Are We Inherently Good or Bad?

Are We Inherently Good or Bad? 

From an early age, many of us are taught that something is wrong with us. We’re broken. Sinful.  Disobedient. The message isn’t subtle: you were born bad, and you need to be rescued. 

This belief doesn’t just live in our heads—it seeps deep into our souls. Imagine being told, from  day one of your existence, that you are inherently unworthy. That you deserve punishment— possibly even eternal damnation—just for being born. It’s a crushing burden to place on anyone,  especially children. The psychological toll is enormous: chronic shame, anxiety about  worthiness, fear of rejection by God, and even spiritual trauma. Instead of seeing life as a gift,  we’re taught to see it as a moral test we’re likely to fail. Instead of being taught to trust the God  who made us, we’re told to fear Him. 

This damaging view traces back to a concept that has profoundly shaped Western Christianity:  original sin. 

The Birth of the "Bad by Nature" Narrative 

The idea of original sin was championed by St. Augustine in the 4th century. He taught that  because Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3), every human being  inherits a sinful nature. We are, by default, spiritually defective. This perspective suggests that  the very act of being born means we're already estranged from God. 

Augustine’s interpretation had staying power. It became the theological scaffolding for doctrines  about salvation, the nature of Jesus, and why the cross was necessary. And it carried heavy  implications: 

• You were born separated from God. 

• You are deserving of punishment. 

This was the air Christians breathed for centuries. In sermons, songs, and Sunday school lessons,  the message echoed: You are a sinner in need of a savior. 

Fear and the Framework of Punishment 

In the 16th century Martin Luther proclaimed that human beings are a “pile of manure.” Fast  forward to the 18th century, and you get Jonathan Edwards warning of humanity as "sinners in  the hands of an angry God," dangling over the flames of eternal judgment. According to this  vision, God is holy, we are evil, and only the excruciating suffering and violent death of Jesus  can bridge the gap of our depravity. 

This thinking led to the doctrine of substitutionary atonement: the belief that Jesus had to suffer  and die to pay the debt we owed to God. God’s justice had to be satisfied, and Jesus was the only  one who could do it. It painted a courtroom scene in which God is the judge, humanity the guilty  party, and Jesus the one taking the punishment.

The result? A legal, transactional view of Christianity: 

1. Admit you’re a sinner. 

2. Believe Jesus paid your debt. 

3. Say the right words, and you’re saved. 

While this view was intended to highlight God’s justice and Jesus’ mercy, it often made God feel  more like a cosmic judge than a loving parent. And it shaped generations of Christians to see  themselves as inherently bad—flawed, broken, and on thin spiritual ice. 

But Was That the Only View? 

No. Not by a long shot. 

Long before Augustine, many early Christians focused not on sin but on our creation in God’s  image. The belief was that there is an inherent goodness and dignity in human nature. Genesis  1:27 says God made humans in His own likeness. Genesis 1:31 says everything God made— including us—was "very good." 

Instead of starting with original sin, some traditions emphasize what could be called original  blessing. We were created good. Sin entered the story, but it isn’t the beginning of the story. The  opening chapter of Genesis is about original blessing, where God declares that creation—and  humanity—is “very good.” The interpretation of original sin, which is never specifically stated in  the Bible, came later from chapter 3. 

In fact, Eastern Orthodox Christianity never fully embraced Augustine’s view. They see  humanity not as depraved, but as wounded—still bearing God’s image, though distorted by sin.  The goal of life is not appeasing a wrathful God, but healing and transformation. 

Jesus’ View of Humanity 

Jesus wasn’t just a healer or moral teacher—he was a radical mirror of God's heart. Time and  again, he saw beyond the labels people carried. The woman caught in adultery? He saw dignity,  not disgrace. The tax collector Zacchaeus? He called him down from the tree and invited himself  over for dinner, not to scold him, but to remind him that he too was a 'son of Abraham' (Luke  19:9). The bleeding woman who touched his garment? He didn't call her unclean—he called her  'daughter' (Mark 5:34). 

Jesus showed us what it means to affirm someone's identity before fixing their behavior. He  didn’t demand belief as a prerequisite for belonging. He restored people first—reminding them  of their worth—and then invited them into a new way of living. 

His interactions were not transactional—they were relational. He spoke with women, touched  lepers, and welcomed children. He saw the divine image in people before they saw it in  themselves.

And when Jesus did speak harshly, it was mostly to the religious insiders who used shame and  fear to control others (see Matthew 23). He reserved his strongest critiques for those who used  religion as a weapon—those who burdened others with guilt, enforced purity codes, and claimed  spiritual superiority while missing the heart of compassion. To the Pharisees and scribes, he  declared, “Woe to you...for you shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces”  (Matthew 23:13). His anger wasn’t toward sinners, doubters, or outsiders—it was toward  systems and leaders who distorted the image of God and hindered others from seeing their own  belovedness. 

So Why Do Good People Still Do Harm? 

This is where the work of psychologist Carl Jung is especially helpful. Jung introduced the  concept of the shadow—the part of ourselves we push away, deny, or repress. The shadow  contains the traits we’re ashamed of: anger, selfishness, fear, jealousy. But it also includes our  hidden strengths, desires, and gifts that we’ve learned to hide. 

Jung taught that when we ignore our shadow, it doesn’t disappear. It controls us from the  background. He wrote, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and  you will call it fate.” 

In other words, people often hurt others not because they are evil, but because they’re  unconscious—operating from wounds and fears they haven’t faced. 

Connie Zweig, who expanded Jung’s ideas in her work on “shadow work,” says, “The shadow is  not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.” She encourages people to face the shadow  with compassion—to see it as part of the journey toward wholeness, not something to fear. 

