Even from a Judeo-Christian perspective, humankind is something of a disappointment, inasmuch as the act of disobedience that first separated it from its creator is perpetuated today, in our individual lives, through sin. And yet the disappointment isn’t entire; it isn’t the last word. For the gift that is the freedom of our will exists as a constant source of potential to alleviate it, as is evidenced by the lives of people we describe as saintly, or holy, or ordinary but decent. And in the messianic promise of the Hebrew scriptures (which Christianity sees as fulfilled, and which Judaism awaits and expects) is a reversal of the consequences of that disappointment.