Models

Murray Jardine's book (The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society: How Christianity can save modernity from itself) has a simple, but perhaps useful illustration for Christian anthropology and eschatology.

He says (I'm simplifying this a lot) that doctors have a model of a human being with everything working correctly. That there may not be such a person doesn't invalidate the model. You don't want a doctor to determine her success in curing you on the model of a sick person. Auto mechanics, too. No perfect car, maybe, but when you want them to fix it, you don't want them to settle for doing it according to a model that says your headlights not working is okay.

So, does our model (human, society, etc.) start off sick? If, in the name of being 'realistic' you settle for a model of the world that assumes original sin as normative, you'll never even be able to imagine or recognize the Kingdom of God.