When somebody has hurt us or someone we love, we feel angry. Oftentimes we feel anguish. The emotions may run so deep and so hard that we wonder if we’ll ever feel light-hearted again.
I remember when a friend’s dear husband was beaten up and left to die on the side of a barren highway. If it weren’t for the miracle of someone finding him in time, my friend would have been left a widow with several young children.
These kinds of incidents are hard to understand. My husband and I have lost a baby to SIDS. Then my husband lost his job soon after our baby died. I’ve had three miscarriages. We’ve had other challenges. I suppose it could be easy to exclaim to God, “Why are you doing this to us?”
But in my experience, it is not that God is “doing this to us.” It’s something completely different. There is a scripture that helps me to understand a much deeper perspective. It’s not an easy perspective, but it is a far more looking-down-the-road perspective than I normally would have.
First, a little background. Lehi was an ancient American prophet. His teachings can be found in the Book of Mormon. What he had to say on the topic of suffering was quite instructive.
For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility (2 Ne 2:11).
Prophets speak of things as God sees them. What this prophet, Lehi, taught was that without opposition, nothing good can be brought to pass. Thus, if all opposition ceased, good would cease also. Lehi teaches then this entire creation of our planet and ourselves would have no purpose. Again, a deep thought, but an important one if we are to understand life’s existence and experiences. He goes on:
Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God (Ibid.).
In other words, by my wishing for no hard times, that kind of a world would literally be at odds with the wisdom of God. When I doubt, I am saying I know better than God Himself!
And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away (Ibid.).
Sometimes I think the easiest way to understand these things is when I think of a friend who had cancer. She said ten years after the experience that it was the only way she could have learned what she did about herself, her tenacity, etc. I’ve heard others say similar things. Of course they don’t have this perspective DURING the trial, but time has a way of broadening understanding. It is this kind of wisdom these friends have gained through their challenges that Lehi specifically spoke about!
Of course, when somebody has hurt us or hurt someone we love, we feel angry. Of course we oftentimes feel anguish. The Lord understands our emotions. The emotions may run so deep and so hard that we wonder if we’ll ever feel light-hearted again. But as we turn to God and read from the scriptures He has given us, we will gain a closer perspective to that which He holds. And we one day may be like my friend who said her challenge was the only way to gain the priceless knowledge she then had!
To read more about Lehi and what he said, click this Book of Mormon link.
