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From Misstep to Damnation How a Linguistic Slip
Became a Business Model Imagine
tripping on a stone in the street. In ordinary life, that’s a peccatum — a stumble, a misstep. In Greek it was a
hamartía — missing the target, like an arrow
flying wide. In Hebrew, a ḥēt — a
mistake, a failure. That’s
it. Nothing cosmic, nothing metaphysical. Just a foot put wrong, a shot gone
astray. Now
fast-forward a few centuries and watch the trick. Paul, needing total control
of his little cult, inflates “missing the mark” into a universal infection.
Everyone has sinned. No exceptions. Newborns, too. Conveniently, his
mediation (and later, his bishops’) is the only antidote. Enter
Augustine, the systematizer. He leans on a bad
Latin translation of Romans 5:12 — “in whom all sinned” — and suddenly the
whole human race is guilty in Adam. Babies are damned from their first cry.
Only the Church’s baptismal tap water can rescue them. From
misstep to damnation in three easy moves: 1. Translate
“stumble” as “cosmic guilt.” 2. Declare
everyone infected. 3. Sell the
cure exclusively through your brand. If this
sounds less like revelation and more like a protection racket, that’s because
it is. The doctrine of Original Sin turned a common-sense category of
“failure” into an eternal death sentence. Then it offered insurance. Refuse
the premium? Enjoy hellfire. Meanwhile,
the idea of Original Goodness — that to be born at all is already proof of
viability, success, fitness — is politically useless. It can’t terrify
parents into baptizing infants, can’t fuel inquisitions, can’t justify
empires. It liberates rather than enslaves. And so it was buried. So here
we are, two thousand years later, still hauling around a theology built on a
mistranslation. What began as a stumble on the road was turned into a death
warrant. From misstep to damnation: the greatest rebrand in history. And the
Church? It cashed in. |