Recently, a family friend of ours just lost her husband suddenly in a car accident, leaving her with two small children, one of them being only a year old or so. My family and I were deeply grieved to hear the news, and in times like this, I cannot help but reconsider the timeless question: why on earth do terrible things happen to upstanding and faithful people? However, the more I ponder this question, the more I also recognize the extent of my reliance on false assumptions: my inquiry insinuates that faithful people will be shielded from life's difficulties. Perhaps a better question to ask, then, is this: what is the relationship between salvation and affliction? Or this: are trials a necessary component of gaining salvation?
Recently, a quote from Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" has been especially illuminating to me, as I have pondered this question. Paine wrote these words when the morale of the Revolutionary War soldiers were at a record low and their outcome appeared especially bleak. In seeking to reignite their fervor for freedom's cause, Paine wrote:
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly:
it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how
to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if
so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”
Paine makes it clear that freedom will not be easily won. That's what made freedom so undeniably precious: it came at a distinct cost. Paine, however, recognized that the greater the sacrifice the soldiers were able to make, the greater value that they would place on their freedom. Joseph Smith understood this principle, as he On a similar note, our mortality is also a war zone: we are vulnerable to challenges, sickness, disappointment, and deep anguish. However, we continue to pull through these trials because we are also seeking to eventually be liberated from these mortal ills. Heaven will be a much dearer and rewarding place and if our toil, blood, and tears is one of the conditions of our entry.
