Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel was in the hospital recovering from open-heart surgery when he was visited by his five-year-old grandson. As the little boy looked into his grandfather’s eyes, he saw his pain. “Grandpa,” he asked, “if I loved you more, would you [hurt less]?” Today I ask a similar question of each of us: “If we love the Savior more, will we suffer less?”Elder Hales' question was surprising to me because it reverses the formula set by Elie Wiesel's grandson. The grandson asked "if I loved you more, would you [hurt less]?" (emphasis added), while Elder Hales asked "If we love[d] the Savior more, [would] we suffer less?" (emphasis added). The original question ponders whether one person's love could have a reductive effect on the suffering of others, but for the sake of being thorough, I will consider four possible configurations of Elder Hales' question based on whose suffering might decrease based on whose love increases.
I'll start with the question Elder Hales actually asked. "If we love[d] the Savior more, [would] we suffer less?" The answer is "Yes." An increased love for the Savior would also increase our desire to follow Him and keep His commandments. God's commandments were designed for our protection, to keep us safe from spiritual, and sometimes even physical harm. So yes, if we loved Jesus more, and thus listened to Him more, we would suffer less.
But would He? Taking the grandson's original question and directing it at the Savior, we might ask, "If we loved Jesus more, would He suffer less?" The answer, again, is "Yes." In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus carried the burden of all our sins. If we loved Him more, and thus tried harder to avoid committing sin, that burden would be lighter. We can reduce our Savior's suffering by loving Him enough to avoid doing the things that caused it. Our Father in Heaven has similar motivations and heartaches as His Only Begotten, so if we loved God more, and by extension, loved His children more, we could reduce the pain our Father feels when He sees the pain we cause ourselves and each other. We can reduce the suffering of God and Jesus by increasing our love for Them.
But let's reverse it again. If God and Jesus loved us more than they already do, would we suffer less? This time, the answer is "No." Setting aside the fact that you can't increase a figure that is already infinite, our mortal suffering is actually a manifestation of God's love. Whom He loves, He chastens. Our suffering gives us experience and makes us stronger and thus, more like Him. Suffering is an essential part of God's plan for us. Of course, because He loves us, He doesn't want us to suffer any more than we have to, so He doesn't give us any more suffering than is good for us. Any suffering we experience in excess to that is inflicted on us by either our own actions or those of others, which are unaffected by God's love. God's love cannot override His children's agency, so no matter how much God loves us, we as a species will always be able to make decisions that cause unnecessary suffering. God already reduces our suffering to the extent that He can. Increasing His already-infinite love for us would not decrease our suffering.
Nor would it decrease His. I believe that God's intense love for us is the greatest cause of His suffering. Because He loves us, He doesn't want us to suffer, and He especially doesn't want us to cause each other to suffer. Watching us with the care and concern of a loving parent as we needlessly increase our own and each others' suffering must be completely heartbreaking to Him. If He somehow loved us more than He already does, watching us suffer and cause each other to suffer would make His suffering even greater.
So, even if God could love us more than He does now, it wouldn't do anyone any good. In contrast, we would do well to increase our love for God and our Savior, for both their sakes and ours. Increasing our love for our Savior and our Heavenly Father would decrease their suffering, just as it would decrease ours, which was Elder Hales' point. There is too much suffering in this world, and that suffering is felt as strongly by Those who created the world as it is by those who live on it. By increasing our love for God, Jesus, and our fellow man, we can decrease the suffering felt by all of those people, and ourselves as well.
1 comment:
Another part of if we loved the Savior more would He suffer less - He suffered unimaginable pain and sorrow that we mightnot have to and so we can repent and have eternal life. In His great love, He is glad to have borne this burden so we can repent and return home. When we accept His gift, repent, and come unto Him, His joy makes up for the pain. I believe that when we reject this great gift, it must make Him sad and increase His suffering. To have suffered so much in vain! Sometimes thinking about that, how wilful disobedience is like throwing His sacrifice in His face, helps me to do better. It is one thing to mess up one's own future, but to additionally cause hurt to someone so perfect and undeserving who loves us so much, that's too much.
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