The Glory of the Fall

In the Church, especially within Calvinist and Covenant Theology, we say that while God did not want sin to enter the world, He allowed it. Why? I have heard it argued before that God did so that He would be glorified. Okay. This line of reasoning has often sat uneasy with me in light of James 1:13. God is not glorified by sin. He is saddened, repulsed, angered. So to just say that God allowed man to sin so that He could be glorified is a simplistic, and I would argue, twisted view of God's purposes. It brings no comfort nor purpose to suffering and brokenness. Then what do we truly mean and wish to communicate when we as the Church speak of God being glorified in the Fall? I would argue that we need a bit of rephrasing here: His glory is not won in the fall. It is won in what He does with the fall. To illustrate my claim I present you with my own fall and how God chose to be glorified with it. 

I was raised in the Church and became a believer in Christ Jesus when I was five years old. I gradually began to grow as a follower of Jesus and was immersed in Christian teaching from a very young age through Awana, regular church attendance, and my parents’ instruction. As a declaration of my faith and dedication to Christ, I was baptized when I was eleven-years-old, but looking back I am not sure if I understood the entire meaning behind any of what I said and did. 

     

Upon entering middle school I allowed spiritual doubt and personal insecurity to take a hold in my life and my relationship with God began to falter noticeably. Though I still did daily devotions when homework allowed, prayed continually, and participated in youth group, I became very busy with school and sports which forced God to take a back seat in my life. I struggled with fear and doubt about my salvation and security in Christ, but in my fear to show my weakness and “loss of faith”, I didn't know how to verbalize any of these doubts and questions. I knew all the answers needed to appear like a "good" Christian, but my silence allowed my life to become a breeding ground for insecurity and sin. 

I also began to take up running as a way to gain approval from my father because running was so important to him. I saw my sister getting tons of attention from our dad because of her running and I unconsciously and consciously figured that that was the only way I would get attention as well. I soon discovered that I was good at running and that I was receiving lots of attention from my dad and others. I began training competitively and during my eighth grade year I began to take my athletics very seriously. My success and competitiveness in sports continued to push God aside and I began to trust in my own abilities and success rather than rejoicing in weakness and boasting in the strength of God as the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians.

Adding to my insecurity, other trials of growing-up, and being a teenager, pushed God further aside and started a destructive pattern of sinful thoughts and desires in my life, eventually taking form in a horrible and strong sin struggle which started when I reached high school. I was horrified by my sin yet unknowingly I had been heading in the direction of this particular sin for the previous two years. I struggled to tell anyone because I was afraid of what other Christians would think of me. I became consumed with fighting the sin and constantly prayed for God to relieve me of it and drowned myself in Bible verses that commanded against it. I began to have mild anxiety attacks and struggled with suicidal thoughts. But not wanting to show my weakness I masked all of this through regulating my personality quirks, becoming a perfectionist about school work, becoming more competitive and obsessed with sports, and obsessing about food and my weight. I continued to appear confident in most areas of my life and excelled in school and extracurricular activities but inside I was messy and broken. To counteract my spiritual guilt I reveled in my accomplishments and became prideful. 

Even while all of this was happening, and I grew steadily worse emotionally over the course of a couple years, I still maintained what some might have seen as a healthy relationship with God. I was immersed in “churchy things,” but I did not understand how to have a deep personal relationship with God even though I felt my soul crying out for deeper teaching in the Word and a more meaningful relationship with Him. I had become so blind by my prideful living that I did not realize that I was starving myself of spiritual food and instead of repenting, I blamed others. And all the while my sin struggle continued to worsen and I became more and more unconsciously convinced that God despised me.

The Bible says that God disciplines those He loves and so He did with me. Sometimes He disciplines His children immediately, but in my case it was a systematic process of God stripping away what I used to commend myself to others and my sense of control over my life. The first thing that God stripped away was my sports. I got badly injured during the summer before my junior year of high school and spent my entire fall soccer season nursing injuries. I became depressed and angry and began to obsess even more about my weight and what little exercise I could do. The next thing He stripped away was my comfort and security. Three weeks into that same school year my dad had to have double bypass heart surgery. My depression and anxiety was already getting worse and the fear of losing my father only compounded it. Then finally, God allowed my sin struggle to gain more hold. It kicked-in with the start of school and this time with a stronger force and enticement. I was so disgusted with myself and I felt more and more that I was despicable in the sight of God. I couldn’t control myself and didn’t know how to. As I worsened in my thoughts and desires for acting on the sin, I began to cut out things in my life to see if I could defeat the sin on my own. I grasped for control but everything kept spinning out of control. Finally, in January of 2011 I came forward and confessed to my parents what I was struggling with. And under the guilt, shame, doubts, self-hatred, and exhaustion of having hidden my struggle for two and a half years I suffered a nervous breakdown at age 18. 

My story could have ended there either in suicide or as a girl forever crippled by her mental health, but that is not what God chose to do. The next several months were hell (It is a biblical word. No one freak out.) as I recovered with the help of a Christian counselor, a Christian doctor, and my loving family and friends. Doubtful of my salvation I rededicated my life to Christ and my relationship with Him took on a new dimension of reality that I had never known before and I fell in love with Jesus because He had first loved me. The Scriptures became real to me and I was floored by the love that God had for me in spite of how despicable I was. After years of repeating Bible commandments, what rescued me and broke me down was not the hatred of God for my sin but His love for me as a person. A few months after my crash I came to realize that God had allowed me to hit bottom because He knew that it was the only way to get my attention and to return me to Him. With everything stripped away all I had left was God and He proved to be more than enough. I became active in seeking Him out and confessed everything before Him—our relationship becoming more like a father-daughter relationship. Even more remarkable, were the opportunities God revealed for speaking into the lives of others who were as broken as I had been. God had shown me the way out--Himself--and now expected me to show others.

That is "the glory of the fall." Was God glorified in any of what I was doing prior to my nervous breakdown? No! I lived a fearful, prideful life that missed every point of having a relationship with Him. The glory behind my fall was what God chose to do with it. He could have left me in my pitiful state and let me commit suicide. I probably would have. But that is not how He gains glory. Instead, He lovingly, mercifully remade me. This is not to say that I am not scarred. I live everyday with reminders of my fall. However, all of this makes my life a depiction of Jesus Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. A depiction that is to be used to point others to places unknown to them: God's love and redemption.