Are you weak enough to be a follower of Christ?
I've been struggling with this question for some time now. Maybe it's got something to do with Lent. Or maybe, it's got more to do with that time of my life when I am past any illusion of personal grandeur or salvation through right works. I know only too well the furious weakness that often assails me.
The primal myth for understanding human weakness and temptation has surely to be the "Fall." It all sounds so final and clear-cut. Adam and Eve, the primordial couple, each gave into temptation. Their eyes were opened, they saw their nakedness, and they hid from God in shame. From the Garden they were expelled, each with their own curse to bear.
The Fall has always been interpreted in somewhat negative terms. We fell, therefore we needed a saviour to bring us back. In the Easter Exultet do we not proclaim, "Oh happy fault of Adam which has gained for us so great a redeemer." I get that and buy into it – at least partly.
What about if we turned our reasoning upside down? What about if we professed that the Fall of our primordial parents was something that had to happen? What if we sang at Easter, "Oh happy fault of Adam, without which we could never have become human?" What do you think of that?
Can we ever think of the Fall as a "good" thing? Such thinking seems downright dangerous, if not unthinkable and unutterable, indeed heretical. How could such sin, shame and expulsion be good? Or if "good" is too strong a term, how about the "necessary" fault of Adam. But, regardless of whether we consider the Fall, good, evil, or even necessary, the fact is that it happened.
And because it happened our eyes were opened. For me that is the key insight in the story of the Fall. It seems to imply that without the Fall our eyes would have remained closed, we would have stayed in the Garden. But, in fact, our eyes were indeed opened, we left the Garden (albeit God's decision, not ours), so that we would have to begin our journey and find our way. It's as if we had to leave the Garden to grow up as humans. Maybe it's like leaving home. We all have to leave the safety of home to grow up. Maybe that is why the Fall may be considered as "necessary."
Father Richard Rohr, OFM, in one of his latest books entitled Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, says the following: "Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from tho
se experiences – all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey. The title of his book tells it all. To advance and grow in the spiritual life, the only way "up" is "down."
Remember the words of Jesus, "I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." Or the haunting admission of Paul, "For when I am weak, then I am strong." The resurrection of Easter is possible only after the death and annihilation of Good Friday.
I wish that it could be different. I wish I could grow spiritually without having to suffer. However, I know it can never be different. Our eyes have been opened. We have been thrust from the safety of the Garden into the hazardous and dusty journey of life.
For some reason, the only way "up" is indeed "down." May God not stray too far from us on our journey.