I mean the Fall of Adam and Eve occurred - was it necessary? Yes. Majorly so. But why? Well for starters, without it we would not be here. It was importantly necessary - got it. But how was this major stunt in the human growth to be overcome? We fell. How could we get back up?
As all these and many more thoughts were jumping around in my chaotic brain - IT HIT ME. The saving power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ is nothing less than a beautiful sign of God's love for us and a highlight of our purpose in this life - the reason we chose to enter the pains and joys of mortality - to fall and learn how to get ourselves back up again - to gain experience from it all, continually progressing in all aspects of life.
With the Fall of Adam and Eve, mankind fell. We fell from the platform of walking and talking with our Father in Heaven. We fell from His presence. Why did we do this? So that we could reach our potential. But just like a bird has to be kicked out of its nest by its loving parents to learn to fly, we, ourselves, had to leave our heavenly nest, even our heavenly parents physical presence, to learn to fly in our own way. A birds flying abilities would be stunted if their parent took them by the wing and did all the flying themselves. The bird is shown and thus taught the way into flight through their parents expertise.
So mankind fell. And we had two options for salvation from the fall: someone to come and pick us up and carry us from then on, or someone to show us the way - to give us the tools we needed to learn to get ourselves up. The first - instant salvation from the pains of the fall, but eternal consequences as we would live in a handicapped state forever (we would never know how to get up from the fall). One word: damnation. The second - an ability to gain the experience that we so wanted, to grow and reach our potential and if we followed the well-planned steps, we would have eternal glorious consequences. We would have joy - which is why Adam fell in the first place (as 2 Nephi 2:25 states). Two words: True Salvation.
The actual conditions of the saving power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ are beautiful- are exactly what needed to be - to make the extreme Fall of all mankind worth it.
Why do we fall? So we can learn to get back up. Once we fall and get back up again, we are better learned not to do it again (at least in the same way). With the Fall, mankind lost ground. The Savior was planned - not to lift us up and take us (with no effort on our part) to heaven once again, but to Mediate for us - to give us a WAY back. One of the many dimensions of His saving power is by teaching us how to get Up from the Fall. Salvation comes with conditions. The beautiful part of it all is that we actually agreed to live with the conditions. We chose to do it this way - we chose to fall and get back up again. It's seriously as if He actually placed a ladder in the deep abyss that we fell into, and we have to have faith from our bruised state to take the first step up the ladder. With experience on the ladder, we gain stronger confidence in the Savior's love and helping hands. And ring by ring, we learn and grow. Going from the innocent child state to an experienced, strong being. So our experiment in following Christ's teachings and having faith in Him bolsters our resolve to continue to follow His way until the glorious day when we reach the gates of Heaven where His atoning, cleansing power will have full effect and we will be welcomed back Home: stronger and happier because we fulfilled our purpose.
The conditions of the Atonement encompass our purpose of this life: to gain exaltation through our choices - to learn and gain experience from our fallings and get-ups!
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