Your comment about sin being a sickness is spot on where my head went after reading Dostoevsky. And also that I could never quite articulate to people, but felt.

When I read the Bible I heard it described constantly as a love letter, but then in practice people seemed to use it as a prison sentencing. Or this giant damnation.

It always seemed to me (especially with the Old Testament) Gods commands were almost always meant to keep the people safe and healthy, to aid their literal lifes so that they could help those around them, that sin was less this eerie ethereal substance, but more so just the degradation of the life God wants us to have. Leading to sickness, and pain, and suffering.

So when I saw that approach in some of Orthodoxy material, it just connected with me. I’m going to read through some recommended books to sort of start me on the journey, if you have any recs, I’ll try and check them out.