The Fall of Mankind: A Call for Compassion in the Chaos

We love to follow people. We track celebrities and scroll through headlines like addicts seeking the next fix, the newest high, the latest gossip; it makes us feel somehow connected to the strangers we care about. We nurture secret fantasies of being one of those people, cared for and invested in on a grand scale. And if we achieve this, we call our followers "community."

I myself am hoping to build such a community, a platform from which to encourage and seek encouragement, a place to share my stories and appreciate the stories of others entrusted to me. But is it "community" really? Or in our loyalty to the communities we claim, are we sorting ourselves into separatist groups of hatred?

We're increasingly close to a world where every headline screams division, every comment section boils with hostility, and every interaction threatens to create enmity and ruin lives. Maybe it's dramatic to liken such a thing to the fall of mankind, but I know I'm not questioning this alone; a host of people like me are looking around the world these days in common grief because we as humans are losing the unity that carried us to the top of the food chain.

• Wise women like Mary Katherine Backstrom ("Can Empathy Save Us?")
• Gentle encouragers like Sarah Tomlinson (the creator of this post and many others at Little Sparrow Loved), and
• Poets and wonderers like Esther, the Dolly Mama (who explored grace, not only for others but for herself in this post)

In general, I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist; regardless of whether the glass is half-full or half-empty, it's refillable. Maybe I'm a realist—I tend to call the situation as I see it, then do my best to deal with it as it is, and while my Christian faith lends hope for growth and improvement, my fascination with historical patterns often tips me toward the negative. Perhaps this is balance; perhaps it's cognitive dissonance.

Either way, when I reflect on the state of our world, I see overwhelming echoes of civilizations we've failed to learn from, societies that crumbled when they forgot to nurture and maintain empathy and understanding. And I can't help but wonder: can we draw lessons from this history before it's too late? Or have we gone too far?

The Bible introduces humanity's first societal rupture in the book of Genesis—Adam and Eve's broken relationship with God, the way they turned on each other, the resulting guilt and shame. For centuries, interpretations of this story continued the cycle: we shovel shame on Adam, the weak man who followed his wife into trouble, and we hurl guilt at Eve, the foolish woman who believed a lie and ruined everything. Right from the beginning, judgmental instinct and separatist views lacked compassion, context, and understanding.

We can't ask for more details; scripture doesn't explore the depth of intent or nuanced motivation driving Adam and Eve. But if the emotional driver behind that little picnic truly was willful disobedience...why didn't God kill them? What if his compassion suggests an acknowledgement that their actions weren’t born of pride...but longing? Genesis 3:5-6 tells us Eve wanted to be like God, wise and just and knowledgeable. What if we're jumping, as we so often do, to wrong conclusions? Could it be that the desire driving Adam and Eve stemmed not from rebellious hunger for power, but from love for the God they saw as a parent and admiration for who He is? What child doesn’t emulate the parents they revere?

This shifted perspective doesn't excuse what happened, anymore than a murder in self-defense lessens a painful loss of life. But it does invite a powerful alteration in how we approach Adam and Eve—as well as how we might approach each other. For example:

• Poverty: The poor among us are often told they deserve hunger, homelessness, or lack of opportunity because they’ve somehow failed to “choose better.” We dismiss their stories without ever hearing them. When's the last time you looked at a homeless person without fear or disgust? When's the last time you asked for their name and acknowledged them as people?

• Domestic Abuse: Instead of offering compassion, society interrogates survivors far more often than they punish offenders. “Why didn’t they leave sooner? Why didn’t they choose better?” These questions deepen already painful wounds. I have personally lost people I loved dearly, because if they could turn a blind eye to abuse, their support of the abuser over the survivor screams in the silence.

• Sexual Assault: Rather than supporting survivors, we analyze their clothing, their behavior, their choices. Too often, we decide that somehow, they must have invited their trauma or deserved to be violated.

• The Unvaccinated: During the pandemic, as I lay isolated in a hospital room, battling double pneumonia from COVID, I prayed for survival and the ability to return home to my children. This was at the height of the societal battle over the new COVID vaccine, and because of my previous health history, I had chosen not to vaccinate. An x-ray tech—who knew nothing of my beliefs, my medical history, or the various factors influencing my decision—told me I deserved to die because I wasn’t vaccinated. He told me, to my face, as I lay sick and in his care, that I deserved to die.

Whether it’s victims of natural disasters, survivors of abuse, or people in the crosshairs of war, drugs, or systemic inequality, we've normalized a disturbing breach in the foundation of humanity and the patterns are undeniable. We've internalized a belief that those who differ from us deserve bad outcomes simply because they're different. They don’t speak like us so they don't deserve to be heard. They don't think like we do, so they don't deserve to be understood. They don't live like we do so they don't deserve to be alive.

Are we ready to live in a dystopian world, where all of humanity is at our fingertips but we're still so willfully disconnected from each other? I don't think so...but if we're on a downward slide, what can we do about it as individuals? I believe the first step is to choose compassion. To embrace empathy and understanding as strengths rather than weaknesses. In a divided world that seems so eager to segregate and demonize, these basic traits are the foundation of community that draws us together—and we can, with seemingly small acts of humanity that ripple through our personal circles, still rewrite the narrative of our world culture.

Like Adam and Eve, we all carry a similar longing to be seen, understood, and valued, and on this common ground, perhaps we can restore a little of what we've lost; the fall of mankind doesn’t have to be the end of the story. So, wherever you are, whatever your community looks like, let me challenge you to treat every day like a blank page, ready to be filled with empathy, compassion, and the will to...