Eden's purposes

We in the Church have a unique understanding of the meaning of the Fall of Adam. 2 Nephi chapter 2 is on the reading list for those preparing to go to the temple for the first time.  Verse 25 famously says that "Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy."  We tend to stop there, but the next line is just as crucial:  "And the Messiah cometh in the fullness of time that he might redeem the children of men from the fall." Lehi explains to his son that the earth would have been created for nothing without the Fall.  Eden was not a place where anything could change.  There would have been no sin, no misery, no joy, no righteousness. No children, so no human family. "Opposition in all things" may make us gnash our teeth, wishing we could just make everything all perfect--make it go away!-- but it is a crucial principle of truth.  The purpose is choice.

 Paul said , "For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."(1 Corinthians15:22-23)

 

"We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression" is our second article of faith. Putting that together, there was a plan for the beginning and for the falling, and then for the living in an imperfect world.  The Atonement of Christ answers the Fall of Adam.  We all have to die, but we all will be resurrected.  The difference is to what kind of life.  With God or far away?

In the rest of the Christian world, if Adam and Eve are seen as actual persons and Eden as an actual place, and often they're not, they believe that the Fall ruined things.  They believe that God planned this perfect, beautiful, effortless world, and Adam blew it.  Since Eve went first, for centuries she was blamed for all the misery and evil in this fallen world.  (There's a reason they were called the Dark Ages.)  Woman was the intrinsically weaker sex, and life was not what it was meant to be.  All of us had lost out on what might have been.

We understand this differently.  I love what our friend Richard Childs said once, teaching a lesson on 2 Nephi 2.  He said Adam fell UP.  If that is too much to quite wrap your ideas around, then Adam at least fell forward.  He did not fall down, into hell.  We are not living under Plan B, this is and always was Plan A. We reverence Adam as the first patriarch, we don't revile him, and we know from modern revelation that he had all the knowledge and keys of the fullness of the gospel of Christ and taught his children.  Eve, far from being the source of all weakness and sin, could not fully know what would follow, but she was able to recognize the necessity of the harder path.  We all want what is easy, but the truth is that we need what is difficult.  We are supposed to be learning here, and the graduation requirements are demanding. This life is not meant to be Walden on "Doonesbury," though there will always be some lost in that mindset.  We have to do the work.

I was struck once, and have thought about it often, that nothing in scripture suggests that Adam and Eve forgot their experience.  The veil was drawn upon their awareness of the pre-mortal life when they were placed here, like all of us, but all of their experiences remained with them after they awoke in the Garden.  Eve was the first to understand the need to choose. This is how I imagine that moment, leaving the Garden of Eden, looking at the lone and dreary world; standing for just a moment between those worlds.  Then moving forward.

            Memories

She remembered Eden.

Remembered with a bit of longing now and then,

That innocent beginning of all things.

Pristine, effortless, filled with beauty and light--

Every look a marvel, every moment a smile.

Was it a loss to be removed?

Eventually, breathing, thinking, learning,

They would have reached the same conclusion:

Static bliss was not their purpose.

Eternal inaction would break the promise

To billions waiting to be born,

Watching, longing also for mortal opportunity.

Perfection is not the absence of opposition and trial

But the cumulative process of active, faithful choices

Which refine the sight and expand the soul.

It was a struggle out in an imperfect world.

There was disappointment and heartbreak,

Sorrow and sickness, weariness and fear.

There was accomplishment and beauty,

Gratitude for redemption and heart-singing joy.

There was purpose in the choices to be made,

The knowledge and experience to be gained.

Would she go back to Eden?

No, she blessed the day that they moved forward.

The only thing they truly needed of Eden

Had never been lost:

For she remembered God.

                

            --(c) Marian J. Stoddard