a theological problem

Here is the problem I have with the idea of a "fallen world” [a “fallen humanity”]; it does not express the reality God, it can't. It can only express evil. In that, the reality of evil, because it is evil, can not express the reality of God. If the world is fallen, then the 15yr old I saw give her food to a homeless man did it for some other reason than to share her food with someone in need. if the world is fallen, then the 90yr old women taking in aids babies is doing it for more than the love of the child and the care of those in need. If the world is fallen, we must have an alternative reason, or desire, for helping people other than helping people. If the world is fallen, God can not be in the world, because [as traditional theology teaches] God can not be in the fallen/evil.

If we live in a fallen world, and we are never “outside” that world, "redemption" can only truly happen after this world - and with that thought, "the kingdom of God" can not be "here and now" - and I believe that the kingdom of God is here and now. When we think of a "fallen world" we can not express the salvation offered in Christ, because we always turn back to the fall and not the resurrection. We are stuck in the words and reality of “the fallen” and are unable to speak the words of salvation. I can not live in the fall, it is too negative, and I need to life in the resurrection, the light of Christ; and it is a place where [as Paul puts it] I “moved out from.”

When ever I hear terms like "original sin," “fallen humanity” and "the fallen world" it is seldom accompanied with the idea that salvation is here, now - but that it comes at another time. No matter the statements, when we start with the fall we never pick ourselves up, we are “always fallen.” We always see the worse in people and we never see the possibility that Christianity can truly change a life. When we center our theology on “the fallen world” we find the drug addicts, the prostitutes, the criminal, and the “ugly” and we never see in them the possibility of salvation. We seek to punish those who do wrong, and justify that punishment via law, and we never see the power and love of grace. We do not move forward in Christ, because we use the excuse of being a fallen people to hold us back. We think in terms of what we can not do, because of the fall, and not on what we can do because of the resurrection.

I firmly believe we need to get past this idea of a "fallen world" and move to the idea that we are a people living in a new land, a land of Christ. I see it all the time in talking with those who have "come from church." When questioned as to why the church hurts its own, we are told that we do not move forward in out faith, because we are fallen; people in church treat you poorly, because we are fallen; people in the church talk and gossip, because we are fallen - yet, all those are not what we are told to be in scripture. When I hear "we are fallen" from church people, I wonder if they truly understand the Christian walk. Yet, in that the misguided theology of the fall, we forget that as a believer in Christ, we are made new, and in that we must act anew – not fallen, but resurrected.