This process mirrors Christian transformation: confession, repentance, grace, and healing. Jesus  calls us to take the log out of our own eye, not to shame us, but so we can see clearly (Matthew  7:5). When we do shadow work, we move closer to our true selves—not further away. 

A powerful tool for working with the shadow is the Enneagram—a spiritual and psychological  framework that identifies nine personality types. Each type has its natural gifts and strengths, but  also its shadow side—the patterns and pitfalls that emerge when we operate out of fear, stress, or  disconnection. 

The Enneagram doesn't shame us for our shadow; instead, it helps us see that every strength has  a flip side. For example, someone who is driven to succeed—a classic Enneagram Type 3—may  also struggle with the shadow of deception, both toward others and themselves, hiding  vulnerability behind performance. The fear of being seen as a failure can lead to an inauthentic  life, where success masks insecurity. This “two sides of a coin” paradigm is part of being human. 

By showing us both our light and our shadow, the Enneagram invites awareness rather than  shame. And awareness is the first step toward transformation. Rather than labeling us as flawed  or depraved, it helps us become conscious of the parts of ourselves we’ve left in the dark—so we 

can begin to integrate them with grace. Some call this process "shadow boxing"—the courageous  inner work of facing what we’ve hidden—an essential step toward authentic transformation. 

This is a good place to talk about the 'coincidence of opposites'—a concept rooted in ancient philosophy and spiritual wisdom by people like St. Bonaventure. It recognizes how opposing forces are not enemies, but essential companions. Nondual thinking, which embraces both-and rather than either-or, allows us to see that joy and sorrow, strength and weakness, negative and positive, love and hate, up and down, success and failure often coexist in the same space and are dependent on each other. Instead of dividing the world into good or bad, light or dark, saved or damned, this way of seeing invites us to hold paradox with grace.

The Enneagram, shadow work, and the teachings of Jesus all point toward this deeper integration—where wholeness comes not by eliminating our contradictions, but by honoring them. As Rohr often notes, transformation happens when we can hold tension without rushing to resolution. Often we find "third-way" solutions and divine creativity by holding the tension of each extreme. This unity of opposites is not only how reality works—it’s also how healing begins. Healing begins when we can hold two truths at once: we are deeply loved and also deeply flawed; we are both broken and beautiful. Rather than seeing ourselves or others in black-and-white categories, we begin to embrace the complexity of being human. Although we were created as "very good," our daily lives are neither good or bad – it’s both - we are human. With this understanding, we move from judgment to compassion, from fear to grace. This is how wholeness happens—not through perfection, but through the honest holding of life’s paradoxes.

As Jesus put it, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). This divine impartiality reveals a God who embraces the paradox—shining light and offering nourishment to all, without prejudice. It is a living picture of grace and the mystery that both the shadow and the light are held within the same loving gaze.

The Mirror of Christ 

Richard Rohr suggests that the true and essential work of religion is to help us recover the divine  image in everything. We were created to mirror God—not by effort, but by simply reflecting  what is already there. 

This divine mirroring, which Rohr calls the "Mind of Christ," is the awareness that we are  already known, loved, and connected. It's not something we earn—it’s something we remember.  As 1 John 2:21 puts it, “It is not because you do not know the truth that I write to you, but  because you know it already.” 

This knowing is planted deep in each of us—what scripture calls the Law written on our hearts  (Jeremiah 31:33), or what Christians might name the Indwelling Holy Spirit. In essence, we  already are the children of God (1 John 3:2). The work of spirituality isn’t to become something  we are not, but to awaken to what is already true. 

Rohr names this “original blessing” or “original innocence.” It is unchanging, universal, and  gifted equally to all. There is nothing we can do to lose it—and nothing others can do to  disqualify them from it. 

Rethinking the Question 

Beneath all of this—beneath theology, psychology, and even behavior—is a deep, universal  human longing: the desire to belong. From our first breath, we are wired to seek connection,  love, and acceptance. But the doctrine of original sin tells us the opposite—that we were born  separated from God, inherently flawed, and deserving of punishment. Nothing shatters our sense  of belonging faster than being told we are unworthy of it. When we believe we are excluded  from God's presence by nature, it becomes difficult—if not impossible—to trust that we truly  belong anywhere at all. This belief can fracture not just our relationship with God, but with  others and even ourselves. 

What if the truest thing about you isn’t separation, but sacred connection? What if, instead of  beginning with sin, we returned to the first truth declared in Genesis: that we were made very  good? 

What if we reframed the question? Not "Are we good or bad?" but: 

Are we deeply loved and divinely made, yet often disconnected and in need of healing? 

Sin, then, is not a stain that makes us worthless. It’s a wound that needs healing. A disconnection  that needs reconnection. Jesus came not to condemn us for being bad but to remind us who we  really are: God’s beloved.

As Richard Rohr puts it, “Jesus did not come to change God’s mind about us. It did not need  changing. Jesus came to change our minds about God—and about ourselves.” 

When we start with a theology of mistrust, we never leave the shadow of fear. But when we  begin with trust and blessing, we can move toward transformation. 

Original Blessing, Eternal Love 

Romans 8:38-39 tells us that nothing—not even death—can separate us from the love of God.  That’s not the language of a God who sees you as garbage. That’s the voice of a God who has  never stopped loving what He made. 

Yes, we mess up. We hurt others. We live selfishly. But those failures do not erase our core  identity: we are image-bearers of divine love. 

So maybe the question isn’t whether we’re inherently good or bad. Maybe the better question is: 

Can we remember who we really are? Can we reclaim the original blessing that’s been there all  along? 

So how do we begin to remember who we really are? Through awareness. Through shadow  work. Through grace. Through looking into the face of Jesus—and seeing ourselves loved there.  That’s how we start. 

You were made in love, for love. That’s the truest thing about you. 

And it's never too late to live like it.