Hank Smith: 00:03 Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith, I’m your host. I’m here with the incredible John Bytheway. Welcome, John.

John Bytheway: 00:10 Hi, Hank.

Hank Smith: 00:11 John, we’re going to have a great time today. This 2 Corinthians is an interesting letter. It seems that Paul starts the church in Corinth, then writes a letter to them, then apparently wrote another letter to them that hurt some feelings, and now he’s going to write this new letter, the 2 Corinthians, to try to reconcile. They want to be reconciled to him. He wants to reconcile to them. He’s going to go through some of the doctrines. They’re missing some of the important principles, maybe they’re not living. I’m looking forward to this. John, what are you looking forward to in 2 Corinthians?

John Bytheway: 00:42 Yeah, the same thing is that, boy, this is so new and it’s in a new part of the world where you have Jews that are converted and Greeks and how do you do that when you can’t just pick up the phone. And this is some of the challenges. I was reading in the New Testament manual that institute students have and it says, “In the 2 Epistle of Paul of the Corinthians, we see evidence of a growing rift among some of the Corinthians Saints and Paul. A small group of church members in Corinth opposed Paul and wanted him to have less influence among them.” Like what? It just sounds pretty foreign to us, doesn’t it?

Hank Smith: 01:19 Yeah. It’s fascinating to me that the people of Corinth are kind of rejecting Paul, yet the entire branch wouldn’t exist without him.

John Bytheway: 01:26 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 01:27 John, we’re joined today by a brilliant mind out of BYU. Dr. Larry Nelson is with us. Dr. Nelson Larry, what do we have to look forward to in this Come, Follow Me lesson.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 01:37 Thanks for having me. First off, happy to be here. I’m really excited to look at some of the same things that we’re facing today, seeing that the Lord through his servant Paul absolutely understands the day-to-day challenges that we face and how we can grapple with those.

Hank Smith: 01:56 Yeah, this is going to be fun. John, can you introduce our audience to Dr. Nelson?

John Bytheway: 02:01 Yes, this is fun to have Dr. Larry Nelson with us today because many of our folks that we’ve had have been teaching in religious education or institutes around the country.

Hank Smith: 02:12 Right.

John Bytheway: 02:12 Dr. Larry Nelson actually teaches in the School of Family Life. He’s one of the very few outside of religious education that teaches a religion course in eternal families. So we’re thrilled to have him. He was born and raised in Woods Cross. He served his mission in Zurich, Switzerland. I went there years ago and I thought, “I will never eat American chocolate again when I get home.”

Dr. Larry Nelson: 02:36 Number one lesson learned, yes.

John Bytheway: 02:38 He got his bachelor’s and master’s in Family Sciences at BYU. Then he went to Maryland where he received a PhD in Human Development. He told us that his anniversary is coming up for 32 years, married to his wife Kimberly. He has three kids and two grandsons. He was one of the best 300 professors in the country according to Princeton Review. So, we’re thrilled to have you and to have your perspective on these chapters in Corinthians today. Thank you and welcome.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 03:08 Thanks so much.

Hank Smith: 03:10 Larry, I’m going to read a little bit from the Come, Follow Me manual here and then let’s see where you want to go. Here’s what it says. “Sometimes being a church leader means having to say some difficult things.” I’m sure there’s plenty of people who are church leaders listening who are like-

Dr. Larry Nelson: 03:23 Who are nodding.

Hank Smith: 03:24 Yeah. Just as it is today. Apparently, a previous letter from Paul to the Corinthian saints included chastening and caused hurt feelings. In this letter that now becomes 2 Corinthians, he tries to explain what motivated his harsh words and he said, then they quote 2 Corinthians 2 verse 4, “Out of much affliction and anguish of heart, I wrote to you with many tears, not that you should be grieved, but that you should know the love, which I have more abundantly unto you.” The manual goes on, “When you’re on the receiving end of some correction from a leader, it definitely helps to know that it is inspired by Christ-like love.”

  03:59 I think the manual could have stopped there, but I like what they added. And even in the cases where it is not, so saying that sometimes leaders don’t correct with Christ-like love. If we’re willing to see others with that kind of love that Paul felt, it’s easier to respond appropriately to offenses. And then this great quote from Elder Holland, “Be kind regarding human frailty. Your own as well as that of those who serve with you in a church led by volunteer, mortal men and women, except in the case of his only perfect begotten son, imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with.” And I think he adds something on that, John, that they’ve left out of the manual. Doesn’t he say “that must be…

John Bytheway: 04:37 “Incredibly frustrating to him, but he deals with it, and so should we,” I think that’s what he said.

