Universalism: Part One

I disagree with the general Christian approach to the doctrine of original sin. We are NOT born as sinful beings. Original sin is not a metaphysical doctrine, it is a social one. We are not born sinful, but we are born into systems of sin.
Of course this quickly resolves the whole dilemma about what happens when innocent children die, etc.
However, as we grow-up in our societies we blindly participate in systems of sin, oppression and death, and as such we become sinful. At this point ignorance is no excuse. I may not have realised my money was supporting child-labour but it was. I may not have realised I was treating women as objects, but I was.
So, although I was once born innocent, I am born into a sinful world and thereby become sinful.
That's why Paul keeps saying that our battle is not with flesh and blood but with powers and principalities. Some charismatics have taken this way out on a tangent and developed intricate diagrams of spiritual beings and their ranks, etc, etc. Really Paul is attacking the social structures of the Roman Empire when he writes this way.
The powers and principalities are sin and death. And it is these that Jesus defeated on the cross. They are ideologies. They are all the things that claim the place of God in our lives yet destroy right relationship in doing so. Racism, Sexism, Capitalism, Patriotism… They are also corporations and businesses. Nike, The Gap, Shell, MicroSoft… These are the structures of sin that exist in our society.
And it is these, I would like to suggest, that are damned to hell, it is these that are damned to annihilation. God is in the process of saving the world, of making all things new. These structures of sin and death and the only things that will not be redeemed. All else will be ushered in. Death after all is not a presence but an absence. When God is fully present there is no room for death.
And this is why Christians are now called to announce the forgiveness of sins. Somewhere along the way we've gotten it all wrong. We've been announcing judgment when we should be announcing grace. No, you are not damned, you are beloved! No, you are not tainted, you are beautiful! No, you are not being cast out, you are being welcomed home! What Christ has accomplished has been achieved for all.
The thing is that Christians also need to be living in a way that signals that the powers and principalities have been defeated if their message is to be heard. “It is by the church living as the one believing community, in which barriers of race, class, gender and so forth are irrelevant for membership, and to holding of office that the principalities and powers are informed in no uncertain terms that their time is up, that there is a new way of being human” (Wright). That's why John says that they will know we are Christians by our love.
Of course we can announce the forgiveness of sins. Israel wasn't called to be God's people so that they could be saved while the rest of the world wasn't. No, election was all about saving the world. Abraham was called so that all the earth would be blessed. So, now, after Jesus, it just doesn't makes sense to say God has called a different group of people while the rest of the world is damned. No, God, in his love, is saving the world and making us all new.