We were watching The Dark Knight tonight when the Joker started talking about human nature. He said humans were at the core selfish creatures who will turn to murder and butchery when order breaks down and panic sets in.
My daughter raised an eye brow and made a comment to suggest my view of human sinfulness sounds a lot like the Joker. I knew this was yet another case in which I had failed to describe what I mean. It may also be a sign that I also do not understand what I am trying to describe.
Sin, it seems, is something we just don’t understand. Original sin even more so.
Saying human beings are corrupted by sin does not mean they are incapable of any actions that we might describe as good. Some hyper-Calvinists might say this, I suppose, but my understanding is less radical than that. Our will is diseased. It is chained. It is broken and damaged by sin. No longer able to see or hear or sense the things of God, we are cut off from the light and cast in a landscape of shadows and darkness and clouds.
The grace of God — perhaps sometimes nothing more than a residue of the grace that brought us into being — glows in this darkness. It leads us. It warms us. It strengthens us to stand up under the weight of our chains.
Am I off the reservation here?
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
Sin is knowing the world is worse than we thought it was. And yet, it is still possible, by God’s grace, to share in God’s blessings.