Deep in the annuls of the Book of Mormon is a common thread of doctrine. It is the idea that while the Lord allows for captivity, he always plans for the deliverance from bondage. To be bound down by another power, whether that power is a person, an illness, social change or even cultural tradition is to be bound without your consent. Most often binding of the soul takes place on a personal level rather than at a societal level, however, the Book of Mormon teaches the principle of deliverance in a marvelous way. That way of deliverance came for Nephi and his people, Mulek and his people and that binding eventually removed the Jaredites from existence. We can in our stubborn efforts to avoid the atonement of the Savior bind ourselves externally due to sin. But that isn’t today’s message. Today’s message is that when we submit to soul wrenching bounds we will eventually be delivered.
Two groups of people teach the same principle but in different ways in the Book of Mormon. The people of Noah and the people of Alma were both brought under bondage of the same group of Lamanites and yet their experiences were significantly different. One was brought under bondage due to sin and the other due to what is called the pruning or the chastisement of the Lord. The scripture in the case of Alma states that under certain circumstances the Lord chooses to test our faith and our patience by submitting us to rigorous faith challenges. He does not do so for his own amusement or simply because he can. Each instance of captivity has a divine purpose.
We tend not to learn much when we are happy and content. We tend not to stretch ourselves and to reach beyond. The body and mind are not built that way. When we are content and happy we tend to stay in patterns that got us there. We tend not to worry about growing towards the Lord. Thus the Lord must submit us to trials so that we may learn the truths of heaven. Anyone under one of these trials such as mental health understands that we tend to reach for the Lord far more when we are in bondage than when we are free and content. And so those who are righteously pursuing the Lord will often find themselves within bondage and captivity for a time.
Now in the case of Noah’s people that bondage came at the request of the Lord to drive the people to repent. Alma’s people could be seen as under the same type of bondage in the sense that they too needed to learn celestial traits necessary for salvation. However, Alma’s people did not come under bondage due to sin but to further refine their celestial habits. So often this is when we cry out that we don’t understand the pruning activities of the Lord. When we are trying to do our best why send a terrible disease or long term trial into our lives. What purpose could that possibly serve.
The answer to that question is found in the manner in which Alma and his people served out their captivity. The Lord desires to teach us patience, temperance and humility. These three attributes generally only come to us under extreme pressures of life. It is rare to find someone who has deep and abiding patience who has not suffered through a difficult moment in time. Temperance in the sense of a celestial nature does not come during warm days and sunny pastimes. And humility is rarely found while we are without the pressures of a difficult moment or timeframe.
We need these moments to allow our souls to become as the Savior did during his ministry. His life was fraught with such difficulties even though he was perfect. It states that he learned by the things that he suffered. The Savior needed to suffer to learn as we do as he was given a mortal body that learned life through the things he was made to suffer.
Now the moral of the story of Alma and the people of Noah is that the Lord always helps those who are willing to submit to his pruning and the form of captivity he chooses to bring upon us. To think that we suffer mental illness do so simply out of randomness is to say that the Lord has no bearing upon our illness. I assure you that he has allowed it. The why is often far more personal and so will too the deliverance be. For all of us, our illness will abate when the time and the learning is sufficient. For it makes no sense to place someone under bondage who is not going to learn and simply suffer. Although the Lord does place everyone under some type of bondage and pruning. The intent is that they learn the lesson of the gospel. Laman and Lemuel were placed under these circumstances and eventually only suffered without learning much. They were then left to their own happiness as they rejected what the Lord desired to give them.
Yes we can reject the Lord and possibly be removed from our prison but rejecting the Lord is a prison unto itself and so the Lord does not see fit to add more upon the individual unless he can see that the individual may repent over time. Most of us I would venture to say that are under the bondage of mental illness are not there due to sin but rather due to the celestial pruning that needs to take place. And so the Lord has a time and place for us to be healed and no longer under bondage.
Yes healing is possible as we work with the Lord and submit to his pruning. It is not easy and it may take much of what we must give to find the release that we need. But it is there even when it may seem that our illness is never ending. The Lord’s mercy is always there even to remove the pains and sufferings as he did with Alma’s people. He made the burdens light so that they could bear them. Now I know personally that this illness we suffer does not always feel light in fact I would say that for me there have been very heavy times when I wish that I could no longer be on the earth. And yet those times have always passed and that the Lord does visit us in a variety of ways. The promise of the Lord is that as we submit our loads will be lightened and we will know that it is by him that they have become light. Eventually we will pass through the trial and find great happiness and treasures of knowledge we could have gained no other way. I know this to be true for I have witnessed and experienced it in my lifetime. May the Lord bless and keep you his. Until next week. Do your part so that the Lord can do his.
