no s— word
#unapologetic
Last night I kept my window open. There’s something comforting about the breeze gently blowing. Something is familiar.
Maybe it reminds me of home. There’s still some comfort there. Remembering waking up at 5 am to stare out my bedroom window. Watching the sky turn pinkish and start to bounce off the fog that would hang low in the valley formed by the gentle hills. When I meditated before bed, this was the place I went to and held in my mind.
I’m not home. I don’t currently know where home is.
But I do know what rest feels like.
I felt calm when I went to bed, even if it was still past midnight. This morning I woke up feeling a bit more at ease.
I still have my window open as I’m writing this. There’s something magical about fresh air. I should go outside later…
My greatest fear when writing is that I’m being dramatic, but then I have to remember that I’m just feeling. Writing is where I go to just let my feelings pour out. The good, the bad, and everything in between. Even if feelings are irrational, feelings are what make us human. They aren’t meant to be measured, but felt, acknowledged, and held.
I feel overapologetic, now. A friend pointed that out to me last night and reminded me of Heartstopper and how similar I am to the protagonist, Charlie.
“No s— word, tonight.”
That’s what my friend told me, paraphrasing Charlie’s boyfriend, Nick. The censored word here is “sorry.” I know, how triggering.
But I still say it, maybe all too often. Sometimes I feel like I have to apologise for everything. Yikes.
Deep down, there’s still a boy who’s insecure about everything. The way he talks, the way that he walks, the way that he breathes, the way that he sees himself in the mirror.
Insecurity, yeah, that’s something we all struggle with.
To paraphrase my despair from yesterday, it’s when we start asking ourselves if we are truly good enough.
Maybe that’s what’s so tough when it comes to how we talk about original sin. I’m no longer so convinced that Augustine was right (oh, no, here come the charges of heresy again… sigh).
I was reading through an application that Christianity Today has for their “Young Storytellers Fellowship.” No matter how much I would love to apply, and might anyway, even though I doubt they would take me, they have one thing that holds me back a bit. A single caveat, that is, like any good “christian” group, “do you accept our belief statement?”
Evidently, I don’t, since in said belief statement were the following phrases.
“[The fall] brought upon the entire race the sentence of eternal death.”
“The wicked shall be condemned to eternal death.”
The place where these overlap is this tendency to say that before we even take our first breath, we are guilty of hell, specifically a hell of eternal conscious torment.
There just is no scriptural basis for this, unless you take metaphors literally.
Oh, and if you trust the Latin over the original Greek.
St. Jerome made many a blunder with the Vulgate. Not only did we get cosmetic things, like a post-Sinai Moses with horns1, with the mistranslation of the word for “light.” That was kind of fun.
We also got fundamental shifts in the meaning of the text. That’s not so fun anymore.
New Testament instances of αἰώνιος (aionios) became aeternum.
Aionios means “age-long; lasting for a long or indefinite period of time; long-lasting.”2 Not forever.
Aeternum means “eternally, always, perpetually, constantly.”3
Two entirely different concepts, overruled by the latter.
ἐφʼ ᾧ (eph ho), which means “because,” became in quo, which rather means “in whom.”
Changing it from “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned” (Romans 5:12, NRSVue). This one is real.
To “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all in whom all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). This one is wrong, even if it exists.
Hence, why this concept just isn’t found in the originally Greek-speaking Eastern church. The Eastern church rightly believes that we experience the consequences of the “original sin,” but we don’t inherit the guilt of the “original sin.”
Through Augustine, who formulated the concept of original sin based on the mistranslation of Romans 5:12, conversely posited (as the Western church continues to teach today) that, through Adam, we inherit the guilt of the first sin.
We are thus born enemies of God.
I can’t help but rail against this concept and the fact that children grow up hearing that they are enemies of God and sinners before they even develop an understanding of morality.4
Similarly, the Eastern church doesn’t have the Western concept of a hell with eternal conscious torment. Instead, the teaching of apokatastasis is prevalent, or the teaching that all things will be reconciled, even though they might pass through fire and not be destroyed.
“Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—the work of each builder will become visible, for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If the work that someone has built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a wage. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire” (I Corinthians 3:12-15).
With all of this, I largely digress, but still reject these Western concepts.
This heart of empathy finds it less crushing to know that these positions were fringe positions in the early church that somehow made it mainstream.
Now I fear I have become too serious in my exposition. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Dear reader, I’m s—. Wait, no s— word. No apologising.
Yet, that doesn’t make this unimportant. It’s like we sell insecurity in the church. Like we expect people to feel hopeless and ashamed.
I don’t think God looks down at us and thinks, “I want my children to be ashamed.”
Neither, “I want them to be overapologetic.”
Nor, “I want them to feel paralysed by their sin.”
I feel like I’m not alone when I say that I know the promises of Jeremiah 29:11 and still sometimes become blindsided by the fact of how we give God such an image of judgement. Even though Christ is literally the living, walking, God-in-human-flesh antithesis of judgement.
But, no, “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).
To think that Christ’s victory is mine is sweet relief indeed.
To know that he rules with the future of all people in mind.
To realise that even though he looked over his creation with sorrow, he did not repent them.
He took action. He defeated death. He defeated sin. He defeated it all.
And yet, here I stand, crippling from my worry, shame, and fear. Powerful emotions that are weaponised by the church all too often. To make those in the church pews keep coming back because they’ve been taught that it’s the only way to cope with their guilt.
What if it wasn’t supposed to be like that? We don’t worship a God who drowns people in their shame, after all. We don’t worship a God who holds people down. We worship a God who calls us forward. A God who lifts us up.
I might be miserably unqualified.
Like a miserable flavour of miserably.
Some might say I’m a heretic. Others call me a sinner. I know Jesus sat with people like that.
I know who I am.
I’m a child of God, and I don’t even have to try. I just get to be his. I get to be his child. I get to be known by him.
The summer breeze blows over me again and through my window. I’m going to be okay.
After all, history is just repeating itself. Even Jesus had to get a bit upset that the people who claimed to be his people were really just weaponising his words. Twisting them against him. Demanding things he never demanded.
Yet, with wonder, I worship a God who uplifts sinners. Who sits with them. Who heals them. Who calls all the lowly, and the oppressed, and the weary.
I follow a Jesus who was human just like me. Who gets me. Who knows me in and out. Who suffers with me.
I follow a God who is relatable, in the most radically loving way possible.
So it’s okay.
I wouldn’t be the first person that the “people of god” charged with blasphemy.
After all, that’s what they said about the only sinless person to walk this earth. I think I’m in good company.
And I’m not s— about that.
Any art people reading this will appreciate this: https://fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/explore-our-collection/highlights/context/sign-and-symbols/moses-horns. Almost every Medieval and Renaissance artist depicted Moses this way. All thanks to St. Jerome.
Wiktionary contributors, "αἰώνιος," Wiktionary, https://w.wiki/Rbr4 (accessed June 22, 2026).
Wiktionary contributors, "aeternum," Wiktionary, https://w.wiki/RbrQ (accessed June 22, 2026).
“By 3–4 years of age, children make categorical judgments about right and wrong based on concerns with welfare and rights.”
Dahl, Audun, and Melanie Killen. 2018. “A Developmental Perspective on the Origins of Morality in Infancy and Early Childhood.” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (September). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01736.