While recording Seek Ye This Jesus (found in multiple formats here), I had several experiences where the Lord gave me much insight about what I was reading. On one occasion, I read the following passage:
As a result of eating the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden. Adam was cursed to farm against the thorns and weeds of the earth, and Eve was cursed to suffer in pregnancy and childbirth. (Seek Ye This Jesus, p 19)
Now, I have to interrupt my post here and give just a little backstory.
I have a very large family. It wasn’t something that I planned on when I was younger. When I met my husband, I was a very scholarly-minded pre-med major and having any children was years off the radar. But the Lord had different plans for me, which he made clear to me in a very sudden and unexpected manner. He told me, before my husband and I had even discussed marriage, that I was not to practice birth control. That command was reiterated later in our marriage when a medical professional recommended hormonal birth control to me as a means of regulating some irregular bleeding that I was having. The Lord was very clear—I was to have none of that, for any reason. I have obeyed and my family is the obvious result.
Staying obedient to that command was not easy. There are both obvious and not-so-obvious challenges to raising a large family. On top of these, the Lord would give me continuing instruction that made the task (to almost anyone’s mind, my own included) absolutely crazy. Think I had plans to homeschool my kids? Nope. Think I had plans to have my last four kids at home? No way! So many of my experiences in raising my children were the result of his direction to me and, I’m telling you right now, his direction did not make my life easy. My challenges were many and there were times when, in the midst of all of those challenges, there was absolutely no one to lean on but the Lord. In just the deliveries alone, there were occasions when I was in desperate need of the Lord’s help—when He was the ONLY one who could help me. As my trust in Him grew, He became to me the one person that I knew I could depend on, even when it felt like the life he had told me to live was throwing me curve balls every other second. It humbled me and it strengthened me because I learned that I had to rely on Him. I look back at, what I call, the darkest days of my life and smile because they are what brought me to Him.
Now let me return to the moment when I recorded that passage from Seek Ye This Jesus. After I recorded those two sentences, I was forced to stop recording as my mind flooded with a recollection of the many experiences I had had in pregnancy and childbirth. The next few minutes were filled with humble gratitude for, what many (even God, himself) would call, the “curse” of pregnancy and childbirth. I had a sudden realization that God’s “curse” was EXACTLY what Eve needed in order to regain the trust in God that she lost when she partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Along with this realization came the understanding of just how many women DON’T take advantage of this fact. To varying degrees, women don’t trust God when it comes to their childbearing experiences. They want to control when they have children, how many children they have, and how far apart in age the children are. To their own detriment, they don’t ever fully trust God and, through him, learn what they are capable of.
Then the Lord said, “The men do it, too.”
It took me aback. His words to me so interrupted the flow of what I was understanding that I paused and said aloud, “Wait, what?”
A repeat of his words to me prompted me to re-read the passage from the book: “Adam was cursed to farm against the thorns and weeds of the earth...”
And then more understanding came. God’s curse to Adam was EXACTLY what he needed to regain trust in God. I remembered the many times when I was working in a garden and the Lord taught me something analogous to my life. I remembered the times that I struggled to raise that garden and prayed for his help in the form of rain, seed germination, sunlight, pest control, and many other things that are best controlled by God. Like women, men have not taken advantage of the “curse” that was given to them and they, too, have not learned what they are capable of. Furthermore, I understood that careers are a pathetic substitute for the work in which God intended for men to engage. When every man provides for his own by farming against the thorns and weeds of the earth, a foundation is laid for a very prosperous society.
The next time you study the Book of Mormon, look up the word “labor” and notice how many times “laboring with one’s own hands” leads to liberty and prosperity, and how many times glutting oneself on the labor of others leads to captivity and destruction. One of the central themes of the Book of Mormon is that societies have a very difficult time getting to the point where liberty and prosperity don’t corrupt the people. You see, liberty and prosperity naturally bring about opportunities for learning and growth, but learning and growth are the seedbed for pride. Men have the all-too-easy inclination to take that learning and pride and offer it for money, thereby circumventing the need to labor with their own hands. Does the term “priestcraft” only apply to religious subjects? What would happen if the following things happened simultaneously?:
1. Men labored with their own hands and farmed against the weeds and thorns of the earth.
2. Men took advantage of the increase that God gives to not only provide for his own, but to also provide for others when they are in need (as anyone who has farmed knows that when it is unsuccessful, yields are low, but when it is successful, yields are very high).
3. Men enjoyed liberty and prosperity to promote discovery, learning, understanding, and innovation and freely dispensed this to others.
4. Men did not use this learning as an excuse to cease laboring with their own hands and instead engage in priestcraft.
5. Men obtained and retained in their hearts humility and a love of God and of all men.
While these things may happen simultaneously in the hearts of individuals very rarely, it has almost never happened in society. God has a way of getting men back to the point where #1 is necessary, but 2-5 are optional and, sadly, men tend to opt out.