:: Being Mormon ::

Imagine that I warn my child, “Cho mm-shik mok-ji-ma!”

That message can have no real impact, if my child doesn’t have the necessary knowledge to interpret it. In this case, a working knowledge of Korean is required to pull the meaning out of that statement. (Okay, and the ability to decypher my horrible transliteration…)

I can’t very well punish him for disobeying if he couldn’t understand me, right? Of course, he will pay whatever natural consequences come from doing whatever I just warned him against. But it’s not his fault, and I won’t impose any external punishment — in fact, I will try to help him recover from the consequences.

Now imagine that our Heavenly Father warns his children, “don’t eat that forbidden fruit!”

Of course, that’s a little bit different. No language barrier prevented them from understanding. But they were missing another crucial piece of knowledge — the ability to discern good from evil that, as it happened, eating that particular fruit would provide them. How fair would it have been for God to punish his children for disobeying a warning when they were yet unable to understand that disobeying was wrong?

And indeed, he did not punish them. Adam and Eve had to suffer the consequences of eating that fruit — including becoming mortal (physical death) and being expelled from the presence of God (spiritual death) — but God did his best to help them overcome these consequences. The mission of Jesus Christ was directly aimed at removing both of these obstacles to our happiness. Through his resurrection, the Savior allowed all mankind to be resurrected, and his atonement allows us to repent of sin and return to God’s presence.

The question remains, “why did God allow Adam and Eve to eat the fruit in the first place? Why didn’t he just prevent them, or at least warn them in strong enough terms that they wouldn’t do it?”

And that’s a question for another day.