Book review: “Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness” by Kathryn Paige Harden

 

Kathryn Paige Harden’s Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness is a difficult book to read because the questions that genetics raises are knotty and yet seem to suggest the possibility of simple, yes-no answers.

These questions are a variation of the nature vs. nurture debate.  Am I the way I am because I was born with a genetic history that has shaped — determined? — my life? Or am I the way I am because I grew up in a particular sort of home and have had — or not had — opportunities to live an interesting, peaceful, happy life?

Is there free will?

Original Sin is also difficult to read because Harden not only describes and discusses scientific findings and debates across the vast field of genetics but also describes and discusses how these findings and debates relate to her own life, to the lives of her three children, to the lives of her two husbands, to her mother and father, and especially to her upbringing as an Evangelical Christian.

Harden’s book is saturated with a particular form of Christian belief that emphasizes and enhances guilt and blame for “sinful” actions. And genetics seems to have a lot to say about that — seems, at least from some studies, to suggest that it’s wrong to blame someone for acting, for example, violently when that action may have been “programed” by the person’s inherited genetics.

 

“More likely”

Yet, Harden, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin and head of the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab, notes at various points that the scientific findings don’t show an absolute correlation between the genetic makeup of a person and the person’s acts.

Indeed, if I read her book correctly, many of the findings indicate that, with a particular genetic makeup, a person would be “more likely” to be, say, prone to violence than the average person. But this greater likelihood, while statistically valid, would be fairly small. It would not be that the person “had” to act violently.

From page to page in Original Sin, Harden is arguing one side and then the other, often using horrific criminal examples. This man, for instance, who was convicted of murder is the son of a man convicted of murder and the grandson of a man who was a killer.

In many cases, Harden doubles back to examine the Christian dogma around original sin and human guilt, sometimes from the context of Augustine of Hippo, the influential fifth century Catholic philosopher and theologian, and more often from the perspective of Evangelical Christianity.

 

Coming to grips with the questions

It is only in her final pages that Harden comes to grips with the questions that have bedeviled her and her readers.

Some thinkers, she writes, claim that the scientific findings “obliterate blame, punishment, and responsibility entirely.” To erase, as it were, sin completely.

She doesn’t agree, but she does assert that genetics can block the will to some extent temporarily — that my genetics may push me to do something in a moment that I wouldn’t choose to do otherwise.

And, while not erasing all blame or all sin, the impact on my actions by my genetic makeup can mean, in some way, that I’m less to blame for what I do.  And, for Harden, this partial lessening of blame

can leave us with an appreciation for the power of chance, awe at the vastness and interconnectedness of the world in which we are part, humility at the smallness of the self and the limits of human understanding.

In other words, if we recognize the power and limits of genetics — that the influence can be very strong while not total — we may be black-white judgmental, less likely to be sweeping in our condemnation.

 

“Not determined”

Nonetheless, a few pages later, while discussing the phrase “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Harden writes that she disputes the implication that the child of a violent person has to be violent — disputes the assertions of some Christians that some people are born saved and other born damned.

Humans do not breed true; our behavior is not essentially determined by our inherited biology, and our infinite variety cannot be categorized as saved or damned.

Much of what Harden wrestles with in her book is the tendency of people and the law to judge someone a “bad” person for committing a “bad” action.  To judge that the commission of a violent murder, for instance, is proof that the person is rotten to the core — is evil.

 

“The complexity of human life”

Yet, Harden asserts that such thinking is blind and wrong, too black and white:

I don’t think any child — anyone — is bad. Neither do I think everyone is essentially good.  Rather, I think a person has no singular essence. By giving up faith in an immaterial soul, I have given up faith in a unitary “I.” Perhaps here is where I have departed most radically from the Christianity of my youth. No one is either lamb or goat, white or tare, saved or damned.

The complexity of any human life cannot be flattened to a single trait or attribute. I am not entirely defined by my race or ethnicity, or pattern of sexual attraction, or gender, or disability, or creed. Neither am I entirely defined by my genotype, nor by my behavior. Even my worst behavior. And neither are you.

 

A line from the Gospel

And, after nearly 250 pages of text in which she has railed against the blindness and wrongness of the blame culture of Evangelical Christianity, Harden’s last thoughts turn to the Bible:

Yet, in the end, the line that rings in my head is from the Gospel. Maybe that speaks to the hold that religion can have on you, long after you’ve given it up. Or maybe it speaks to the power of story, of words. Words of mercy rather than blame, of hope rather than despair, of evolution rather than perdition. Words we will not hear from a god and long to hear from each other.

And the words she then offers are the words that Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery — a woman the crowd wanted to stone to death but who was saved when Jesus said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” and everyone in the crowd felt his own conscience and, one by one, walked away. That is the moment when Jesus said to her:

Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.

 

A different form of Christianity

One of the most frustrating things about reading Harden’s Original Sin was her frequent references to a form of Christianity that is not like the Christianity that I try to practice.

The sort of Christianity I try to practice is rooted in those final quotes from Jesus.  It’s a Christianity of mercy and forgiveness, a Christianity that asserts that my job as a human being is to love each other person, regardless of what that person does.

An example of this came after the attacks of September 11, 2001. A week or so later, a priest in my Catholic parish led the congregation in praying for Osama bin Laden — praying that he would recognize that violence was not the right path to walk.  And it wasn’t just this priest. When I researched a story for the Chicago Tribune, Cardinal Francis George and Protestant leaders I interviewed all said, essentially, that Christians are called to love the sinner despite the sin because, in truth, we are all sinners.

In our parish, there is a column in the weekly bulletin, called Growing in Faith, in which a lay parishioner offers about 250 words about the readings of the Sunday Mass.  As it happened, I had to write the one for September 13 which I did in late August before I started reading Harden’s Original Sin.

 

“Seventy-seven times” means “always”

When September 13 came round, I was just finishing Harden’s book, and my little essay seemed to have something to say about blame, guilt, mercy and forgiveness. So I am offering it here:

Listen to the opening words of this weekend’s first reading from Sirach: “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.” Does that sound familiar? So much of what we hear in our world is toxic with anger.  We live in a culture of outrage, of being quick to judge — and to judge harshly.

And, if I’m honest, it’s not just the world and the people around me who are wrathful. I confess that I am quick to anger, fast to judge. It is easy for me to get mad at some driver on Devon or at some politician on TV with whom I disagree.  Disagreement is fine, but not demonization.  That’s when I write off the other person as deeply bad, deeply evil, as a kind of demon.

There are bad actions, evil actions. But the people who do these bad things are still human beings, still my brothers and sisters.  Just as I am their brother, even though I am a sinner. We are all sinners as Pope Francis often reminded us.

“How often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus is asked in Matthew’s gospel.  He responds: “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.” Essentially, “seventy-seven times” is another way of saying “always.”

At the end of Original Sin, Harden speaks out for humility and mercy. I agree with her.

 

Patrick T. Reardon

9.18.26