called the Original Sin, Adam and Eve reject their status as limited creatures. They choose themselves over God. They choose against their true identity as people made in the image and likeness of God, preferring their own rule over the Father’s loving kindness. If the kingdom is about right relationship and communion with God, then to live under the loving dominion of the Creator is to acknowledge the truth about who God is and who we are. Through their choice to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, Adam and Eve choose their own will over God’s, refusing to acknowledge the reality of their dependence on God as his sons and daughters.
In doing so, they fall right into Satan’s trap. In their desire to be free from God’s rule and from any dependence on him, they reject his kingdom and make a kingdom out of their own will—a kingdom of Man. The tragedy of the Great Story is that Adam and Eve exchange the truth for a lie: desiring freedom, they fall into bondage and take all of creation with them.
Everything Falls Apart
Remember that God created humanity to experience love, and love cannot be coerced. It must be freely given. Therefore, God has given us free will—not so we can choose between good and evil, but rather so we can freely choose the good and embrace our identity as God’s sons and daughters. When Adam and Eve, our first parents, choose disobedience instead of God’s love, they do not use their free will, they abuse it.
This abuse has serious consequences that ripple across all of creation. The very first consequence is that the intimate bond between Adam and Eve ruptures: “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves” (Genesis 3:7). Previously, our first parents were naked in the Garden of Eden and experienced no shame. Now, their bodies have become sources of temptation for each other, and they are ashamed. They create clothing to cover themselves, and this layer of protection creates a barrier that separates them.
The brokenness in the relationship between Adam and Eve possesses more than a physical dimension. Adam and Eve, who were spouses, helpmates, and partners with each other, find themselves at odds now. When the Lord confronts them after they eat the forbidden fruit, Adam blames both God and Eve: “The woman whom you put here with me—she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it” (Genesis 3:12). Adam wastes no time in shifting the blame to his wife, throwing her “under the bus” with a loud, She did it!
The rupture in communion between Adam and Eve, however difficult and tragic, is not the final consequence of their choice. Because of our first parents’ disobedience, the intimate bond connecting humanity and God is ruptured as well. Adam and Eve’s decision leads them to separate themselves from God. After the moment of the fall, God enters the garden and strolls through it. Adam and Eve, however, are nowhere to be found. They are hiding from God—a real rift has formed between them.
This is what is meant by the “stain of Original Sin.” Since our first parents turned their backs on communion with God, all of their descendants—which is to say all of humanity (including you and me)—are born out of communion with God. This stain of Original Sin isn’t a moral judgment on babies or a statement that all people are now evil. We are still made in the image of God, but that image has been wounded. Remember that God breathed his own Spirit (ruah) into them, giving them life, which was a share in his very life. Our first parents used that breath, the life God had given to them, to turn away from God. The stain of Original Sin is actually a lack: it is the absence of that divine life, which Adam and Eve lost for us by their disobedience.
Without that divine life, our intellect, will, emotions—all of the soul’s faculties (or powers)—are wounded. Our bodies become sources of temptation, and we experience a hunger for God and his love that we often seek to fill with things that are not godly. Without that divine life, death enters the world, the final layer of separation introduced by Adam and Eve’s sin. Even the original integrity of the human person—body and soul working together in harmony—breaks down as a result of sin. In God’s plan, our bodies and souls would never separate, and we would dwell in the unity of God’s love for all eternity. Now, the human body ages and breaks down, eventually succumbing to bodily death.
As if these weren’t enough consequences, the whole created order is thrown into disarray:
To the woman he said: “I will intensify your toil in childbearing; / in pain you shall bring forth children. / Yet your urge shall be for your husband, / and he shall rule over you.”
To the man he said: “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, You shall not eat from it,
“Cursed is the ground because of you! / In toil you shall eat its yield / all the days of your life. / Thorns and thistles it shall bear for you, / and you shall eat the grass of the field. / By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, / Until you return to the ground, / from which you were taken; / For you are dust, / and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:16-19).
Through the devil’s lies, Adam and Eve abuse the gift of free will which God had given them, and their sin leaves all of creation wounded. Now tension, domination, lust, manipulation, and many other things threaten human relationships. Now natural disasters afflict the world. Now pain and illness enter the human experience—because of this moment. We sometimes look at the suffering of good people and want to blame God for it all. The truth is that evil and suffering and illness are real, but God had nothing to do with their coming into being. These evils have resulted from two things: the disobedience of our first parents and the seductive prompting of Satan.
God did not create evil, illness, and suffering—they come as a result of the fall of man. All of the suffering and illness and trauma that we experience in this life has its origin in this moment of the story. If God were truly a good God, and if he were truly all powerful, wouldn’t he have fixed things for us? Many people have followed this train of thought and come to the conclusion that God cannot be all good or possess all power. Many therefore decide God does not exist, or that if he does, he’s anything but loving.
The truth is that God could easily have erased the fall of man. He could have interrupted the story the moment Adam and Eve took a bite of the forbidden fruit, snapped his “fingers,” and started Eden 2.0. Adam and Eve would be ushered offstage and Jose and Luana would take their place. Or, if God chose not to take this kind of cosmic mulligan, he could instantly have healed the effects of the Original Sin. Why didn’t he? Well, this is where our story takes a wonderful twist.
God didn’t reverse the fall of man or instantly heal its effects because he loves us too much.
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