Out of my depth

What fell?

When Adam and Eve, and thereby the entire human race, sinned against God and "fell," what exactly fell? How extensive is the Fall? In answering this question, I'm going to go a little out of my depth, but that never stopped me before.

We know that our volition fell. Our ability to choose fell. We are inescapably consigned to want sinful things, to choose sinful things, to never be pure in our motives and actions. This is what we typically blame in others (and sometimes ourselves). In our judgmental moods, we critique people for their choices. A homeless substance abuser asks for money, and we think, "If you hadn't made all those bad choices, you wouldn't be in this predicament. " What else could God hold people accountable for but their choices?

Our relationships also fell. Most obvious, our relationship with God fell - kicked out from His presence. It was severely damaged, but not irreparably destroyed. It is the most tragic loss - to be estranged from your Creator. Furthermore, our relationships with each other fell. When God told Adam and Eve what life was going to be like going forward, He described that tension and conflict would plague us.

We also fell spiritually - we became spiritually dead, needing to be reborn.

But I step out of my depth when I consider that we also fell developmentally. I haven't studied human development science, especially child development. Some of you have. What little I understand is that we go through developmental stages, and if a stage is not properly experienced, then there are predictable dysfunctions that are likely to occur later in life. These dysfunctions may involve little to no choice on the part of the person. We fell developmentally, too.

But here's the problem: we can't blame people for things they have no choice over, can we? More importantly, God can't blame a person for that, can He? Such a person doesn't need to be saved from things that aren't his fault, does he?

Part of our difficulty is equating the Fall with blameworthiness. We tend toward thinking salvation is only for the things we're directly at fault for. Our difficulty is that we think Jesus died only for our sinful choices.

We are fallen. Every part about us is fallen. So, every part about us needs to be saved - including the stuff we have little to no choice over. Grace is that extensive. Our need for Christ is bigger than just our bad choices. We are so fallen that just fixing our choices won't make us unfallen. We absolutely cannot save ourselves. The Cross of Christ is that complete. We are that dependent on a Savior, because we even need saving from things we can't control. We are all out of our depth.

I don't need to fixate on someone else's bad choices. He or she is fallen in every way and needs salvation in every way. The last thing people need is for me to give them the false idea that all they need to do is make better choices.