A final thought on suffering...

Our group project spent a lot of time with the story of Candide and the philosophy of Pangloss.  Voltaire seemingly mocks the optimistic perspective throughout the play that is held dearly by many religions both then and today.  The LDS perspective certainly is that everything is for the best.  Joseph Smith was told that even if the very gates of hell were to chase after him that it would ultimately be for his good.  Nephi observes that there must needs be an opposition in all things.  Satan wanted to thwart God's plan and remove the suffering all together.  So what is it about suffering that is so essential to the God's goals to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man?

Eve concluded that being cast out was a good thing because without evil, one cannot know good.  It creates a spectrum that we can now use to compare things with.  We know good is good because we've seen what evil is.  And it seems that as we experience more suffering throughout our lives that the spectrum widens and we have a greater capacity to appreciate joy - almost as if our capacity to feel joy is exactly proportional to the amount of pain and suffering we've endured...  Christ descended below them all, he suffered everything imaginable, and then he received a fullness of joy.  Satan didn't quite understand God's intentions when he suggested that we make everyone 'choose the right' by eliminating the spectrum.  You have to ask yourself now if passing billions of God's children through a test-less life would produce results.  

Elder Wirthlin says, 'Come what may, and love it."  But can we really tell that to our newly-wed neighbor whose wife was just diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer, can no longer have children, and will likely die?  How can we comfort someone who is suffering so much?  How is it possibly that a loving god would allow such a travesty to happen?  And if He could overlook this one young woman suffering... how does He overlook an entire nation of suffering?  How is it that world wars are allowed to happen - and six million Jews exterminated! They were Christ's own people!  How does this idea of pain and suffering fit in with the good news of the Gospel and everlasting happiness and joy...?  ...I think that in the end it comes down to love...

Maybe perfect packages of suffering are prepared for each of us - but they're prepared out of love.  Pain and suffering help widen the spectrum so that we can know joy.  God allows bad things to happen because in the eternal perspective of things, it will be for our good.  We know that this is a test-tube experience to prove our worthiness and gain an appreciation for good.  And maybe that's why some actually ask for trials in their life because they have this understanding that it won't be permanent and in the end it will be for their good.  Do we have to go through a Christ-like suffering experience and take on the pains of God's children across countless numbers of worlds before receiving a fullness of joy?  Well - I hope not.  I think that this is where the atonement somehow intercedes and spares us that necessity.  

I know that God lives, and I know that He loves His children.  And because of that fundamental knowledge, I can know that because God allows suffering - it will be for my own good.