Knowing without Doing

In a previous article (The Benefits of Sin?), I explained that people sometimes suggest they are better off for having sinned because they learned and grew so much in the repentance process, in ways they could not have otherwise. In the following article (“I Am the Way … Unless You Find a Better One”), I explained how that cannot be true, one reason being that it would mean we are better off than Jesus Christ, because he is the only person who has never sinned. A good question arises, however: how can God be all-knowing if he has never experienced sin? How can we learn all things if we only do some things?

Does Opposition Require that We Sin?

Lehi taught that having joy and doing good does not require that we partake of the misery of sin, only that we “know” it.

The beginning of an answer is hinted at in a statement by Lehi in his parting words to his son Jacob. Lehi explains how opposites are necessary in order to have meaningful existence. He says that if Adam and Eve had not eaten the fruit, “they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin” (2 Ne. 2:23). When first reading this, I expected him to contrast the paired opposites with the same verb, like this:

Having no joy, for they
Had no misery;
Doing no good, for they
Did no sin.

Instead, Father Lehi throws in a subtle, unexpected twist:

Having no joy, for they
Knew no misery;
Doing no good, for they
Knew no sin.

Lehi may have intended to communicate a number of different things by his phrasing of this couplet. I wonder if one message is that, while people must leave that state of Edenic innocence in order to experience meaningful good, we do not have to sin in order to experience good. We must know sin, but not necessarily do it. Does that mean we can know sin, its full effects, without actually experiencing it?

The Virtue of Vicarious Experience

C. S. Lewis compares resisting temptation to walking against a strong wind.

C. S. Lewis seemed to think that not only could we understand sin without sinning, but that it was the only way to understand sin.

You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness.((C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Harper Lewis).))

A fascinating quote from the Ensign elaborates on this same question:

If we are selective in the things we choose to do in life, we only have time for high-priority experiences. For example, an enlightened mother chooses parenthood over her career. A youth overcomes any desires to follow the seamy side of life in favor of building on positive, uplifting experiences.

Many people feel that vicarious experiences never lead to meaningful understanding. Only the poor can, they say, really understand poverty. Only the sinner can know the nature or the consequences of sin. They claim there is no substitute for direct experience.

Such an argument has at least two inherent weaknesses. First, it’s risky to live in the atmosphere of sin in order to understand it or to help others who are sinning, since individuals may become trapped in the very things they want others to avoid. Taking drugs to know what it’s like, for example, may lead to personal slavery rather than the redemption of others. Second, the argument overlooks the fact that the Holy Ghost can provide such understanding and that man can, by empathy, come to understand, as Jesus did, what sin means to others.

Jesus understood sin better than the sinner, without ever having sinned. Prophets have been and are acute “vicarious” observers of the consequences of sin and thus can provide adequate leadership in helping others overcome sin.

Spiritually guided empathy leads to a greater understanding of the nature of sin than partaking of sin, because the empathizer seeks only to understand and is not subject to the perceptual distortions present in trying to justify behavior.((Phillip C. Smith, “The Virtue of Vicarious Experience,” Ensign, Apr. 1974, p. 20.))

We have all had experiences that later faded in memory, or which we sometimes wonder if we truly understood or interpreted correctly. In contrast, many prophets have emphasized the power of a spiritual witness from the Holy Ghost. “When a man has the manifestation from the Holy Ghost, it leaves an indelible impression on his soul, one that is not easily erased. It is Spirit speaking to spirit, and it comes with convincing force. A manifestation of an angel, or even the Son of God himself, would impress the eye and mind, and eventually become dimmed, but the impressions of the Holy Ghost sink deeper into the soul and are more difficult to erase.”((Joseph Fielding Smith, Answers to Gospel Questions, 2:151.)) Of course, this doesn’t mean that spiritual experiences are impossible to doubt after the fact, but President Smith certainly teaches that it is much harder to undo their effects.

Conclusion

It appears that the Holy Spirit’s ability to convey knowledge may be more powerful than we sometimes suspect, even to the degree that it conveys reality and knowledge more purely than direct experience. I can’t help but wonder if that is part of what happened to the Savior in Gethsemane, coming to know the effects of sinful actions he had never performed. And knowing how intense such pure knowledge can be, unmediated by the mind and unfiltered by the flesh, it’s understandable if the rest of us mortals don’t receive it to such a degree on a regular basis.