On Feeling Forsaken

I have been deeply moved by doctrine regarding life and living from one of my favorite speakers, Elder a Neal A. Maxwell who served for many years until his death in 2004 as an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I would like to share with you some of what I have learned from my recent study which I believe will help each of us place our challenges in life into their proper perspective. These principles I know to be true.

Christ on the cross gave out the soul cry "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" So real and exquisite was His suffering that even the Son of God cried out — not in doubt of His Father's reality, but wondering "why" at that moment of agony — for He felt so alone. James Talmage advises us in his book Jesus the Christ, that in ways we cannot understand, God somehow withdrew his immediate presence from the Son so that Jesus Christ's triumph might be truly complete. There are lessons here for all of us. We, too, at times may wonder if we have been forgotten and forsaken. Hopefully, we will do as the Master did and acknowledge that God is still there and never doubt that sublime reality even though we may wish to avoid or be delivered from some of life's experiences. If we are not careful, we may even attempt to pray away pain that appears to be an impending tragedy but which is, in reality, an opportunity. We must do as Jesus did and humbly preface our prayers by saying, "If it be possible," let the trial pass from us but then in humble submission resolutely declare, "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt," and bow in a sense of serenity to our Father in Heaven's wisdom, because at times God will not be able to let us pass by a trial or a challenge. 

Elder Neal A. Maxwell wisely observed, "If we were allowed to bypass certain trials, everything that had gone on up to that moment in our lives would be wiped out. It is because he loves us that at times he will not intercede as we may wish him to. That, too, we learn from Gethsemane and from Calvary.”

Consider this reality, God loves us and because He loves us he has placed us here on earth to cope with challenges that He will place before us. I don't believe we fully comprehend the implications of such divine love because His love will call us at times to do things we may wonder about and pass through circumstances that we would rather not face. I do believe that because God knows us intimately that there will be some particularized challenges that will be delivered to each of us in order to teach us things we need to know. These experiences will be what we need but not always what we like. God knows even now what the future holds for each of us. The future "you" is before him now. He knows what He wishes to bring about in your life and the kind of remodeling in your life and mine which is necessary to produce those results.

There are some of you who are reading this message that feel pervasively the weight and press of life's burdens and hardships. Please do not despair. God loves you more than you know and He is aware and His beloved Son Jesus Christ knows intimately your suffering and knows how to ease your burden if you will come unto Him. 

Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, “Isn't it marvelous that Jesus Christ, who did not have to endure that kind of suffering because he was sin-free, nevertheless took upon himself the sins of all of us and experienced an agony so exquisite we cannot comprehend it? I don't know how many people have lived on the earth for sure, but demographers say between 30 and 67 billion. If you were to collect the agony for your own sins and I for mine, and multiply it by that number, we can only shudder at what the sensitive, divine soul of Jesus must have experienced in taking upon himself the awful arithmetic of the sins of all of us--an act which he did selflessly and voluntarily. If it is also true (in some way we don't understand) that the cavity which suffering carves into our souls will one day also be the receptacle of joy, how infinitely greater Jesus' capacity for joy, when he said, after his resurrection, 'Behold, my joy is full.' How very, very full, indeed, his joy must have been!” (But For a Small Moment, BYU Speeches, September 1, 1974.)

On Becoming

I believe that it is a part of discipleship for us to be prepared for the kind of rigors that Jesus always leveled his disciples. He said, "My people must be tried in all things, that they may be prepared to receive the glory that I have for them, even the glory of Zion; and he that will not bear chastisement is not worthy of my kingdom" (D&C 136:31).”

Elder Neal A Maxwell of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints once observed,

“If God chooses to teach us the things we most need to learn because he loves us, and if he seeks to tame our souls and gentle us in the way we most need to be tamed and most need to be gentled, it follows that he will customize the challenges he gives us and individualize them so that we will be prepared for life in a better world by his refusal to take us out of this world, even though we are not of it. In the eternal ecology of things we must pray, therefore, not that things be taken from us, but that God's will be accomplished through us. What, therefore, may seem now to be mere unconnected pieces of tile will someday, when we look back, take form and pattern, and we will realize that God was making a mosaic. For there is in each of our lives this kind of divine design, this pattern, this purpose that is in the process of becoming, which is continually before the Lord but which for us, looking forward, is sometimes perplexing.” (But For a Small Moment, Neal A. Maxwell was an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when this fireside address was given at Brigham Young University on 1 September 1974.)

