Mother Eve speaks very little in the Genesis account of creation, even between the two woven-together tellings. She speaks very little in Joseph Smith’s reimagination, but what she does say offers a subtle shift on the historical narrative. Where she is silent or silenced after eating the fruit of the tree of life in most scripture and literature, the Pearl of Great Price imagines a post-garden reckoning. The outcast pair is granted an audience with their God after laboring for what appears in the text to be many years by the sweat of their brows. In this audience, they gain understanding as to the consequences of their choice to eat the fruit and leave the garden. Adam rejoices in his deepened understanding which he sees to be for his own personal benefit. And Eve, the deviant, the original transgressor, interprets Adam’s self-centered glory in multiplicity: 

Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient (Moses 5:11)

I have long wondered over these verses. Did Adam and, especially, Eve, harbor shame and guilt over eating the fruit? Were they confident in their choice, as is often portrayed or suggested, or was it actually a hunch spurred by a trickster serpent? Did they wonder, all those years of laboring both literally and metaphorically, if they had betrayed their God’s great plan? How did they make sense of the conflicting commands, the true knowledge they gained from the serpent bent on destroying them in contrast with the limited instructions of their deity? 

“With much knowledge,” the writer of Ecclesiastes penned, “comes much sorrow. The more knowledge, the more grief” (Ecclesiastes 1:18). In Western culture, knowledge is something one can possess. We can master knowledge, owning it by careful study. Knowledge in this paradigm can be transmitted into words, numbers, ideas, equations, formulas – it is intellectually tangible or graspable. Knowledge is discernible, communicable, discursive; knowledge of the other, of systems, of methods, is thus power. Knowledge can accordingly discard humility, shunting her by the wayside of dominance and mastery. Knowledge so utlized has little use for empathy, for what purpose does she serve in the accumulation of doors and keys to be unlocked for gain? Of course knowledge can contain humility and empathy. My point, however, is that it does not have to; they are not essential for knowledge as the possession of information to function and flourish.

Additionally, possessing information is not necessarily equivalent (or even close to) possessing or understanding truth. I can possess apparently factual information that is in fact completely wrong: according to studies of brain anatomy in the 19th century it was widely believed that European brains were larger and thus more sophisticated than African brains (1), one of many once-decreed “facts” underpinning the anti-black racism in particular. So what does it mean to know something? I can factually know some of the realities of the world today: statistics about climate change, facts about starving and traumatized families in war-zones, numbers of refugees seeking safe-haven. I can read the words of news headlines and articles. I can reliably gather information about various issues with aplomb. But I do not—I cannot—know what it is like to be deported after building a life in a country that has become my home. I do not and cannot know what it is like to flee my country with an infant clinging to my breast, or to give birth in a war zone, or to lose loved ones to hate crimes.

1 This is a helpful overview of the influential anthropologist Samuel Morton: https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/how-samuel-morton-got-it-wrong.

Even in reviewing my own life, and the lives of my ancestors, a litany of facts and information fails to capture the tender realities of what it is like to be alive in a specific moment and place. I know I am not alone in describing moments of painful misunderstanding, when someone assumed something about me, misjudged me, or dismissed me based on a few facts they surmised without bothering to treat me as a complex and multifaceted individual. Experiences like these are so common as to be nearly ubiquitous, and they are deeply painful. We are all more than a label or ingredient list, more than the titles we hold or don’t hold, more than verbal descriptions and bios and captions and photos. 

But as a chaplain and a theologian, I know that complexifying individual lives can be exhausting and demanding. It is easier to categorize people, to use labels and stereotypes and black and white thinking. It is easier to think in terms of binaries: the church is good, the world is bad; the world is good, the church is bad; etc. Additionally, our capacity to empathize is biologically limited; we can (and do!) burn out our ability to hold compassion when we do not learn how to use and care for it. Empathy, like other capacities, is similar to a muscle that can be trained, and it can be used for good and ill (2). Practicing empathy requires skill and care, especially because our bodies have evolved to think in terms of intervention rather than the often painful practice of witnessing without solving. It is very hard to see suffering and feel helpless – this can fatigue empathy (3). Many of us come up with creative solutions to feel like we are doing “something” rather than nothing, and sometimes it is true that we are not as helpless as we think. I appreciate the importance of calls for action and involvement and justice – my thoughts are not in opposition to such work. Rather, I am interested in what motivates our ability to engage deeply in the many issues and needs that demand our care. In that sense, I think the writer of Ecclesiastes had it right. Much knowledge, beyond the surface of information, does lead to much sorrow. But might this sorrow be productive? Might it be cultivated toward a wellspring of compassion that propels caring action, that does not drain the giver but replenishes itself in being given away? 

2 Lots of research on this. A few interesting starts: https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/limits-empathy, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/run_out_of_empathy, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_limits_of_empathy 

3 This is an overview of compassion fatigue: https://cmha.ca/news/empathy-and-compassion-fatigue/

As a Latter-day Saint engaging my church’s complex history, I feel the pangs of sometimes agonizing discomfort in the space between binaries. In broad strokes of interpretation, I sometimes want to write and see and learn a church purely bad, patriarchal, unredeemable. I cannot. Nor can I write and see and learn one that is purely good, wholesome, and divine. The church I see is neither. Its people are neither – indeed, the world is neither. The more I learn, the more complexity I find. There is no single story, no metanarrative. Trying to make one, including a good/bad narrative, seeks a certainty that evades me. 

I don’t want to accumulate facts about things and people and histories. I want to seek understanding, even at the risk of intense uncertainty. Perhaps this is faith. Perhaps this was Eve’s faith—not knowing for certain whether the apple was a grave error. Perhaps the sorrow of compassion and empathy is the price and gift of being human, the risk of loving and being loved that differentiates us from artificial intelligence. Is human intelligence simply intelligence that can empathize? Perhaps this is overly simplistic. But perhaps not. It may be that the work of empathy, of expanding the boundaries of our capacity to feel compassion and provide care, is the great spiritual call. This work requires that we expand our capacity to empathize in ways that do not deplete and reduce us but enliven and humanize us, a work requiring enormous attention to our inner landscapes and embodied boundaries. 

I want to practice faith in uncertainty, faith that does not seek a fairy godmother God but a fundamentally present God, a God that weeps. I want to practice faith by slowing down, allowing myself to focus and expand the boundaries of my capacity to empathize rather than frantically scrolling through the performative operations of demanded empathy. I want to cast the edges of my good fortunes out like a blanket (4), sharing and sheltering without resorting to self-shame or guilt. This is real work, work that requires love and patience and introspection. It is attuned to the moment we are living in, one that I think requires a particular cultivation of empathy over despair and rage, but it is also an ancient spiritual calling. “Mourn with those that mourn,” I read in the ever-complex Book of Mormon, “and “comfort those that stand in need of comfort” (Mosiah 18:9). This is the standard of Christian discipleship, at least for a people an imagination away. I cling to it today. How do I mourn with those that mourn? How do I comfort those who need comfort? 

I look to my mother Eve, the first to eat the apple, the first to see her nakedness, the first to feel the prickles of shame. Must we eat the apple, learn of the other, seek to understand that which is not immediately our own? With much knowledge, Eve learned, comes much sorrow. Yet without the apple, she says, “we never would have known.” 

“You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat: / So I did sit and eat.” (5)

4 This beautiful metaphor from @sistasinzion

5  From “Love III” by George Herbert

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Eagle Poem

By Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can’t see, can’t hear;

Can’t know except in moments

Steadily growing, and in languages

That aren’t always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

In beauty.