Since the Fall...

According to the earliest believers of the Christian centuries, "man has been born into but does not really belong to" the level of physical nature (Frye). Reading this triggered something in my brain...I read and re-read this phrase until I concluded that this belief signifies guilt and weakness within the devout believer. I understand christian believers are 'supposed' to give themselves to God while also having to sacrifice if need be, but this statement, in my opinion is wrong and de-humanizing. This practice of truly believing man is not on the same level of physical nature and is on a "fallen world of alienation"(Frye) is debilitating to mankind. If this is true, then our current society's teachings, especially those directed towards the youth, is completely contradictory. There isn't a learning facility anywhere that would ever promote the preaching to students that mankind does not belong in this world. First of all, I feel this is an extreme personal belief...one that should never be advertised as a form of good faith. The second reason is the theme that results: Believing this, one is accepting that man is in a muddy, sticky pit that he is unwillingly trapped in. I've always believed I could do anything I wanted...metaphysical or not, I feel in this lifetime or the next I will have the opportunity to do anything I desire. This narrow-minded belief of man having a ceiling or some other type of physical barrier entrapping him is negative and crude. Because of this, individuals doubt themselves rather than dream.

Below are the levels Frye states on pg. 169:

1st Level: "Heaven, in the sense of the place of the presence of God, usually symbolized by the physical heaven or sky."
2nd Level: "The earthly paradise, the natural and original home of man, represented in the Biblical story by the Garden of Eden, which has disappeared as a place but is to a degree recoverable as a state of mind."
3rd Level: "The physical environment we are born in, theologically a fallen world of alienation."
4th Level: "The demonic world of death and hell and sin below nature."