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.
