A Theology of Suffering

Recently I discovered a discourse given over 20 years ago by a woman named Frances Bennion. Since the time I read it, I have pondered it daily. It has changed my outlook on suffering and the whole question of "why do bad things happen to good people?"

I started this blog, partly, with a mind to explore the topic of suffering, and how understanding the scriptures and the teachings of doctrine can help us through difficulty, as well as how we can have soft hearts for God to write His teachings upon them. (Hence, the Tables of the Heart moniker.)

Here is the link to the entire discourse. It is long. But it absolutely blew my mind, and I invite anyone who is suffering, has suffered, or anticipates future suffering to give it a look.

I'll include one quote (of many) that I found thought-provoking:

"One of my prayers to my Father is that my children will be healed of my ignorance and will not bear forever the difficulties caused by things I have mistakenly done or not done as a parent. As I think of the atonement of Christ, it seems to me that if our sins are to be forgiven, the results of them must be erased. If my mistakes are to be forgiven, other persons must be healed from any effects of them. In the same way, if other persons are to be released by the atonement, then we must be healed from their mistakes. I think that is an essential part of understanding God’s gift: He did not make a plan whereby we simply prove ourselves already right or wrong. Rather, we must make sense of the fact that who we are and who we become is not wholly dependent on where we are now, and on never having made a mistake. Christ’s atonement makes it possible for us to go through the meeting of reality, the falling, the hungering, the screaming, the crawling on the floor, the being disfigured and scarred for life psychologically or physically, and still survive and transcend it. If that were not true, then our whole universe would have no meaning."

Yikes! Be Patient in Affliction...Or Else

When my kids are being little pills, my husband often hangs this nebulous threat over them, "Kids! You'd better stop it or RELSE." It's an aberration of the word else, obviously. The kids will sometimes ask, "What's relse this time?" And then he thinks up some random consequence to their bad behavior, and generally he gets results.


Smart dad, right?


But as I've been dealing with a negative situation over the past several months (years if I think about it), I have been trying to be patient with the, for lack of a better word, affliction. One day a couple of weeks ago, I was really digging into the Book of Mormon, looking for ways to help me handle things, and I came across a couple of verses that simultaneously comforted and scared me.


That's possible, right? Comforting and scaring? At the same time? Well, apparently it's possible.


Here's the verse from Alma chapter 34.

 40 And now my beloved brethren, I would exhort you to have patience, and that ye bear with all manner of afflictions; that ye do not revile against those who do cast you out because of your exceeding poverty, lest ye become sinners like unto them;

 41 But that ye have patience, and bear with those afflictions, with a firm hope that ye shall one day rest from all your afflictions.

Did you see that? There's  RELSE in there. A big one.

At first glance, the RELSE looks like "They're sinners and you're not because you're the afflicted one and therefore innocent and spotless." But I'm no dummy. I know I'm not some kind of perfect, sinless martyr. I've got challenges of my own in the way of spiritual growth.

No, I think the "warning relse" here is more specific. And maybe I'm just reading this wrong, but it sounds like "lest ye become sinners LIKE UNTO them." So, wait. Is that really saying that when I'm impatient through persecution, there's a good chance I'll become a cranky old persecutor just like the person I'm being impatient with through their infliction of affliction upon me?

Kinda what that sounds like.

So, yikes-a. Time to suck it up, quit my whining, and be patient through this trial, right? Because more than anything, I want to be kind and loving and ... not be out there heaping persecution on my brother's head.

So I'd better quit it...or RELSE.