What We Can Learn from Adam and Eve about Agency and the Law of Obedience

I’ve shared thoughts on the story of Adam and Eve before in a previous blog post. I thought of Adam and Eve’s story again this weekend after listening to the Semiannual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

During this General Conference, both President Nelson and President Oaks focused their remarks on God’s Plan of Salvation and the way the choices we make here on earth will influence where we will live, who we will live with, and what level of glory we will attain in the next life. To live with our Heavenly Father and our families again in the celestial kingdom and receive a fullness of all the blessings God has to give us, we must be willing to live according to celestial law. President Nelson also emphasized the importance of living the law of chastity, which states that sexual relations are only appropriate between a man and a woman who have been legally and lawfully married.

I believe it is the responsibility of God’s prophet and apostles to clearly teach true eternal principles to God’s children. The fact that both President Nelson (the prophet) and President Oaks (his counselor and an apostle) felt the need to speak on these topics tells me that these are important truths that we need to take into consideration as we make choices in our lives.

As I listened, I also thought about the struggle of being an LGBTQ+ member of Christ’s church listening to these eternal principles being taught–especially an LGBTQ+ member of the church who feels they have been led by God through personal revelation to pursue a same-sex relationship.

Some may say that if someone thinks they have received personal revelation to do something that goes against the teachings of the prophet and apostles then they are wrong and it wasn’t really personal revelation. I think that’s too simplistic of a view though. It’s definitely something to be cautious of–it’s true that we can be led astray by Satan’s deceptions or our own desire for something and convince ourselves that that constitutes personal revelation from God. However, I’ve heard too many stories of people sincerely striving to follow Jesus Christ (and willing to make sacrifices to do so) receiving surprising personal revelation to believe that in every case our personal revelation is going to line up exactly with the general ideals taught by prophets and apostles. Sometimes life is messy, and the personal revelation we receive at different points in our lives can reflect that same messiness as God teaches us in uniquely personal ways the things we need to know to return to Him. I don’t think how we learn the lessons we need to learn is as important to God as that we learn them.

The story of Adam and Eve was fresh in my mind while watching General Conference, as I had just participated in an endowment session at the temple on Friday, and the retelling of the story of Adam and Eve is a significant part of the endowment session. I think a big reason for this is that we are supposed to learn something about agency and God’s commandments from their story.

The first law you covenant to keep in the temple is the law of obedience. This is the law that God initially gave Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when He commanded them not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He also commanded them to multiply and replenish the earth, something they were incapable of doing as long as they stayed in their innocent state in the Garden of Eden (2 Nephi 2:22-24, Book of Mormon).

I mentioned in my previous blog post about Adam and Eve how unfair and unkind it felt to me for God to give Adam and Eve two conflicting commandments, basically setting them up for failure no matter what they chose. I think maybe that’s the point though. I think God is trying to teach us about mortal life and agency. We are never going to be able to earn salvation for ourselves through perfect obedience to the law. Paul spent a lot of time in his epistle to the Galatians talking about this. What we need is the law of sacrifice and the law of the gospel–the next two laws we covenant to keep in the temple. The laws that God gave to Adam and Eve after they failed to perfectly keep the law of obedience. The laws that hinge on God providing a Savior for us, Jesus Christ.

The truth is that becoming like God requires us to learn to use our agency well. It requires us to have choices to make between different things, sometimes between different good things. The truth is that every choice we make usually involves some sort of trade off. Our time and resources here in mortality are limited. We can never do all the good things there are in the world to do. We have to choose what our highest priorities are–what we want the most. We also have to choose which things we’re willing to sacrifice in order to get what we want the most.

Adam and Eve had the choice to remain in the Garden of Eden where life was easier and simpler, but where they were limited in their ability to grow and progress. Or they had the choice to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, leave the Garden of Eden, become mortal, have children, and learn through their own experience the difference between good and evil, pleasure and pain, joy and suffering. In the end, Eve first, and then Adam, chose the more strenuous, painful path of mortality for the opportunity to have posterity, experience real growth, and increase their capacity to experience true joy. They could not have the benefits of a mortal experience without being willing to deal with the limitations and hardships of a mortal experience. Neither could they have the benefits of living in the Garden of Eden without being willing to accept the limitations of that existence.

And so it is with us, as we navigate our mortal life. There are many decisions before us, and God offers us a lot of counsel through the scriptures, current prophets and apostles, and the Holy Ghost to guide us in making the choices that will lead us to the growth and joy we seek. And sometimes some of those wise words of counsel appear to be in conflict. And we have to decide for ourselves: what do I want the most? What am I willing to sacrifice to attain my highest priorities? God cares what our answers to those questions are. He gave us the freedom to choose so that we could pursue the path that is in line with our highest goals for ourselves and our lives, here and in eternity. He seeks to guide us through His wisdom, but He also honors our agency and desires. And many of us must wrestle before God as Jacob did to understand what path and which choices at what time will lead us where we truly want to go.

How Many Times Do I Need to Learn Something Before It Sticks?