Hank Smith: 04:45 I bet today, Larry, we have a chance to talk about dealing with some frustration. Where do you want to go with this lesson? How do you want to start and where do you want to take us?

Dr. Larry Nelson: 04:53 I’d like to start off exactly where the introduction of me did, which is what I’m not. I’m not a religious ed scholar. I’m not a scholar of Paul and the scriptures. So, this could feel very different than maybe previous episodes with other guests. Maybe lay the foundation for what I hope to bring and I hope it will be an interesting perspective for listeners. I’m a developmentalist. What is that? So, I teach and study the development of human beings from conception to death. I refer to my human development class as a womb to tomb course. I tell my students that I believe human development is the most important topic taught at BYU. I know some of my colleagues in other departments may disagree, but I believe that because of what we read in the book of Moses, Moses 1:39, that God’s work and glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of all of His children. In other words, God’s work and glory is the development.

Hank Smith: 06:05 Yeah, human development.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 06:07 That is the plan of salvation. Our development from spiritual babies into divine adults, deity, like our heavenly parents. So, I feel blessed to be able to study professionally the part of that process that occurs here in mortality. But I feel blessed as a disciple scholar to have the scriptures and modern prophets and apostles to help me study more of the entire process of growing from spiritual infants to become like heavenly parents. And when we’re looking at the plan, we don’t refer to it as development. So maybe I’ll ease from that language of development into what we’re more familiar with, which is becoming. That process of becoming like our Heavenly Father. So that’s the second thing I’d like to preface our examination of 2 Corinthians with if I may, and that is understanding becoming. Kittens grow up to be cats and puppies grow up to be dogs. Children of heavenly parents as the Family, a Proclamation to the World states, grow up to be like them. And understanding “that is the plan, that’s the process” is so important.

  07:29 President Oaks has said it this way, “The final judgment is not just an examination of a sum total of good and evil acts, what we have done. It’s an acknowledgement of the final effects of our acts and thoughts, what we have become.” I just love that. He goes on to say, “You’ll qualify for your inheritance by learning what I have learned and by living as I have lived.” Elder D. Todd Christofferson has said, “Exercising agency in a setting that sometimes includes opposition and hardship is what makes life more than a simple multiple choice test. God is interested in what we are becoming as a result of our choices. He’s not satisfied if our exercise of moral agency is simply a robotic effort at keeping some rules. Our Savior wants us to become something, not just do something.” This is central to how we examine these chapters in 2 Corinthians.

Hank Smith: 08:31 John, just last week we talked with Dr. Dan Peterson about kind of the same idea about charity, how charity has to govern everything we do in the church. And I think in that talk you reference the Challenge to Become, Elder Oaks talk about charity.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 08:45 That’s a classic talk. I’m glad you brought it up.

Hank Smith: 08:48 This is what he says. “We are challenged to move through a process of conversion toward that status and condition called eternal life.” Just what you explained, Larry. “This is achieved not just by doing what is right, but by doing it for the right reason, for the pure love of Christ. The Apostle Paul illustrated this in his famous teaching about the importance of charity. The reason charity never fails and the reason charity is greater than even the most significant acts of goodness”, he cited, “is that charity, the pure love of Christ, is not an act but a condition. It’s a state of being. Charity is attained through a succession of acts that result in conversion. Charity is something one becomes.”

  09:27 So I think with what you’ve said, it seems that Paul is a little bit of a developmentalist. He wants people to become something, not just do the right things.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 09:38 Yeah. And that’s going to be a theme over and over. Maybe an analogy for us to think about. I am sure present company excluded. But the majority of the time that somebody learns how to sit behind the wheel of a car for the first time, they’re not good drivers.

Hank Smith: 09:56 Yes. I distinctly remember being terrified actually.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 10:01 Even though you’d driven with good drivers, you’d been taught by good drivers, you’d been in a car with good drivers, but you only became a good driver by practicing. If you want to become a pianist, you got to practice the piano. If you want to become a basketball player, you need to practice basketball. Therefore, President Oaks is teaching us to become as God is, we need to do as he does and live as he lives. Not just doing something because we’re supposed to. It’s important that we do those things, but it’s because that is how God lives. And therefore, by doing as he does, we become as he is.

