After my daughter started crawling, I had to resist the urge to rescue her all the time. This proved significantly harder with her than with the other two because she was the first. When she slipped, when she fell, when she strained for something just out of reach, my maternal instincts screamed for me to rush to her aid. Over and over again, I repeated to myself that she needed these slipups, these errors, these trials to grow and develop. After all, if I held her hand every step of the way, she would never learn to walk on her own.
In this week’s lesson, President Kimball poses the question, couldn’t God prevent tragedies in our life? When you look at the world today, it seems awash with pain. When a much-needed parent passes on, when a mother or father outlives their child, people ask, why didn’t God stop this from happening?
Our Heavenly Father could indeed stop the terrible trials that invade our life. He could make sure no one died until they were quite old (though even then, the loss of a parent or grandparent breaks the heart). He could make sure everything in life was good and perfect. But He doesn’t.
In many cases, an untimely death is the result of human error or malice. Someone fails to follow traffic laws or chooses to drive drunk, and an innocent person is killed. Another person chooses to commit murder or other foul acts, and again, an innocent person reaps the consequences. Perhaps we neglect to maintain our vehicles and the result is a mechanical failure that costs us our own life.
Or, from a scriptural perspective: perhaps we choose to persecute those who believe in Christ, and they die in a fiery inferno. Perhaps we slay a group of people who refuse to raise their weapons against us. Perhaps we stone the apostles who try to teach us about the Savior.
In each of these cases, for the Lord to raise his hand against the wicked would require stopping their agency. Yes, there are times when miracles occur and God saves his people – but there are more instances when He does not. He allows the wicked to act, “that the bjudgments which he shall exercise upon them in his wrath may be just; and the cblood of the dinnocent shall stand as a witness against them, yea, and cry mightily against them at the last day.” (Alma 14:11)
There is a difference between thought and action. We may have wicked thoughts and chose not to act on them; though we will be held accountable for our thoughts in the last day, thinking and doing are not the same thing.
All ‘untimely’ death does not come from wickedness or neglect, of course. The mother with cancer, the father with a sudden heart attack, the natural disasters that plague our world – many times, there is no way to prevent these unfortunate deaths. Yet, in the depths of sorrow and despair, we find ourselves either turning towards the Lord or turning away from Him, blaming Him or seeking comfort in His loving arms. There are times when the survivors grow stronger and closer to God. And there are surely other reasons, though we may never see them. Perhaps, simply, it was that person’s time to move on to the spirit world, and teach others or be taught the gospel.
The Lord could save us all from pain and sorrow. He could have stopped Adam and Eve from tasting the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. He could have chosen to follow Satan’s plan, in which not one soul would have been lost. But He, in His infinite wisdom, did not. And, as President Kimball explained in last week’s lesson,
“We understood well before we came to this vale of tears that there would be sorrows, disappointments, hard work, blood, sweat, and tears; but in spite of all, we looked down and saw this earth being made ready for us, and we said in effect, “Yes, Father, in spite of all those things I can see great blessings that could come to me as one of thy sons or daughters; in taking a body I can see that I will eventually become immortal like thee, that I might overcome the effects of sin and be perfected, and so I am anxious to go to the earth at the first opportunity.” And so we came.”
Related Articles:
Gospel Doctrine: Christ’s Eternal Mission
General Conference: “The Great Plan of Happiness”