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I'm a woman with PCOS, which means I have an excessive amount of body hair, most noticeably on my face. This is something I struggle with a lot, and my mom once apologized to me for it. She told me a story of something she did when she was younger that could have led to this happening as a sort of "Sins of the Father" type thing.
I won't get into the details of that discussion as it was very personal, but it did get me thinking about the concept as a whole, and it's one of the many things I've been taught growing up with religion that, upon reflection, is super fucked up.
Using myself as an example, not only is it unfair that I would be punished for something I had absolutely nothing to do with, but I also don't like what this implies about my personal autonomy. My problems are my own. My struggles, my pain, are my own and not something to be used as a punishment for someone else. I know my mom didn't in any way mean to be invalidating. This is just a part of her beliefs, and I respect that, but it did make me think.
How many people open up about their pain, only to have that pain taken over by someone else?
How audacious to think that you, a person who has not experienced what I have and do not know how it affects me, feel those affects more deeply than I do. And that is what this implies, that this problem I have is somehow more your cross to bare than mine. It's insulting.
It is also so unnecessary. Religion already places so much guilt onto our shoulders, we are born in sin, we live in sin, we die in sin, and the only way to escape is to live our lives constantly apologizing for ourselves. Don't add to that weight by taking burdens that aren't yours.