  10:48 God is honest, so he asks me to be honest. When I do honest things, I become honest. It’s this beautiful process of becoming. And so, I hope introducing our examination of Paul’s Epistle here through the lens of becoming, it will maybe be a unique look, provide something that understanding the historical context or the Latin or the Greek that is fascinating way to stay the scriptures, but not where I’m an expert at. And I hope we’ll also model that there’s no one right way to study the scriptures, but it can still be informative.

Hank Smith: 11:33 Yeah. That’s why we invite people like you.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 11:37 The oddball like me.

Hank Smith: 11:38 Yes. Because we want a different look, we want a different take, right John? We’re open to learning how to study the scriptures a little bit differently today.

John Bytheway: 11:47 Absolutely. And that’s one of the beautiful things about the scriptures. We’re supposed to read them again and again and again and again because we’ll have a new insight or a new approach the next time we come around. So, this is great.

Hank Smith: 12:00 Yeah. So please don’t feel bad that you don’t speak Greek. Neither do John or I.

John Bytheway: 12:03 Right.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 12:06 Wonderful. So maybe through that lens, to show that right off the bat that indeed Paul is helping us understand that, maybe we can look at 2 Corinthians 5 for a moment because some astute student of 2 Corinthians may look at 2 Corinthians 5 verse 10 and say, “This sounds a little different than how President Oaks just explained it.” Could one of you read that for me please?

John Bytheway: 12:39 Okay. 2 Corinthians 5:10, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done in His body according to that He hath done, whether it be good or bad.”

Dr. Larry Nelson: 12:54 That sounds a lot more like acts being judged rather than what we have become. But this is another reminder to us that Paul didn’t write an Epistle with numbers dividing it up into verses. We can’t just take one verse and believe that that is stating the doctrine being taught. Instead, we need to look at it in context. And indeed, he goes on to basically say, Yeah, if it were based on your acts we’re all in trouble, and knowing therefore the terror that that would put us in. And then starts to bring the Savior in to the role that He plays in this process of helping us become something rather than just being judged for our acts.

  13:43 As we get to verse 17, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, He’s a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold all things are become new.” Through our acts, through doing as God does, living as he lives, we become this new creature. If we go back to 2 Corinthians 3:3, we see it again and again. It says, “For as much as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but with the spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone but in fleshy tables of the heart.” Verse 6, if one of you would read that for me.

Hank Smith: 14:33 Yeah, I’ll read. This is 2 Corinthians 3:6, “Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life”

Dr. Larry Nelson: 14:46 Over and over again about what our flesh has become, what our hearts become all the way into 18. “But we all with open face beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, what we have become. Work and glory, our development, are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the spirit of the Lord.” So once again, it just isn’t a sum total of good and evil acts, what we have done, but what we have become through those acts. That’s just the foundation I think for understanding so many of the things that we can now dig into in 2 Corinthians.

John Bytheway: 15:31 I love that you’ve done this kind of equated development, that word with becoming. And that talk of President Oaks is just a favorite of mine because it makes so much sense. When we come from a background of, “Did I check all the boxes?”, then we come up with questions like, “What lack I yet? I’ve checked all these boxes.” But when it becomes a question of becoming, it reminds me of, do you remember Elder Lynn Robbins gave that talk about we all have to-do lists, but what’s harder is a to be list? How do I check off “I am now a good husband”?

Hank Smith: 16:03 Right.

John Bytheway: 16:04 Or when do you check a child off is done? And that idea of becoming is that lifelong development. So, I love that you’ve made that development kind of as a synonym for becoming. Thank you.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 16:18 And just as we’d never look at a four-year-old and say, “Why aren’t you doing adult things yet?”, we understand this process and where that four-year-old is. I think we can be more kind, provide more grace to other people and to ourselves in this process of growing up. So right off the bat, I think one of the things that stands out of Come, Follow Me lesson for the week focuses on trials, tribulations, sufferings, afflictions. Paul outlines at the very beginning of his Epistle, some of the things that they’ve been through that he’s been facing. In chapter 4 verses 6 through 10, we read a full list of challenges and attributes. I think it’s important, let’s look at some of these, chapter 4, verses 6-10.

John Bytheway: 17:16 Yeah, I would love to read these because these are some that I have marked. Okay, 2 Corinthians 4:6-10, “For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earth and vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed. We are perplexed but not in despair. Persecuted but not forsaken. Cast down but not destroyed. Always bearing about in the body, the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.”

