Not Guilty And Not Knowing

The word innocent has two main definitions. The first obviously is someone who is not guilty, but the second is someone who is ignorant. Before they partook of the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve were innocent in both senses of the word. They hadn't yet done anything wrong but they were also completely ignorant. Adam and Eve chose knowledge over innocence in both meanings of the word because they knew they could not fulfill their destinies to create and multiply while they remained innocent. A lot of us want to stay in the garden of Eden and remain innocent, never doing anything wrong, but at the same time never learning or growing. It's not that the pursuit of knowledge is wrong, but that learning means making mistakes and failing. We have to lose our innocence by going out and doing things badly so that we can replace our innocence or ignorance with knowledge and experience. Hiding forever in the Garden of Eden is like the servant who received one talent and was so terrified of failure that he hid the talent under a napkin, determined not to let anything happen to it. It doesn't mention it in the parable, but I imagine that the servants who managed to multiply their talents did so only after losing some of the money to bad investments until they developed the knowledge and experience and wisdom to make good investments and could then begin to multiply their talents. I've never really liked the phrase "you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs" because it seems to imply that if your were clever or careful enough then you could figure out how to make the omelet without breaking the eggs. But you can't have an omelet without the broken eggs and you can't have knowledge without losing your innocence.