Original Sin
One of my areas of greatest discomfort with Christian theology has been the concept of original sin. To say that human nature is inherently inclined towards the evil seemed to me unfair and inaccurate. Also, the score keeping seemed unfair as well: If you do something wrong, you get the blame, but if you do something right, only God gets the credit. You own your own flaws but not your own virtues. Now I say all of this as a strict amateur, someone who has never studied Christian theology seriously, so please take it with a grain of salt. This is less an accurate portrayal of Christian theology than an outline of my own theological thinking. For a long time I think I subscribed to an essentially optimistic view of human nature - that people are born essentially good, and if they gravitate towards bad behavior later in life it is because they were not provided the necessary nurturing and guidance in their childhood. I think this is a view fairly com...