What really separates us from God?

Is it sin, or something else?

I  have been pondering this question lately.

Listen to this:

"Our misdeeds are not  the real root of the problem. They are just what the tradition called actual sins.

There is a much more serious problem, what the tradition called original sin.

It is much more subtle and inevitably hidden from us.

The relationship is broken by the presumption of our ethical behavior, our morality, our good deeds, our insistence on doing it ourselves.

The relation is broken because these too turn us quite simply against grace ...

The Almighty God desires simply to be known as the giver of the gift of absolute grace.

To this we say "No."

We say, rather, that we intend to make it on our own, that grace is 'too cheap.' 

Then the relationship is destroyed just as surely as it was by our immorality."

(Gerhard Forde - A More Radical Gospel)

Have you ever pondered the thought that it is your own self-created "goodness" that keeps you from God?