Knowledge Is Not Enough
When Satan tempted Adam and Eve to partake of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, he was essentially inviting them to put the veracity of God's statement to the test. Look, he might have said, you can sit here and wander around this lovely garden for all of eternity, never knowing for sure if God was actually telling the truth or not. Or, you could conduct an experiment. Just try the fruit. If you do end up dying, then at least you will know for yourself that God was actually telling the truth. If you don't eat the fruit, then you will always wonder. That desire for us to know for ourselves, through our own experience, is at the heart of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and it is also at the heart of every other piece of knowledge ever acquired through experimentation. Ever since the scientific method was formalized during the Age of Enlightenment, mankind has been plucking fruits from the tree of knowledge of good and evil at an accelerated rate. Partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the only way to be cured of ignorance. We will be stuck in arrested development and hindered on our path of eternal progression until we follow the example of our first parents and partake of the fruit of that tree and learn for ourselves. There are many today that assume that acquiring knowledge through experimentation is the final step on the road. It shows a very admirable faith in the capacity of the human intellect, ingenuity, and indefatigability that we will continue to progress in our knowledge and understanding of the universe and of ourselves until we have turned over every stone and plumbed every depth and ascended to every height until at last we have come to a complete knowledge of everything. And who knows, if left to their own devices, perhaps humanity could one day reach such a goal, but it certainly wouldn't happen in any of our lifetimes. At least, not through the way that Satan first recommended to Adam and Eve and has been the preferred method of obtaining knowledge by nearly everyone ever since. The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is an important step for all of us, but it is not the last step. We have to try things on our own and trust to our own judgment and make mistakes and feel the ache in our hearts that comes from failure and losing our way. When we have been brought to the depths of humility and truly understand that if God offers us something, it is for our good, and if He forbids something, it's because He doesn't want to see us get hurt, then we are ready to move beyond the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We are ready to partake of the fruit of the Tree of Revelation and Truth. I don't want to demean the value of discovering knowledge through experimentation. Learning for ourselves is absolutely essential to our eternal development and indispensable preparation for partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Revelation and Truth. But once we have laid that firm foundation of knowledge of good and evil, then it is time to build on that will revelation and truth. Joseph Smith said that a man can learn more about a topic by gazing into heaven five minutes then he could by reading all that was ever written on the subject. As sweet as the moments of discovery are when we try things on our own terms, the fruit from the Tree of Revelation and Truth is sweeter than all that is sweet, and purer than all that is pure, and most precious to the soul. If we have hit a plateau or a dead end or a brick wall by trying to do things on our own and figure it out for ourselves, then maybe it's time for us to set aside the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and pick up instead the fruit from the Tree of Revelation and Truth. I know that our Heavenly Father is anxious to pour as much revelation and truth as we have room to receive as fast as He can. I hope that we will all continue to seek out as much knowledge and as much truth as revelation as we can.
