All Things Witness

Thoughts on the mission and power of Jesus Christ

Tag Archives: guilt

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden


by Leave a comment

They Were Not Ashamed

Guilt and shame. One is healthy, one isn’t. One is necessary for repentance, one isn’t. One hopefully encourages you to improve your life, while the other takes you further from God and happiness.

In psychological terms, guilt is described as feeling bad about something you’ve done, while shame is feeling bad about who you are. Guilt is about actions, while shame is about the core or essence of your very being.

We see this in the creation and garden of Eden story in the Bible. After God has created male and female, the record reads, ‘And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.’ (Genesis 2:25)

After the serpent manages to manipulate Adam and Even into partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, our first parents1 hide from the approaching Lord God (Jehovah-Elohim) (Genesis 3:8). In the LDS temple endowment, it is Satan who tells Adam and Eve to make aprons of fig leaves and it is Satan who tells them to hide. We don’t get this in the Biblical account, but we do see that the reason they make themselves aprons is to hide their naked bodies (Genesis 3:7). And when God calls them forth, Adam tells Him that the reason they hid themselves was because they were naked (Genesis 3:10).

Continue reading →


by Leave a comment

Exhausted of being exhausted

I don’t like to talk about what it’s like to “have a chronic illness”, because everyone’s illness affects them in different ways. I only know what it’s like for me. My diagnoses are ME/CFS and FND. Both of these are somewhat ephemeral in that there is no solid diagnostic test that confirms that you have the condition – it’s more a case of ruling out what you don’t have and then fitting your symptoms into what’s left. My suspicion is that there are actually a number of things that cause the condition and as our medicine gradually becomes more advanced, we’ll slowly start to identify these causes.

When I was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, my wife and I were actually quite excited that I finally had a firm diagnosis of something. There was treatment, things we could try, tests we could perform. In contrast, when I was diagnosed with FND, the consultant neurologist basically said, “You might become bed-ridden for the rest of your life, you might get better, who knows. No idea what might help. Goodbye.”

Continue reading →