Why was the Atonement necessary? Couldn’t God have arranged things so that we could overcome sin ourselves? It seems like we might have learned more that way.

Our colleague Adam Greenwood has given one excellent answer: Our spiritual education would not have been complete without the experience of being completely, utterly  helpless. However, Adam himself points out that the most exquisite helplessness comes when there is absolutely no discernible reason for our trial. Suffering for our own sin doesn’t really qualify.

I had an insight the other day into another reason: We needed redemption without pride.

C.S. Lewis talks about this (in The Screwtape Letters, if memory serves.) The moment we realize we are being humble, we lose it. I add that never becoming aware we are humble seems to be a nonstarter as well. I’m not sure I can quite articulate why, unless it’s the principle that no man can be saved in ignorance.

The Atonement seems like at least a partial cure to this dilemma. If we remember the price paid for us to be able to repent — to become humble — then perhaps it’s easier to realize we are being humble without immediately becoming proud. The cost was just too much.

But I suppose I shouldn’t be too proud of any explanation I come up with for the Atonement. Perhaps it is not well to too readily explain away something I so desperately need.

Perhaps people don’t want to break with an unhappy past so much as to relive it; to return to some point on the road to ruin and make the one change, the single alteration that would make it all turn out differently.

-Richard Fernandez

There’s something profound in that about repentance and the atonement, but I don’t quite know what. Maybe turning your sins over to Christ means finally owning that you have to write off parts of your past and even of yourself. Though in the long run, losing your life this way may be the only way to find it.

That is to say, Mormons believe in original sin, we just happen to believe that Christ atones for it for all.

It’s not fair to punish the children for the sins of their fathers, no doubt. Any more than it is fair to make Christ atone for those inherited sins.

But inheritance is relationship. If we didn’t inherit anything from Adam, we wouldn’t be bound to him in anyway. And Christ’s act binds us to him.

As Mosiah understood, fairness–justice–leaves us alone, miserable, and even uncreated.

Thank God that life is unfair.