I loved this! I really liked this take so much, brings the whole genre a breath air of humanity but not in the grittiness that's often the depiction of reality. Just pure inspiration.

Personally, I just wrote this story as fast as I could, so I just went with the idea that Original Sin was that he wielded the first act of violence against someone in like, ancient times. The shrine is super vague because I wanted it to be as cryptic as the Gods before the commonly known Abrahamic one.

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Jacob eating the rest was just a haunting line I came up with lol

Thanks for a good first prompt for me!

The smoke cleared as Father Jacob took to his podium, clearing his throat to make his first words of the morning. He spoke to a full audience, it was a Sunday like any other, with some families and others filing in still, whispering "Excuse me's" and tiny hellos to neighbors peppered throughout the hall.

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"Today, we are here to talk about what brings us all here. What makes us all equal in the eyes of our Lord. Not that we are here to praise him, to speak to him, to love him, to gain his sacred word. Those are all given endlessly, wherever we may seek His guidance. We are equal in the ways we are not Him, that we are all needed to be cleansed in his eyes before we are able to stand before him. If we are unable to be free of sin, how would we be able to withstand his judgement? How could we ever possibly bare to see his eyes squint in ire as he casts us aside?" Father Jacob began his sermon. The audience listened intently, locked into their chairs with his words.

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"Original Sin, we call it. The flaming sword that kept us from Eden, its metal now melted down to forge the gates that keep us from the glorious heavens. Why are we still kept out, some of us may ask, when our Lord sacrificed his life between sinners?" Jacob continued, walking from end to end on his stage, his robes flowing as he pointed to the three crosses behind him.

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"We have many verses to explain why we are born with this. I was told when I was younger, that it's like a baking pan with a dent, every batch comes with that same mark, that same proclivity that leads us to err, that makes us always need His word."

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"Personally, I wouldn't mind a muffin from that batch, dent or not," He joked. His audience chuckled.

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"But I don't necessarily think it's like that. We want to think it was the biting of the apple, but I think it's simpler."

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"Much, much simpler." Jacob finished. The priest looked at his audience, his family. The confessional was beside him, but he decided it was about time to have one out in the public. A confessional for himself.

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"Adam and Eve made their own choices, but He knew that we were marked for wrongdoing further than that. The apple wasn't the provider of knowledge of Good and Evil. It was a test to see if this batch was still tainted. They still were."

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Jacob remembered it all like yesterday. In his age, it was. Candles beside him flickered, casting shadows of himself on the wall. He put his hand up to see its shadow, remembering his first mark in that cave thousands of years ago. He snapped his fingers, killing the lights and the shadows with them. Smoke circled him, the double doors locking.

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"Adam and Eve made their own choices, but the moments God showed us his wrath were not for them. The plagues Moses had cast. Not for them. The evils that he allowed throughout the years. Not for them. The horrid acts that only leave us saying the simple sentence of 'Maybe it was God's plan,' as our only comfort. Not for them. He allowed all of this because our Original Sin is still yet to be cleansed."

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Jacob remembered his first night in that cave, his shrine set up deep within. His eyes, bloodshot like split wires, staring at a lone child that began to stray from his herd. Away from the clay huts that were his only protection in this dark night.

"He knew the moment I made my own choice, that humanity wasn't meant to Be. We couldn't be left to our own devices."

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The child only saw his eyes before he clubbed him unconscious, dragging the boy back to the cave.

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"He did so much to reverse what I did to get where I'm at, today."

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Jacob buried the kid in five holes.

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"He flooded us once, but he couldn't drown me."

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Jacob ate the rest.

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"He riddled me with locusts, but they didn't like what they ate."

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Jacob looked at his audience.

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"He killed his own son as a compromise. To reverse someone so hateful with someone who could die for anyone."

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Jacob smiled. He never hungered like that ever again since, holding it back so He couldn't find him easily again. So he could gather a crowd one day. So he could smile to his audience...

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And enjoy his Last Supper.