A doctor friend developed prostate cancer. I texted him, “Praying for your surgery tomorrow—for great success!”

My friend responded, “Thank you. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being pretty fatalistic and despondent right now. I’m having a really hard time reconciling my feelings. I want to trust God. I’m really trying. And intellectually, I know that I’m no better than anyone else. But, truthfully, I just don’t know why this is happening to me.

“I guess being a doctor is a blessing and a curse. It has empowered me and enabled me to get better, faster care. But knowing what I know makes me head straight to being fatalistic. I don’t know if I will ever understand. I promise I’m trying to find every single thing God is doing here. I know He is doing something. But it all just seems hopeless. I feel doomed to have a bad outcome but am trying not to. He has done so much so far that we can see. But I am so confused and lost right now.”

The Reality of the Fall

The Bible doesn’t describe a utopian world free of pain. That would make Christianity a wishful farce. Instead, the Bible describes the world exactly as we see it—broken, despite what Francis Schaeffer called its “leftover beauty.”

The world became what we call “fallen” when Adam and Eve lost their innocence. In the garden of Eden they chose to believe the voice of the serpent instead of trusting what God had told them. Through that single choice, sin, death, and suffering became part of the human experience (see Genesis 3 to read more of the story).

“The Fall,” as it’s often referred to—#21 on my alphabetical list of 70 things every man needs to know—explains why we must look at the blazing beauty of a crimson sunrise through thick glasses that grace the bridge of our crooked, runny nose.

Because of the Fall, we must do our work while feeling the prick of thorns. To Adam, God said, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you” (Genesis 3:17b–18a, NIV). While work itself is a gift from God, we toil because of the Fall.

It doesn’t seem fair, does it? To paraphrase seventeenth-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal, the Fall is an offense to human reason, but, once accepted, it makes perfect sense of the human condition. Have you accepted it yet?

Managing Against the Fall

We must manage our lives against the Fall because it has distorted every aspect of human interaction. Sin is always lurking, and as a result everything we say and hear can be misinterpreted or misunderstood.

The Fall helps explain why men may feel the need to:

• Try to make a sale without appearing anxious—even though we are
• Convince a lender we don’t really need the loan
• Get a woman’s attention while appearing disinterested
• Take extra measures to safeguard our children from predators
• Verify what even the people we love and trust tell us
• Guard our many passwords with our lives

There isn’t an area of our lives that hasn’t been impacted. That’s why we must manage against the Fall in ourselves and others, and why others must manage against the Fall in us.

God Has a Plan

Yet, when properly understood, the Fall is a blessing. If you are a man of faith, you know that your sufferings produce in you a longing for a deeper walk with God. You can hear it in the words of my friend’s text messages, can’t you? Our struggles remind us that our bodies are a temporary tent and this is not our real home; they turn our thoughts toward heaven.

And, if you are struggling with faith, your frustrations, futilities, and sorrows are God’s kindness to help you realize your need for a Savior. The apostle Paul put it like this: “For the creation (includes us) was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one (God) who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21, NIV, parentheticals added).

Understood this way, God turned the Fall into the means by which He sovereignly draws us to Himself. I admit there is much about it that still baffles me, but I do see how it makes perfect sense of the human condition. What do you think?

By the way, my friend’s surgery was a success, and he has just joined a small group of other men to help him draw closer to God.

Much love,

Pat

For reflection and discussion:

1. In what area of your life do you see the effects of the Fall most clearly?
2. Does the idea of accepting the reality of the Fall help you make better sense of our human condition?
3. What does “managing against the Fall” look like in your most important relationships?