Problem :

sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by uid 1000, should be 0
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting
sudo: unable to initialize policy plugin

Reason why :

sudo chown -R sael:sael /etc

Was trying to change permissions so that I could edit something now im a sitting duck.

Why on earth did you chown -R /etc ????

/etc/ holds system config files, you're not supposed to be able to edit them as a regular user, that's the point. This is also another reason why sudo-only distros are stupid, but that's an argument for another thread.

Boot into a live distro, mount your root partition, and chown everything back to what it's supposed to be. Hopefully you have a backup you can use for reference? Most of them should be root:root, but there are several critical exceptions. If you don't have a reference to go off of, you may end up wanting to chown them all to root:root and then install the same distro in a VM so you can see what they're supposed to be. And then chalk this up as a learning experience and never do it again

Whatever you use for a reference, the following could help you identify the outliers that aren't root:root
There are only 26 outliers on my CentOS 7 system, not too bad.

Well I'm VERY new to linux and had no idea that /etc was system files. Mostly because of what it was named. I just figured it was random information for installed programs. Also, I have no idea what you just told me to do. Is there a way to back up my files and reinstall linux?

For future reference: http://tldp.org/LDP/tlk/fs/filesystem.html

don't get defensive.
habitual is trying to help you, and their gentle critique is justified:
if you are so new to linux, what were you doing trying to change your sudoers file? and why weren't you using visudo for that, as every tutorial says?

ok, try this:
and reboot.

if that helps, lucky.
if not, and judging from your admission that you are clueless, i think your best bet is to boot up a live distro, copy whatever files you want to save to a spare usb stick, and reinstall.

and chalk it up to experience: be more careful in future. don't execute a command without knowing what it does.
and it has happened to all of us at some point!

For future reference, whatever the task, if you need root privileges in order to do it, then you need to take a long hard look at what you're doing and why. If it was just "random information" that didn't matter, you wouldn't need to be root.

Sure, either way you'll want to boot into a live distro so you have permission to mount drives, etc.

Actually, if this is RHEL based distro, there is a way to correct ownerships (& perms if reqd) http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/reset-...ermission.html
Obviously you'll need to be/have root access.