Dr. Larry Nelson: 18:01 Manifest in our body, what we have become and how can we experience those hard things but then have those wonderful attitudes of how to approach it or develop the characteristics mentioned here. Then when we study development, or when I study and teach development, we talk about risk factors and protective factors. Risk factors are anything that might hinder development, hinder a child from reaching milestones, from reaching their potential. And protective factors, those things that facilitate growth and healthy development. So, I think we should look at how challenges, they can either become risk factors or can actually facilitate growth. I think that’s what we’re being taught here.

  19:01 To help us think about this, let me introduce a concept or a metaphor that might be helpful, and that’s one of a crucible. Crucibles are furnace-like vessels that can endure intense heat and chemical reactions. Crucibles facilitate a process that purges impurities and creates a qualitatively different final product. So, thinking about that language of purging impurities and creating a qualitatively different final product through the lens of becoming, especially as described in chapter 5 verse 17, “Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold all things are become new.” This process of going from the old to a new, a new creature in Christ. So having a crucible mindset of challenges can help us see the things that we suffer, struggle with, become the process through which those things facilitate our growth are becoming like God.

John Bytheway: 20:13 Is it in how we see them?

Dr. Larry Nelson: 20:14 It’s the process of going through them and one way is how we see them. Let’s stick with the driving a car analogy. I have a goal, I want my child to become a good driver. But for that to happen, I know she’s got to get in the car.

Hank Smith: 20:33 Step one.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 20:33 I can only teach her so much, she has to get in the car. But what if I went the next step further and really wanting to teach her, should I call some friends and say, “Hey, I want you to cut her off in traffic or I want you to tailgate her, or you know what? I think I’m going to go out and I’m going to slash her tire so when she comes out of school, she’ll find a flat tire”? John, Hank, why don’t I do those things?

Hank Smith: 21:02 I would think she’s going to run into enough problems as it is being a driver. I don’t need to create more problems for her.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 21:09 Exactly. I don’t need to do it. That is part of being in a car out on our roads. It’s just natural. If I want my daughter to become a good basketball player, that’s my goal, I see that long-term perspective of becoming a basketball player, do I contact her coach and ask her to berate and yell and put her down and then bench her? Do I sit on the sidelines as she’s trying to make a game winning free throw and heckle her? Do I trip her so she sprains an ankle and has to sit out? Again, silly questions maybe, but I don’t have to do those things because that’s all part of playing basketball.

Hank Smith: 21:59 Yeah. In fact, your role is to cheer her on and probably not take away those difficulties, right?

Dr. Larry Nelson: 22:05 Exactly. And being there for her to come to me when she’s going through those things because it’s going to happen. So, this is critical that we think about this as we approach the role of God in our trials, because a commonly held perception is that God causes our pain and suffering. That He’s sitting on high, distributing cancerous tumors, mental health challenges, diabetes, and infertility, that He’s the one orchestrating your parents’ divorce or abuse of your child by a relative or forcing somebody to drink and drive just so they’ll hit a loved one and cause the trial that they need. But He doesn’t have to do any of those things. I’ll ask again why.

Hank Smith: 23:03 They’re part of the classroom.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 23:05 They’re part of mortality. He doesn’t have to do it. We’re taught in general conference by L. Whitney Clayton, “Life presses all kinds of burdens on each of us. Some light, but others relentless and heavy. People struggle every day under burdens that tax their souls. Many of us struggle under such burdens. They can be emotionally or physically ponderous. They can be worrisome, oppressive and exhausting and they can continue for years. In a general sense, our burdens come from three sources. Some burdens are the natural product of the conditions of the world in which we live. Illness, physical disability, hurricanes and earthquakes come from time to time through no fault of our own. We can prepare for these risks and sometimes we can predict them, but in the natural pattern of life, we will all confront some of these challenges.”

  23:57 “Other burdens are imposed on us by the misconduct of others. Abuse and addictions can make home anything but a heaven on earth for innocent family members. Sin, incorrect traditions, repression and crime scatter burdened victims along the pathways of life. Even less serious misdeeds such as gossip and unkindness can cause others genuine suffering. Our own mistakes and shortcomings produce many of our problems and can place heavy burdens on our own shoulders.”

  24:28 “The most onerous burden we impose upon ourselves is the burden of sin. No matter the burdens we face in life as a consequence of natural conditions, the misconduct of others or in our own mistakes and shortcomings, we are all children of a loving Heavenly Father who sent us to earth as part of his plan for our growth and progress. Our unique individual experiences can help us prepare to return to him. The adversity and afflictions that are ours, however difficult to bear, last from heaven’s perspective for but a small moment. And then if we endure it well, God shall exalt us on high.”

  25:09 So what was lacking in that list of the sources of our pains and our sorrows and our afflictions?

