Limits, Human Potential, and the Fall

I got in a conversation with a friend of mine after a recent discussion group meeting.  He raised the question about whether limits are a result of the fall of mankind in the garden of Eden. I think that this is a very important question because a lot of the problems we experience universally as humans and particularly as Westerners have a lot to do with how we understand human limits.

Ken Myers puts it much better than I could in his article, A Devlish Temptation:

“For some time now, I have been growing in my understanding of how many cultural disorders are related to hatred of limits. The aspiration to limitlessness was embedded in the first temptation and the original sin, it informed the earliest docetic and Gnostic heresies, and it inspired the founding intellects of modernity. Many sincere Christians still have some sense that being limited is an effect of sin, rather than a condition of the Creation. Both Genesis accounts of Creation (in chapters 1 and 2) resound with the establishment of boundaries—in time, in space, in ontology, and in vocation. God created all things (including his image-bearers) to thrive within limits, and he then asserted that this circumstance of Creation is very good. After delivering the mandate to serve as his regents and stewards over all Creation, God reminds Adam and Eve that they are creatures who are bounded. They do not exist independently, but must turn to the earth (from which they came and to which will return) for food, for the stuff of life. But not all the food in the Garden was on the menu. Man was limited and needy in his created state, and his continued fellowship with God required the recognition of boundaries.

I am convinced that humans are bounded creatures- we were made with “bounds” or limits. Our bounds and potential are set by our calling as God’s creatures. We were made to be in relationship with Him, with each other, and with the rest of the created order. The creation stories in the first two chapters of Genesis shows that God created a world of finite creatures, who had bodies, lived in time, and were free to grow towards their God set potential.

We only experience these limitations as a problem because we mistake what we are supposed to be. I believe that all sin has to do with us trying to be God:

Genesis 3: 1-4
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ “

⁴ “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

God knows good and evil by His own self-set limits. God is limited only by his own character. Good is all the God is and what God wills, evil is what is outside of his character and will. I believe that the temptation to “be like God, knowing good and evil,” is the temptation to live as if good and evil were in reference to ourselves- to our character, to our will.

When Adam and Eve chose to live this way, they broke the way they were supposed to relate to God, themselves, each other, and the rest of creation. They attempted to live in the world as something they were not. Because their limits and calling didn’t change and the universe didn’t change, they simply did not fit. By trying to become more, they became less. God doesn’t make us dependent so we will need Him. We are dependent. We need Him. We just don’t want to be dependent or need Him, and that’s why we hate our limits so much. We don’t know how to live within our limits, and so therefore we can’t become what we are called to.

This is not to say that I believe that all limits are good and God given. Some limits exist because of sin. Sin limits our freedom and capacity to become fully human- both because of our own sin and because we live in a fallen world that is hostile to us as children of God.

I had an interesting conversation about freedom and limits with a young woman that I mentor. Not surprisingly, this was part of a larger conversation about sex. We talked about how our culture understands the concept of freedom as a state of being without limits. That’s part of the reason why even Christians resist the idea of limits on something that we want, such as sex.

I believe that every freedom to do something or be something is inseparable from both calling and limits. The bounds that God puts on sex have everything to do with what God made people to be and what he made sex to be- what he calls us to. When we act within those bounds, we walk within the freedom to enjoy sex as something that more fully connects us with our spouses and each other- it becomes something that makes us more fully human and brings us closer to fulfilling our calling. People who live lives of celibacy, as Paul describes in our readings in first Corinthians this week, experience a different type of freedom within the limits of what they are called to (see 1 Corinthians 7). It’s interesting to look at why Paul encourages celibacy among the Corinthian Church:

9What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; ³⁰those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; ³¹those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.

³²I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. ³³But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— ³⁴and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. ³⁵I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.

In this passage, Paul encourages people in the direction of celibacy because the limitations of a fallen world and their own immaturity restrict their freedom to become like Christ. God given limits fall into Paul’s encouragement of celibacy: time is short, meaning we have limited time and energy to accomplish certain things, so it’s best not to divide our energies too much. Marriage isn’t a bad thing- it’s just that it’s potentially distracting from a more important calling in their context. Every freedom has an opportunity cost-you loose the freedom to do or become something else.

Levels of maturity put different types of limits on us as well. An immature person isn’t free to have healthy relationships because they are indulging in the “freedom” to be dysfunctional. They don’t respect the limits of and responsibilities of healthy relationships, so they don’t develop their capacity to sustain healthy relationships. Their “freedom” becomes a type of slavery that limits their potential. A more mature person has learned to live within limits (not insisting on their own way, not boasting, not proud, keeping no record of wrongs), and therefore has developed a character that can sustain healthy relationships in the freedom that Christ calls us to.

It’s interesting how we try to violate limits in our culture. We want to be unlimited in our bodies, eating what we want but never growing fat. We want to be unlimited in our time, juggling the big career, the perfect family, and a swarm of activities. We want to be unlimited in our understanding, flattering ourselves that our rationality or natural intuition can make all knowledge and wisdom available to us. We want to live as if the world were not limited, consuming resources and dumping waste as if the world will adapt to our endless desires for more.

If you’re interested in thinking more about this, I encourage you to read the rest of Ken Myers article, A Devilish Temptation. Myer’s ministry, the Mars Hill Audio Journal, is one of the best resources available for shaping a Christian worldview. It’s a lot like NPR for Christians, and despite the similarity of the name, it’s not related to Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill congregation in Seattle. If you’re more or a listener than a reader, you can hear some more about this topic in one of Myers’s Podcasts. Myers also recommends an article by Christian thinker Wendell Berry called Faustian Economics: Hell Hath No Limits. Berry talks about how the attempts to deny limits in our economic system lead to the degradation of lives and the world we live in.

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