The fluidity of sin

Sin takes the shape of its container.

We live easy lives of refrigerators, insulation, and plumbing. I didn't die of postpartum hemorrhaging, our son didn't die of pneumonia. This is a comfortable historical moment, and yet we're barely keeping it together. If kids don't have tuberculosis, sin invents something or other to render them inoperable (yes, yes, kids are overmedicated--but aren't we all afraid to say it in front of the parents whose kid can't function without his meds?). Medicine beat polio, and sin crippled us with panic attacks. Develop an economy that frees people from working like dogs, and soon they're slaves to sloth. Sin has programmed us to break down under afflictions great or small. Where it cannot brutally annihilate, it inexorably aggravates.

I'll take the petty complaints of my life any day over losing half my children before their first birthdays, and I know that my trials don't begin to compare to those of our brothers and sisters elsewhen and -where. But at the same time, rich Americans are sad people, like all of sin's victims. Every person staggers under her cross, whether that cross is a relentless series of negative pregnancy tests, or a relentless succession of kids, or a deliberate two with a house in the suburbs.