That Men Might Be

¹“Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.” (2 Nephi 2:25). When God created Adam and Eve, they were perfect. It makes sense since God is a perfect being so everything that He makes must also be perfect. But in order for there to be opposition in all things so that we have the opportunity to discern between good and evil and to choose the good, there must therefore be imperfection. If God can't make imperfect things, then how could this be? It could only happen through Adam and Eve. When God placed the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden and commanded Adam and Eve not to partake of it, it's possible that there was some property of the fruit of that tree that contained some metaphysical power of corruption and when they ate the fruit they were transformed from perfect and immortal beings to imperfect and mortal beings through some poison in the fruit itself. Or, perhaps the fall happened not because of anything special about that particular fruit but simply because Eve and then Adam chose to disobey God's commandment. The tree of knowledge of good and evil could easily have been a regular apple tree with regular apples, but because God commanded them not to eat the fruit of that particular tree and they rebelled against Him, that act of disobedience is what introduced imperfection and corruption into the world. Maybe the Fall could have happened just as easily if God had told them don't sit on the rock of good and evil or don't walk down the path of good and evil. It is necessary for us to make choices between good and evil but that is only possible because Adam and Eve worked with God to introduce evil into the world through their initial act of disobedience. God can't make evil choices but He has given us that capacity. Thanks to that first act of disobedience by Adam and Eve, we can truly exist as thinking and choosing beings and not just be objects that are compelled to be good because we were placed in a perfect garden where there was no choice to be anything else.