I’ve noticed that all my learning and change really does come “line upon line, precept upon precept” (2 Nephi 28:30). Every time I think I’ve learned everything I need to know about something, I run into another hang-up spot and realize there is more for me to learn. Luckily, the Lord is a patient teacher.

Since learning the truths about emotional dependency that I shared in my last post, I have run into more situations where these feelings have come up for me, and I’ve had to sort out what’s going on and how to best understand and handle those emotions.

I think giving up the relationships where I struggle with emotional dependency is a cop-out—I want to be able to keep those relationships and learn to engage in them in healthy ways. Just disengaging from those relationships doesn’t teach me anything; staying in the struggle to learn how to manage my instinct to go into emotional dependency in those relationships teaches me a lot more (I do have to be careful not to put the burden of solving my emotional dependency on the people I am tempted to become emotionally dependent on—I’ve lost friendships that way in the past. Solving my emotional dependency issues is my job, not theirs).

In pondering my most recent run-in with emotional dependency, I realized I need to relearn a lesson I’ve learned before: I need to stop trying to control things that are outside of my control.

I think a good way to explain what is going on for me in some of these situations is that when someone is really important to me and I value my relationship with them a lot, I’m tempted to try to control not only my side of the relationship, but also the other person’s side. I’m afraid of losing something that’s so precious to me, so I try to control not only how I feel about the other person, but also how they feel about me. This is a losing battle and creates a ton of anxiety for me.

As God has taught me before, the truth is, no matter what I do, other people get to decide how they feel about me and how much time they can/want to invest in their relationship with me. I can’t control other people or their side of our relationship. Only they can. When I try to control things outside of my control, there are several things that happen:

• I feel anxious

• I need constant reassurance that I am loved so I know whether my attempts to control the other person and my relationship with them are working or not

• I come across as needy and manipulative, which is likely to decrease the other person’s desire to spend time with me

Needless to say, not only does trying to control other people not work, but it often has the opposite effect of the one I intended. And it definitely makes me feel less secure in the relationship rather than more secure, which is what my attempt at control is supposed to accomplish in the first place. Lose-lose.

My conclusion to all this is, it’s my job to be aware of my own desires and to clearly communicate them to other people. It’s other people’s job to let me know if their responsibilities, priorities and desires line up in such a way that they are able/willing to accept any invitations my desires lead me to extend to them. I don’t need to control anything about other people’s desires or responses to me. When I ask a question or extend an invitation, I am just gathering information about other people’s availability and desires—their response doesn’t mean anything about me or about my relationship with them.

Basically, I have to let go of the control that I don’t actually have anyway, and I will find myself in a much more peaceful place. That’s my emotional dependency lesson for today—one that I will probably need to be reminded of a few more times before my brain gets itself re-wired well enough to hold onto it 😜

The Truth About Emotional Dependency

Emotional dependency is something I’ve struggled a lot with in my life. 

For a long time I didn’t know I was becoming emotionally dependent on people—I just thought I was loving them. Untangling what was healthy love from what was unhealthy emotional dependency was a long, painful process. It took years of hard work and lots and lots of tears.

Even now (I’m embarrassed to admit), I find myself tempted sometimes to walk the emotional dependency road. Sometimes I feel a lot of shame about that. Ashamed to be struggling again with the same thing I worked so hard to overcome. 

Every time this temptation comes up for me though, I learn something new and gain a little more insight into myself and why this is a problematic way to relate to others. 

The hardest part is convincing my brain that emotional dependency really is a bad thing. My brain is pretty convinced that becoming less emotionally dependent on someone means becoming less invested in that person and my relationship with them. When I really like someone, becoming less invested feels like the wrong thing to do. It’s harder to break a habit when your brain is so convinced that what you’re trying to do to help your relationships is actually hurting them.

This time around in my battle with emotional dependency, the new thing I’ve realized that has helped me is that when I’m in that emotional dependency place, I’m not really loving the person I’m emotionally dependent on; I’m trying to get them to love me. Realizing that helps my brain understand that emotional dependency is not love. I’m trying to get something from someone, not give to them (all my giving is ultimately an effort to extract love and validation from this person, and when they don’t give it in the way I hope or expect, I experience a lot of negative emotions). 

I realized that when I’m not in that emotional dependency place, my overall experience of the relationship is much more positive. I find myself more grateful for the opportunities I do have to spend time with this person. I trade in the heavy and complicated emotions I feel about them when I’m in a dependent place for a more simple enjoyment of their company. When I am in an emotionally dependent place, I experience a lot more anxiety and feelings of lack in the relationship. Being able to go back and forth and see the good fruit of healthy love and the bad fruit of emotional dependency helps me gain my own testimony that emotional dependency is hurting me and my relationships, not helping them. 

Emotional dependency is not about loving people in a selfless way; it’s about taking from people in a self-centered way. And the fruit it yields is an increase in negative emotions and a decrease in gratitude for the goodness that is being offered to me. That’s the truth I’ve learned about emotional dependency.