Blogger of Jared

Disclaimer: this is not a doctrinal dissertation, and is not a claim to authority or anything of the kind. It is a description of what I consider possibly the only time in my life, outside of the affirmation of current doctrines explicitly taught in the church, where I was given a personal revelation of a “doctrinal” truth. I mainly wrote this down for journaling purposes, for great grandchildren and the like. I decided to post it in light of the question I raised over at NCT of whether blogging can be spiritual. As I am exposing a tender soft spot of my self here, and it is frankly quite impossible for me to disassociate myself from this experience, I ask that you please be kind, and remember, I am not trying to scholastically defend anything here.

Why did Jesus Christ have to Suffer?

For some time I struggled with this question. I was a newly wed, just home from my mission, working for a temp agency moving boxes, and listening to books on tape most of the time at work. One of the books I went through was Jesus the Christ. While listening to it, all the questions surrounding why Jesus Christ needed to suffer swam through my mind, and they were troubling to me, but I could not, of my own reasoning, discover an answer which satisfied me. I talked to my Home Teacher about it. I searched every resource I knew of at the time, and there was nothing available which seemed to appease the internal questions I was struggling with.

Eventually, I decided I had to take my standing situation on faith, and trust that the Lord will allow me to understand this when I was ready. Of course, this still continued to weigh upon me in some sense, but I tried to let it go. I talked to my wife about it, after some time, and she encouraged me to pray to receive an answer to my question during general conference. I submitted myself to her wisdom, and so prayed.

Conference began and Elder Robert D. Hales spoke. He brought up the atonement, and Christ enduring that intense suffering, in Gethsemane and on the Cross. I found my mind remembering my prayer and in my heart I asked the question: “But why did Christ have to suffer?”

There was an answer. In some ways, that answer was ineffable. I wept as it came to me. The feeling that God was real, That Jesus was real, and the intense love that I felt were so palpable. The doctrinal answer was not complex, and may be rather disappointing or incomplete to some(In fact, I have often speculated on what it means myself), but it was a moment of such amazing clarity to me, that I will always hold the memory of it as one of my most prized possessions

The Spirit’s answer to me, quite simply and without elucidation, was:

“Because we need him to.”