The following is a talk I gave in church for Mother's Day . . . reluctantly.
Moroni, speaking to the Lord as he compiled the Book of Mormon, lamented that, “. . . Thou hast not made us mighty in writing; for thou hast made all this people that they could speak much . . . Thou hast also made our words powerful and great, even that we cannot write them; wherefore, when we write we behold our weakness, and stumble because of the placing of our words . . .”
Unfortunately, the Lord has seen fit to give me exactly the opposite weakness. I can write well enough to get my point across, but I am not great at public speaking. Also, I was asked to give a Mother’s Day talk to a congregation that has few mothers in it, and the topic assigned was something along the lines of ‘a mother from the Bible’. Finding a way to make this relevant to a young single adult ward is definitely on a whole different level of difficulty. Thank you, Brother Peterson, for this humbling experience.
I pray that the Spirit will help you — and me — to learn something today.
Before time began, or the world was created — so Abraham tells us — God stood in the midst of the intelligences which he had organized and saw that among them there were many of those whom he called “the noble and great ones”. Of these, there were many great men and women present. He saw that these souls were good, and he said, “These I will make my rulers.”
From these ‘noble and great ones’ he foreordained many to specific roles, and called a heavenly council where he proposed a plan by which each of us would be made like him. This would require us to gain a physical body, subject to death and the imperfection inherent in mortality. We would forget all that we knew about our Heavenly Father, in order to find out for ourselves whether we would be willing to follow him by faith.
A Savior was appointed, our Elder Brother, whose sacrifice would bring about an eternal Atonement, allowing us to return home in spite of the sins and mistakes God knew we would inevitably make. Through Christ’s resurrection we would also someday be resurrected, our mortal bodies raised to incorruptible immortality. Through our faithfulness, we would become part of our Heavenly Parents’ eternal family, sealed by the power of the priesthood which our Father would grant us.
Together with our Heavenly Father, our Savior and the rest of those noble and great ones “[went] down . . . And [made] an earth whereon [we might] dwell . . .”, a world created as a testing ground for those who had kept their first estate. Though the mortal experience would include pain, suffering, sorrow, and death, God created this earth with its abundance of beauties to remind us of His presence. As Alma wrote, “. . . all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it . . .”
When the creation was finished, the book of Genesis records that, “. . . The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden . . . And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” He then gave this garden to Adam and Eve, and granted them stewardship over Eden. His first commandment to them was to multiply and replenish the earth. He then warned them that if they wanted to stay in Eden, they must not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, or they would die.
It is here that modern revelation diverges from the multitude of narratives and explanations given previously. The world sees Eve as weak and foolish, easily tempted and without foresight or good sense. If only she hadn’t eaten the fruit! Theologians lament and churches condemn, seeing the first woman as an unfortunate afterthought, one which brought ruin on the human race before it had properly begun.
But one of the many things that has been restored to us is the plan of salvation and exaltation. In its proper context, Eve’s choice was fortunate and her actions necessary.
Lehi tells us that, “. . . If Adam (and Eve) had not transgressed [they] would not have fallen, but [they] would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end. And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good for they knew no sin. But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things. Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.”
Scripture tells us that God walked in Eden. Surely he spent time with Adam and Eve and taught them much about the world they found themselves in, preparing them for the roles they had agreed to but forgotten as their souls were veiled in flesh. There is no record of what exactly Eve remembered of the Plan before she spoke with the serpent. However, there are hints of her struggle to reconcile God’s first commandment with His second, even as Satan came to tempt her. Moses records that, “. . . He sought also to beguile Eve, for he knew not the mind of God . . .” In other words, the Fall was intended, not a desperate last-ditch fix of a terrible mistake, and was necessary to our Heavenly Father’s plan of salvation.
Then-Elder Dallin H. Oaks said it this way: “When Adam and Eve received the first commandment, they were in a transitional state, no longer in the spirit world but with physical bodies not yet subject to death and not yet capable of procreation. They could not fulfill the Father’s first commandment without transgressing the barrier between the bliss of the Garden of Eden and the terrible trials and wonderful opportunities of mortal life.
“For reasons that have not been revealed, this transition, or “fall,” could not happen without a transgression—an exercise of moral agency amounting to a willful breaking of a law. This would be a planned offense, a formality to serve an eternal purpose.
“. . . It was Eve who first transgressed the limits of Eden in order to initiate the conditions of mortality. Her act, whatever its nature, was formally a transgression but eternally a glorious necessity to open the doorway toward eternal life. Adam showed his wisdom by doing the same. And thus Eve and ‘Adam fell that men might be’.”
Eve’s choice to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge has been portrayed by the world as the easy deception of a thoughtless, impulsive woman, but there is some textual evidence that this is inaccurate — indeed, that it is slander. “Hebrew scholar Nehama Aschkenasy points out that the original Hebrew word that was translated as beguiled is a rare verb that has rich and connotative meanings. ‘Beguile’ suggests Eve underwent a deep internal process; she weighed, pondered, and reflected upon the ramifications of partaking of the fruit before she did so. The King James translators, themselves inheritors of the original sin cultural bias, used the word almost exclusively to mean deceived. They did not capture the original richness of the word.”
