Is it better to know than not?  Is ignorance bliss?  The other day, as I was examining, in a book, Michangelo's Sistine Chapel masterpiece, specifically, the portion depicting the fall of humanity, I wondered about these questions anew.  Would Adam and Eve had been better off if they had remained totally obedient to God?  Or are we humans better served by being born into a profoundly amazing yet heartbreakingly broken world?
     It's complicated.  We all want to be good, we all wish to do the right thing.  Yet none of us wishes to be people who have never experienced life's complexities and challenges.  None of us would want to be born with free choice yet have no opportunity to use it.
     Choice making capacity is tenuous.  It is the door to tremendous marvel and achievement, yet it is also the path to utter destruction.  Oddly enough, however, the fact of free choice affirms the love and wisdom of God.  Better that we choose wrongly than we not choose at all.
    Even, I add, if we do not choose God.  There's God's love, there's God's wisdom.  Where do they meet?  I do not understand all dimensions of the aching paradox of choice; but I do accept the meaningfulness of God.