D&C 101, 103 and Preventable Suffering

Agency, or the ability to make our own decisions, is a precious gift from God to all of us. However, so many of us fail to remember that agency is a gift with strings attached. For every choice we make, there is a consequence, and often we are victims of consequences that we could have prevented.

D&C 101 and D&C 103 really hit this issue hard. It is December 16, 1833, and the church that was commanded to gather in Missouri just a year before is experiencing fierce persecution from the outside world. Historians can look back at this time and say something like, "well, the Mormons were a strange, outside religious group from Northern non-slave territory. They believed in Sabbath day worship. They were trying to get in contact with the Native Americans, who the rest of the civilized world hated. They had valuable property and voting rights as a block. People hated and persecuted them for it."

The beginning of D&C 103 agrees that native Missourians exercised their own agency to persecute the Saints. However, D&C 103 also notes that the church members were to blame for problems in Zion. They "did not hearken altogether" to the counsels of the Lord, who says that he "suffered" or allowed, others to use their agency because the Saints needed to be chastened (103:3-4). He later notes that by hearkening as a united group to the Lord's counsel, they will prevail against their enemies (103:6).

The D&C isn't the only book of scripture to talk about chastisement as a means to change and progress in life. Paul also described this idea in Hebrews -- that he who is not tried is Fatherless. In other words, God is our teacher, and he teaches us right from wrong through the consequences of our actions.

So, what were the Saints doing wrong? Well, in D&C 38, verse 31, we read that the Saints are meant to gather together to be a righteous people -- a people without spot or blame. However, all the Saints really did was "gather." D&C 101 goes down the list of the Saint's wrongdoings: "there were jarrings, and contentions, and envyings, and strifes, and lustful and covetous desires [...] they polluted their inheritances. They were slow to hearken unto the voice of the Lord their God [...] in the day of their peace they esteemed lightly my counsel [...] in the day of their trouble, of necessity they feel after me" (101:7-8).

D&C 101 and 103 teach us that suffering is not always completely someone else's fault. Sometimes, we bring our own grief upon us. It would be so nice to blame a bad test grade on a teacher's negligence, but in the end, our lives are our own responsibility. And that's what suffering is all about: being tried and then coming out better for it.