Separation from God

I just finished a book in preparation for sharing and, more importantly, defending my faith in the face of questions and persecution with the coming attraction, "The DaVinci Code." The book is called "Cracking DaVinci's Code." Hopefully this will equip me with some more apologetic ammo. Anyway, in the book, the summary at the end brought up a very interesting notion about sin. We are separated from God by original sin, and not necessarily by our actions in the present. At first, I admit, it almost seemed heretical. Of course, we are to be responsible for our actions, and we can't blame Adam and Eve's original sin for what we do in the here and now. So how can we adopt that concept of sin- that it's not our sin that separates us from God, but the fact that humanity itself is and has been separated from the beginning of time, and is therefore continually apart from God? Well, when I got to thinking about it, it makes sense. I haven't thought it all out, but frankly, the fact that we start out without connection with God when we are born is matched with this concept. We are born into the world with sin in our genes. We start out separated from God, and we can only be reconciled to Him by being perfect, and as we all know, that has not been done (Romans 3:23). So, Jesus comes into the picture and puts His cross over the gap and asks us to "cross His cross" back to Him. Sounds theological to me, but many atheists (or unbelievers) would probably not be too comfortable with this teaching. They would say something like, "So it's Adam and Eve's fault for our being separated from God? That doesn't seem too "loving" to me. We have to pay for someone else's sinning." Well, my answer to that would be- if you were the first human created, would you be perfect? Is that what you are saying, that you would make no mistakes and do no selfish deeds? Hardly... none of us would. That's a big load to bear, being blamed for all humanity's sins. I'm glad Jesus bore it anyway. In my opinion, even if we are separated from God at the start, and continue to sin after that because we aren't close to Him, it seems a rather small price to pay just to admit one's selfish, depraved, sinful self and to cling to God for reconciliation. Let's let Jesus do the work. Then, let's praise Him forever for it.