Sometimes I think it would be nice to live in a world with no sickness, no sorrow, and no pain. What would such a world be like?
I’ll begin with the trivial: I wouldn’t be uncomfortably hot during the summer. Now, on hot days, I hope for a short summer and early autumn. Of course, I wouldn’t have any uncomfortably cold wintery days either. But, without the extreme weather, I wouldn’t appreciate spring and autumn weather. By eliminating unpleasant weather, pleasant weather gets very boring.
Then I think about a world void of sicknesses and pain. I’ve always been healthy and lacked major health problems. That has changed in the past four months. (Having a baby helps your body fall apart, I guess.) I would love to eliminate pain and sickness from my life! Ironically, though, it is only now that I’ve regularly experienced ill health that I recognize what a blessing it was to have had good health. Every day that I am not ill is a very good day (there still are plenty of those), and some days I feel great! By being ill, I appreciate so much more being well. (However, I really do look forward to not being ill on a regular basis.)
It might sound nice initially, but a world without sickness, sorrow, pain, and sin would lack all enjoyment as well.
In the beginning, Adam and Eve lived in such a world.
When they were first placed there, they were given two commandments:
- Multiply and replenish the earth (Genesis 1:28)
- Don’t partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17)
And here lies the most complex irony: because the garden was a place of innocence, Adam and Eve couldn’t fulfill the first commandment without breaking the second.
When Adam and Eve did choose to partake of the fruit, they committed a transgression, not a sin. Because there was nothing inherently wrong with partaking of the fruit, it was not a sin to partake of it, even though it was a commandment not to.
I like this comparison: A parent tells a child to never cross the street. Does the parent have a reason for the rule? Yes. But is it inherently wrong to cross the street? No. At some point in his life, the child needs to cross the street.
Eve had a dilemma. She had to choose to sacrifice her painless world of innocence in order to gain experience and to bear children. She did not know what the experience would be because she’d never before experienced it. No human had experienced it. It’s hard to choose to experience the unknown. And yet, she wanted to gain experience and she wanted to raise children.
I feel close to her dilemma. A little more than three months ago, I went through incredible pains to bring a child into the world. It was horrible. I thought I was going to die. I wanted the pain to stop. I wanted to give up. Why can’t we have children without the pain?
Well, that’s not the plan, and I’m not talking about the lack of drugs. (I imagine childbirth is still quite painful with drugs.) There is much pain in raising a child, beyond childbirth. The plan of our Heavenly Father is to learn from experience. Experience sometimes entails fear and pain, but it also includes incredible happiness. There is supposed to be opposition as we experience the good.
Eve could only bear children by giving up innocence. I can’t speak for Eve, but because I went through that painful experience of childbirth:
- I have the most beautiful, perfect little boy to raise.
- I learned a lot about my abilities to do what I have to do.
- I gained an incredible spiritual closeness to my Heavenly Father.
- I am learning every day from my child.
I think childbirth is an incredible miracle. But it required going through a very challenging experience. It required that I not live in a perfect world, void of pain and sorrow.
Adam [and Eve] fell that man [and woman] might be, and men [and women] are that they might have joy. 2 Nephi 2:25
I’m grateful for the Fall of Adam and Eve. It meant I could come to earth. It meant I can bear children. It meant that I can have my joy multiplied as I Experience. And truly, my family is my greatest joy.
Lesson 3 of 45
