COMPASSION

 

Whenever I come across someone who seeks to show compassion by benign band-aids we use in the Church, I immediately recognise that this person has not suffered yet.

The familiar band-aids are: 1. We voted for this in our pre-earth life and; 2. We are here to learn and to grow. As if these two magical sentences can make everything better. I find it offensive when someone tells me this which to my mind suggests that they consider me less spiritually astute than I am.

Some of us experience sorrow which can be a passing phase and its impact can lessen to the point where equilibrium can eventually be regained.

Suffering on the other hand can last a much longer time and can leave life- long scars. You see so much of it in the world through abuse, sickness and oppression. The effects of these are so deeply rooted that only those who have suffered the same can understand.

Suffering at its most acute can be through bad mental or physical health. It reminds me of Job. After God took away from him all that he had to prove that he would stay faithful to Him, Satan was quick to point out to God that a man can lose everything and survive if he can keep his life, but afflict him personally through his body and he will curse God to His face (Job 2:4,5).

And so Job was afflicted physically beyond his wildest imagination and he wished he had never been born (Job 3:3). That’s suffering….when you are in so much pain that you struggle with a will to keep living. The reconciliation between his faith in God and his reality took Job to hell and back. That’s suffering. Along the path of such reconciliation one can encounter soul wrenching guilt, anger, bitterness and self-doubt. That’s suffering.

I do not believe we came here to ‘learn and to grow’. My personal belief is that we came here with more knowledge than we can ever acquire in this life. We were schooled and tutored extensively in all matters before we came here (D&C 138:56). The experiences we suffer here just awaken our eternal wisdom we brought with us. Hence our identity as ‘intelligences’ (Abraham 3:22). This is my theory and understanding.

According to my knowledge, there is nowhere in the scriptures that it tells us we came here to learn and to grow. The phrase almost suggests that we have been sent here to kindergarten, which I believe we graduated form long ago. Maybe to add upon the great knowledge we already possess…What the scriptures do tell us is that we came here to be tried and tested (Abraham 3:25). It is the passing of the test that progresses us to salvation.

The way we can show another compassion is by validating the hell they are passing through. Acknowledge that life is hard and what they are feeling is normal. The worst thing we can do is recount our blessings and our recognition of the positive because this only induces guilt in the other person. We don’t know what it is like to live in their skin but there is one who does:

“….and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.”  (Alma 7:12)

That is something to celebrate this Christmas.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Gentle Healer by Greg Olsen)