Considering the events of last Saturday it’s no surprise that I didn’t record my experience from the temple that morning but as I was talking to Bill yesterday I realized that my insights in the temple that morning provided helpful context for me in processing Isaac’s drama that evening. As I was doing more processing on those insights this morning I realized that I should record them.
During the endowment session last Saturday I saw the story of Adam and Eve in the garden in a more symbolic/metaphorical/allegorical way. I saw their story as the story of each person. Before I had thought of the fall as an event in their lives that affected the rest of humanity. While that is literally true it dawned on me that each of us has fall experiences in our lives. The events of that evening were a fall experience for Isaac.
So what is “a fall experience”? It is a situation where we choose to ignore boundaries that Lord has set that we are aware of. Neither Adam nor Eve accidentally slipped and ate the wrong fruit. Once at a party I ate a pudding that contained alcohol. I wasn’t aware of that fact until after I had consumed the delicious pudding (2 servings). That is not a fall experience because I did not knowingly cross the boundary by choice. Likewise, anyone consuming that pudding who was not aware that we have been instructed to avoid alcohol would not be having a fall experience.
Eve choose to eat the fruit, knowing what fruit it was, because she had come to a point where she felt that knowing good and evil was more valuable long term than staying safely behind the boundary that had been prescribed. Likewise, Adam knowingly partook of the fruit because he felt that staying with Eve to be able to keep the other commandment they had received was more important that staying safely ignorant of good and evil. Sometimes we have fall experiences where we choose to cross a boundary thinking that doing so will be better for us in the long term. Even when our belief is misplaced, that is vastly better than the alternative where we cross a boundary simply to prove our independence or as a way of rebelling. Neither Adam nor Eve were trying to be rebellious in their choices.
This distinction between different motivations behind different fall experiences illustrates the real importance of our choices surrounding them. Certainly our motivations in choosing to cross a boundary in the first place are important but even more important are the choices we make afterward. Adam and Eve chose to make covenants with God, repent, and look forward to being cleansed through the Atonement of Christ. Other times, regardless of how reckless or noble our initial reasoning, we respond to the fall experience by choosing to abandon God, or even worse, to actively fight Him, rather than repenting and turning to Him for healing and growth.
In that way, our fall experiences are similar to the situations where we are subjected to the vicissitudes of life or where we are adversely affected by the fall experiences of others—we can choose to turn on God, blaming Him or rejecting Him when we suffer for thing we didn’t choose, or we can turn to God, seeking healing, hope, comfort, and understanding (in other words, receiving the blessings of the Atonement).
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