The Fall . . . and the Return
A cycle. But the way back can be lost, or forgotten. The systems and practices that truly remind us are invaluable. And they must be improved.
You probably know this story:
God creates a man and a woman and places them in a perfect Garden. He gives them plenty to eat, and instructs them not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Enticed by a talking snake, they eat. They feel ashamed, and they hide from God. God casts them out of the Garden. Further hijinks ensue with the human race.
I’ve never heard what seemed to me to be a fully realized interpretation of this story. I know people within the Abrahamic traditions who have explanations for this story that are airtight and, to my mind, dissonant. I know people within the Abrahamic traditions who understand the story refers to some loss of innocence, but they can’t fully make sense of it. Out in the hustle and bustle, a lot of people either haven’t thought it through or have just cast off the story altogether. One of the oldest stories there is, part of one of the oldest and most pervasive cosmological traditions in the world is often poorly understood, vaguely understood, or thrown away.
Currently, one of my favorite interpretation comes from the Jungians, via Edward Edinger: the story is a partial account of a larger truth, and that larger truth is a cycle. It’s been called the Hero’s Journey. In Jungian psychology, it’s the individuation process by which the ego differentiates itself from, without fundamentally severing its umbilicus to, the Self. (A model that I’m just beginning to understand.) My preferred model at the moment is a little simpler, from my an early class I took in a writing program: Mad World / Green World.
The protagonist starts out in Green World, which is safe, nourishing, harmonious. One way or another, they are cast into Mad World, which is unfamiliar and perilous. They must make their way back to Green World — presumably at a higher turn of the spiral, somehow.
Jungian psychology sees this cycle as essential to the process of wholeness. And that makes sense. The Fall from Eden, then, is not an utter tragedy, but a necessary step toward growth. It becomes dangerous through over-extension — into ego-inflation, tyranny, stamping of one’s own will overmuch on the world — ultimately into such self-centered, imperious forms perhaps that the words like “evil” can start to apply.
What keeps that from being a tragic story, or a horrifying story, is the hope of a future return. If the protagonist can return to Green World, if the protagonist has the ability to re-acclimate to Green World, in some greater form in some way, then something extraordinary will have happened — and good. Ultimately, all will be well. In Christian theology, there is an idea of apokatastasis, which is that eventually all beings in the universe make their return to God. Origen was one of the early Christian theologians who believed in apokatastasis (and it was one of the main reasons he was posthumously excommunicated by a later version of the Church).
What makes the story of outward journey tragic, of course, is when the return doesn’t occur. When the return absolutely never comes — as some Christians fear can happen, and which seems to me to perhaps be the rare case. Or when it or happens too little, or too infrequently — or maybe when it happens too late in a series of events.
I have been thinking about this a lot as I continue to take classes at a Methodist Seminary, and as I debate whether I’ll continue. I’m not Methodist, to be sure. By many traditional definitions I would not be considered a full, card-carrying Christian, because I don’t accept as Truth some of the basic doctrines of Trinity, salvation, etc. I think I’m a Christian. But like many people, I think it’s more complicated than doctrine tends to have it. Also, I have the impression that the Christian avoidance of the Fall can have a stunting effect on people. I’m reminded of the film, The Truman Show, which is a clear allegory for certain types of particularly mid-Western American Christianity: The bargain that some churches offer is peaceful and safe, but Stepford-ish and sometimes insidiously abusive. Certain ideas of being close to God can actually force the choice to leave.
At the same time, I love the idea of living close to God. And to me, in its heart, the Christian narrative of return is distinctly eloquent, beautiful, and potent. It’s clear to me that we live in a world that sees itself as cycling through the journey out into Mad World and back to safety, but a world which is actually not effectively making the return to Green World nearly often enough or well enough. And it seems to me that, at its best, this idea of return is something that Christianity is very, very good at.
The experience of return is indicated throughout the Gospels, in Jesus’ example. His generosity; his wisdom; his humor; his profligate, almost casual healing; his humility; and his mercy. It’s pointedly indicated in the parable of the prodigal son, who squanders his fortune and then returns to his father, asking for permission to be a servant in the stables. But the father instead receives the son back with open arms.
The return is an experience of being immediately, palpably loved by the most sovereign energies in everything that exists. It is the understanding that everything occurs within the context of this Love — which we neither have any role in generating, nor can in any way cease to be directed our way. It is an experience of being Saved. It is an experience of the pervasiveness of Grace. It’s flooding, disarming; making us tiny, surrendered, and immersed in vastness.
It’s the realization through which Julian of Norwich reported, “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.” Christ, might not be the only name for the agency in this process, Jesus may not be the only name for the agent, but these names, without a doubt, are some of the very best, closest names.
Too much of the nearness to God can be infantilizing, perhaps. And perhaps not. But certainly too little of it is catastrophic to the soul. Without return, our victories are pugnacious. We are cold, snobby, subtly cruel. Taken too far life becomes increasingly nightmarish — which is what I think we’re doing with much of the world now.
We must understand that, no matter what we become, there is something beyond us by which we can be undone. Ultimately, we are undone by a goodness, beauty, glory and love. And we are undone by its penetrating personal-ness. This Source is what informs all the pathos in the world.
More than anything, the role of clergy, I think, is to anchor a beacon of return in the temporal world. Ideally, clergy will be able to conceive of a model of human development on Earth that is suitably comprehensive — and which, it seems clear, involves an understanding of both departure and return. But the primary, unique function of clergy, I think, involves the journey return. It’s the role of clergy to explore that, to steep in it, to remind of it, and as much as possible to be an instrument of it. To make it real here, on Earth.
I long for a potent system that offers access to the process of return, redemption, salvation that is less ensnared with dogma. A new imagining of the New Creation, a new Church.
In the meantime, we must still go, along the ways that are available — or along new ways that we forge ourselves.
We ought to step away from the world long enough to contemplate the journey of return, until it becomes a palpable reality in our lives. A space of fullness, where Love saturates, and there is nothing to do and nothing else one must be.
Don’t settle for the practices that have satisfied you. Look at this world. There is not enough return.
Go out. But return. And when you return, return more.
Even more.