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Happiness Versus Pleasure

We sometimes confuse pleasure with happiness but they are not the same. The poet Robert Burns (1759–96) wrote an excellent definition of pleasure in these lines:

But pleasures are like poppies spread:
You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white—then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow’s lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.
(“Tam o’ Shanter,” in The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Burns [1897], 91, lines 59–66)

Pleasure, unlike happiness, is that which pleases us or gives us gratification and generally endures for only a short time. As Elder David O. McKay (1873–1970), then of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, once said:

“You may get that transitory pleasure, yes, but you cannot find joy, you cannot find happiness. Happiness is found only along that well beaten track, narrow as it is, though straight, which leads to life eternal” (in Conference Report, October 1919, 180).

While studying from Elder Jame E. Talmage's book Jesus the Christ, I came upon this excerpt from an old issue of the Improvement Era,

Pleasure Versus Happiness.

"The present is an age of pleasure-seeking, and men are losing their sanity in the mad rush for sensations that do but excite and disappoint. In this day of counterfeits, adulterations, and base imitations, the devil is busier than he has ever been in the course of human history, in the manufacture of pleasures, both old and new; and these he offers for sale in most attractive fashion, falsely labeled, Happiness. In this soul-destroying craft he is without a peer; he has had centuries of experience and practice, and by his skill he controls the market. He has learned the tricks of the trade, and knows well how to catch the eye and arouse the desire of his customers. He puts up the stuff in bright-colored packages, tied with tinsel string and tassel; and crowds flock to his bargain counters, hustling and crushing one another in their frenzy to buy.

"Follow one of the purchasers as he goes off gloatingly with his gaudy packet, and watch him as he opens it. What finds he inside the gilded wrapping? He has expected fragrant happiness, but uncovers only an inferior brand of pleasure, the stench of which is nauseating.

"Happiness includes all that is really desirable and of true worth in pleasure, and much besides. Happiness is genuine gold, pleasure but gilded brass, which corrodes in the hand, and is soon converted into poisonous verdigris. Happiness is as the genuine diamond, which, rough or polished, shines with its own inimitable luster; pleasure is as the paste imitation that glows only when artificially embellished. Happiness is as the ruby, red as the heart's blood, hard and enduring; pleasure, as stained glass, soft, brittle, and of but transitory beauty.

"Happiness is true food, wholesome, nutritious and sweet; it builds up the body and generates energy for action, physical, mental and spiritual; pleasure is but a deceiving stimulant which, like spiritous drink, makes one think he is strong when in reality enfeebled; makes him fancy he is well when in fact stricken with deadly malady.

"Happiness leaves no bad after-taste, it is followed by no depressing reaction; it calls for no repentance, brings no regret, entails no remorse; pleasure too often makes necessary repentance, contrition, and suffering; and, if indulged to the extreme, it brings degradation and destruction.
"True happiness is lived over and over again in memory, always with a renewal of the original good; a moment of unholy pleasure may leave a barbed sting, which, like a thorn in the flesh, is an ever-present source of anguish.

"Happiness is not akin with levity, nor is it one with light-minded mirth. It springs from the deeper fountains of the soul, and is not infrequently accompanied by tears. Have you never been so happy that you have had to weep? I have." (Article by the author, Improvement Era, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 172-73.)

Happiness of this kind has a price, as President Spencer W. Kimball, former President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, (1895–1985) said:

“‘What is the price of happiness?’ One might be surprised at the simplicity of the answer. The treasure house of happiness is unlocked to those who live the gospel of Jesus Christ in its purity and simplicity. Like a mariner without stars, like a traveler without a compass, is the person who moves along through life without a plan. The assurance of supreme happiness, the certainty of a successful life here and of exaltation and eternal life hereafter, come to those who plan to live their lives in complete harmony with the gospel of Jesus Christ—and then consistently follow the course they have set” (The Miracle of Forgiveness [1969], 259).

 President James E. Faust said,

"The golden pathway to happiness is the selfless giving of love—the kind of love that has concern and interest and some measure of charity for every living soul. Love is the direct route to the happiness that would enrich and bless our lives and the lives of others. It means that you show love even to your enemies, “bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you” (Matt. 5:44). In so doing you will be fulfilling the greater commandment to love God Himself and to enjoy His love. You will soar above the ill winds that blow, above the sordid, the self-defeating, and the bitter. You have the promise that “your whole bodies shall be filled with light, and there shall be no darkness in you; and that body which is filled with light comprehendeth all things” (D&C 88:67).

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