Beneficial Sin?

In his General Conference talk, The Godhead and the Plan of Salvation, Elder Dalin H. Oaks said something that, upon reflection, I think is somewhat curious: "God the Father is the Father of our spirits. We are His children. He loves us, all that He does is for our eternal benefit."

This is not new doctrine. I have always known that God is our Heavenly Father, that He loves us, and that everything He does, He does because He loves us. At least, I've known it as long as I can remember. But it's that last part that makes me think twice about the quote. "All that He [God] does is for our eternal benefit."

I'm not sure how that could be true. There is one thing that God does that, to me, doesn't seem to work out for our benefit: He allows us to make bad decisions, including sins. I can understand God allowing us to make mistakes that we can learn from, as long as those mistakes don't have eternal consequences. But sins do, or at least can, have eternal consequences. Then, how could it work out to our eternal benefit for God to allow us to make them?

Perhaps God is counting on us repenting. If we repent of our sins, we can benefit from the experience by learning from our sins without having to endure the eternal consequences. But then, what of the sins that people don't repent of? What about the sins that consign one's soul to hell? Wouldn't it be better, more to our eternal benefit, if we hadn't committed those sins? Then, wouldn't it have been better for our eternal benefit for God to have prevented us from committing the sins of which He knew we wouldn't repent?

Perhaps not. I can think of two reasons why God might not intercede to prevent us from committing eternally-damning sins. The first is that the solution might be worse than the problem. Perhaps the temporary loss of agency is worse than the eternal loss of blessings. I doubt it, but it's possible that having our agency taken away from us, even for a short while, would somehow lead to a fate worse than hell.

The second, and more likely reason (in my opinion) is that the solution wouldn't work. Temporarily revoking the agency with which we would have committed sin would not change the fact that, had we had that agency, we would have committed that sin. And I believe that intent weighs more heavily in heaven than actual outcomes does. If I had to guess, I'd say that attempted murder is just as bad in God's eyes as successful murder, in terms of how heavily the sin would weigh on one's soul. If that's true, then attempted sin, or even intended sin, would be counted as being just as bad as committed sin.

If that's the case, there would be very little point in preventing the sin, while allowing the sin to be committed may still have some benefit. If a person sins, learns, and then repents of that sin, then the experience of that sin may prove educational, and thus beneficial, to the sinner, but that assumes that the sinner repents. If the sinner doesn't repent, then the education the sin provides would have a hard time counteracting the negative eternal consequences the sin provides. But any sin, repented or otherwise, creates a hardship for others, which hardship could be beneficial to those who are strengthened by the experience.

Then, perhaps God allows sin because it wouldn't have done the sinner's soul any good to prevent it, and having to deal with the sin and/or sinner may be of benefit to others' souls. Or perhaps there's another reason, or maybe I'm just reading too much into this. In any case, we know that God's actions are for our benefit and that God chooses not to directly prevent us from sinning. There must be some reason God doesn't physically stop us from sinning, and that reason must somehow work out to benefit some of His children in some way. It seems absurd, but if my logic is correct, there must be some kind of benefit in sin.

This can't be right. There must be something I'm missing. I'll have to think more about this later.