14 And now, my sons, I speak unto you these things for your profit and learning; for there is a God, and he hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon.
15 And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created,
Boy, have I been sitting on this post for a while!! It’s good to be writing again. :)
Quite a few years ago, as I was studying 2 Nephi 2, the Lord impressed upon me several things as I read these verses. One was the fact that the Lord went to great lengths “…to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man.” And what are those purposes? Let’s hop over to Moses 1:39, shall we?
For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. (Moses 1:39)
What do you suppose God’s “work” and “glory” look like? What does it take to bring “immortality” and “eternal life” to pass?
It turns out that it takes all of creation (and then some, actually.)
Now, let’s zoom in on the last part of verse 15:
…it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter. (2 Nephi 2)
As I finished reading this verse, and with the two types of fruit immediately on my mind, the Lord prevented me from moving on by asking me, “Which one is which? Which one is sweet, and which one is bitter?”
I foolishly thought it might be an easy question to answer by just noticing the respective nature of the types of fruit and their descriptions. I thought that the forbidden fruit was mentioned first, as was the quality of being sweet, so those must go together, and both the tree of life and the quality of being bitter were mentioned second, so they must go together, too.
That answer to the Lord’s question crumbled away in my mind before it was even a complete thought. As my thoughts rolled through the relationship between the tree of life and bitterness, I realized that I could not recall one instance in the scriptures where the fruit of the tree of life was ever described as bitter.
“Ok,” I thought, “then they just need to be switched around, right? The fruit of the tree of life is sweet, and the forbidden fruit is bitter.”
Again, I knew that answer was wrong, too, because we are told that Eve thought the forbidden fruit was sweet.
Stumped, I did what you can only reasonably do when the Lord stumps you and asked Him to teach me.
He drew my attention to the fact that people have differing opinions about what tastes good and why. Our senses of taste are unique and individual, and we may prefer to eat certain things over others, but it’s silly to think that anything we like must necessarily be good for us. Most children have to be taught that sweets are actually terrible for you and that healthy foods, while they may not be sweet, have nutrition that is far valuable than any fleeting sweetness they sense on the tongue.
We are like that. God knows what is actually good for us, and we don’t. In fact, we are so unaligned with God’s perspective on things that it takes an entire world to straighten us out. Even with all of the effort He puts into persuading us to improve our beliefs and desires (which you will never be able to comprehend unless you are like Him), it is all for naught if we don’t choose to believe Him once he clearly shows us what is truly sweet and what is truly bitter.