Sins of Our Fathers

After the Emancipation Proclamation, William Tecumseh Sherman promised “40 acres and a mule” to former slaves in the United States. The emancipated ones never got their 40 acres and a mule, but still the debate goes on about whether the United States and other governments owe it to descendants of the African slave trade to provide some sort of reparations.

I see a parallel here with Christianity. The Christian view goes something like this: Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden, which was the Original Sin. All of us humans have been sinners ever since, even though we ourselves, as individuals, had no part in what the first humans are said to have done. We have been burdened with the sins of our forefathers, much as Whites descended from slave-owners are expected, by those in favor of reparations, to provide some sort of compensation to Blacks descended from African slaves.

The Christians had their Jesus Christ, who was a human sacrifice offered up by God himself to atone for the Original Sin — another deal which we, again, had no part in ourselves, as individuals. We had no part either the original sin or God’s so loving the world that he gave his only begotten son.