What does this change? Much.
If Eve chose to partake not because of Satan’s urging but because of her own careful consideration — if Satan’s attempted persuasion to sin was instead a catalyst for deep contemplation on the reason for God’s conflicting commandments, it seems to me that she understood the consequence of her action, and chose to embrace it with faith in God. She didn’t know yet if her husband Adam would be willing to follow her in the Fall, but she was willing to act without a perfect assurance that everything would work out the way she hoped. That must have taken an incredible amount of courage.
Sheri Dew, in her talk entitled “The Mother of All Living”, confirms this view: “Eve set the pattern. In addition to bearing children, she mothered all of mankind when she made the most courageous decision any woman has ever made and with Adam opened the way for us to progress. She set an example of womanhood for men to respect and women to follow, modeling the characteristics with which we as women have been endowed: heroic faith, a keen sensitivity to the Spirit, an abhorrence of evil, and complete selflessness. Like the Savior, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,” Eve, for the joy of helping initiate the human family, endured the Fall. She loved us enough to help lead us.”
Thankfully, Eve persuaded Adam to follow her in the Fall, thus blazing the path that countless generations would follow. They worked together to fulfill all of God’s commandments to the best of their mortal ability, trusting in the promise of a Savior who would come to redeem them and their children from the corruptibility that the Fall had introduced, both physically and spiritually.
Eventually, Eve came to rejoice over her decision, saying, “Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.” Though our first parents were not immune to the sorrows of life — among other things, having one of their sons commit the first murder, and watching many of their children choose to follow Satan’s enticements — still they found joy and peace in mortality, despite the effects of the Fall.
This new understanding of Eve’s role in the Fall, given to us by revelation, has much to teach us about how to approach the decisions we face at this pivotal period of our lives.
The first principle we can draw from her experience is that of trust in the Lord. Eve, though she had no real concept of good and evil, trusted that God had her best interests at heart. When she chose to, as President Oaks said, “[transgress] the limits of Eden’, she did so because she believed that God would not ask her and Adam to do something they could not in their current state — namely, to bear children — unless there was some way to change their possibilities.
Sometimes our Heavenly Father asks us to do things that we can’t yet see the reasons for. When we choose to trust Him and do them without knowing why, the answer often comes, though much later than we would hope. Take the example of President Nelson, who heard a seemingly throwaway line in a talk about learning foreign languages. He decided to learn Mandarin (which is, incidentally, a very difficult language to learn), and practiced diligently. He has since strengthened ties with the Chinese people in ways that he could not have possibly foreseen when he began that project!
When we trust in the Lord and lean not to our own understanding, I testify that he will direct our paths.
The second principle we can learn from Eve is that sometimes we must make a decision without all the information, or even with incorrect information, and trust that the Lord will see the desire of our heart and honor it. As I have mentioned, there is some evidence that Eve did not partake of the fruit impulsively, but instead pondered the decision carefully before she acted. Satan may have beguiled her, but this does not mean that she was deceived. Eve likely believed Heavenly Father when He said that they would surely die if they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, but she also trusted that knowledge of good and evil was important enough to risk death, even spiritual death. In Eden, there had been no chances to grow and progress, and I believe it was for this reason that the scriptures say that Eve “. . . saw that the tree was good for food, and that it became pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make her wise . . .”
Eve’s choice was ultimately correct, not because it had no consequences, but because it did. Yes, everyone will die physically — there is a 100% mortality rate for all of us eventually. But we can choose whether we will live or die spiritually. As Alma explained, “there was a space granted unto man in which he might repent; therefore this life became a probationary state . . .”
We are all on a journey. There is a path, the strait and narrow way of which many prophets have spoken. Sometimes we may wander off the path for a while, but it is always possible to return, thanks to our Savior’s Atonement. When we repent, we can change the consequences of our evil action and turn back. This is not to say that all consequences for our actions will vanish, but they can be turned to our good when we allow the Savior to change us. There are no sins we can commit, except denying the Holy Ghost, that can possibly lead us farther from the way home than our Savior can reach. He can turn all sorrows to joy if we are willing to let Him. This is only possible because of the Fall that Eve set in motion, for without the Savior’s atoning sacrifice, we would all be lost, or forced to remain forever in the state we were in.
Orson F. Whitney once said, “The fall had a twofold direction—downward, yet forward. It brought man into the world and set his feet on progression’s highway.” When we believe this and act accordingly, trusting in the Lord, we will be able to make decisions as Eve did, through careful consideration, seeking inspiration and guidance, but not waiting forever for the perfect moment to act, or complete knowledge of all of the consequences.
I testify that because of the Fall, we have come to this earth to fulfill the plan of salvation in our own lives. I testify that Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer, and that through His Atonement we can return to our Heavenly Parents someday — that the resurrection of Christ is a reality, and that because of Him we can have eternal life and joy in our redemption. I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
