“If a child grows up being told she is ugly or stupid or selfish, at some level, she comes to believe that about herself. The descriptions haunt her self-understanding, and she lives in a state of doubt about her deepest identity. This is exactly what has happened in relation to the doctrine of original sin, a belief that has dominated the landscape of Western Christian thought and practice since the fourth century. It teaches that what is deepest in us is opposed to God rather than of God. It means that we are essentially ignorant rather than bearers of light, that we are essentially ugly rather than rooted in divine beauty, that we are essentially selfish rather than made in the image of love—the list goes on and on. It is a doctrine that disempowers us. It feeds our forgetfulness of the sacred tune at the heart of our being.”
-John Philip Newell, Christ of the Celts, p. 18-19
