet abominations. Roaches swarmed literally over every square inch of the mess.
Huge holes gaped in the walls of the back bedroom. Weeds in the backyard stood higher than the fence, hiding a junkyard of discarded toys and trash.
“No wonder they moved!” I thought. “Who would want to live in a pigsty like this?” They had ruined my house and moved on, no doubt, to trash somebody else’s place. And they never even said, “I’m sorry.”
I’m beginning to suspect that our pioneer preachers might have altered their views on Original Sin if they had just owned a rent house or two!