I can understand original sin simply by watching the evening news: the competitive struggle to prevail. What I cannot understand is why people think original sin causes some kind of permanent break with a God who in all the Hebrew scriptures used to simply forgive those contrite in heart? Is the Christian God more mean than the Jewish God that he needs a human blood sacrifice? Perhaps some of our ancestors mistook the phrase "he died for our sins" to mean he had to die for our sins to be forgiven. But it can simply mean he died because of our sins.