Hank Smith: 25:16 Yeah, there is no “God is up there creating this huge problem for me to face.” Yeah.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 25:24 It’s not. The instant classic of Elder Renlund’s talk in 2021, Infuriating Unfairness, he too makes it clear. “Some unfairness cannot be explained. Inexplicable unfairness is infuriating. Unfairness comes from living with bodies that are imperfect, injured or diseased. Mortal life is inherently unfair. Some people are born in affluence, others are not. Some have loving parents, others do not. Some live many years, others few, and on and on and on. Some individuals make injurious mistakes even when they are trying to do good. Some choose not to alleviate unfairness when they could. Distressingly, some individuals use their God-given agency to hurt others when they never should. Different types of unfairness can merge creating a tsunami of overwhelming unfairness.”

  26:19 Again, he doesn’t point to God as the source of any of this infuriating unfairness. And I think this is really important that we understand that, that it’s essential to understanding who God is. Is he the one slashing my tires? Is he the one heckling from the sidelines? He’s not. He’s there for us. “Come to me. I love you. Let me help you make this better.”

  26:48 I was trying to discuss this concept with a loved one and he was just convinced that God causes our pain and suffering and he used the metaphor of a loving parent who has a child who wakes up in the morning with snarls and tangles in her hair and as a loving parent has to comb that out even though it causes pain. And I said, “That’s a great analogy of what the Savior does with us as we’re struggling, but the key is the parent in this metaphor didn’t cause-“

Hank Smith: 27:30 Didn’t go and tangle the hair, yeah,

Dr. Larry Nelson: 27:33 No. But helped succor the child’s bedhead. Help them in that. Didn’t cause the tangles. There’s so many important reasons to understand that God’s not doing this to us, to help us understand His nature and that why we can come to Him instead of, “Oh, why did you do this?” And even the concept of, “Yeah, okay, but he allowed it.” But just like I as a father see the view of my child becoming a basketball player, I see that with the long view of my child, the need to become a good driver, He has the perspective of what we can grow up to become. But to do that, He’s got to allow some of this, but He doesn’t have to cause it.

Hank Smith: 28:29 And this seems to be one of those ways that if you understand this, you won’t get as angry. What did Nephi say about Laman and Lemuel? John, you’ll have this memorized. “And they did murmur because they knew not the dealings of that God which had created them.”

John Bytheway: 28:45 Which had created them. And that’s a good verse to bring up, Hank, because I think sometimes we can be quick to say they had a bad attitude or something. “Oh no. It was much more fundamental than that. They knew not the dealings of that God which had created them.” And speaking of Nephi, what I’ve been thinking of as you were talking was, “Knowest thou the condescension of God,” the angel asks Nephi in 1 Nephi 11, and Nephi’s answer is just so good, “I know that he loveth his children. Nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.” And if we start with knowing God loves us and stop going up and down with, “Well, maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he’s given me this trial,” if we start that starting point, “I know God loves his children,” it makes the wrestling with the rest of it a little easier.

Hank Smith: 29:35 Yeah.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 29:35 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 29:36 Because nope, I’m not going to give that one away. He loves us.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 29:39 He loves us. And it’s so important that we understand this and yet I’m sure there are listeners to this who are struggling with that concept for reasons that I understand and I’ll address in just a moment, but I just, one more time, make sure it’s just remembered. Elder Renlund, Elder Clayton, and now Elder Holland had a devotional address at BYU in January of 2022. Elder Holland teaches, “In his farewell address, King Benjamin taught that a fundamental purpose of mortal life, perhaps the fundamental purpose, is to become a saint through the Atonement of Christ the Lord, which will require us to become as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him even as a child does submit to his father.”

  30:42 Some may instantly say, “There’s that term inflict. See, God is doing it.” Elder Holland knew that might be a first thought of some and he says, “I think the only commentary needed for this verse might be regarding the line suggesting God inflicts trials and burdens upon us.” In English, the word inflict, which comes from the Latin…” I can’t pronounce it, I told you I’m not a Latin scholar-

Hank Smith: 31:08 Inflicta.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 31:08 … has at least two meanings.

Hank Smith: 31:10 No, no.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 31:10 Thank you.

Hank Smith: 31:11 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 31:13 “Has at least two meanings. One is to strike or dash against. And another is to beat down. But those definitions are not applicable to God or his angels. No, the proper definition of the word as King Benjamin used it is to allow something that must be born or suffered. Now, allowing something is a different matter. God can and will do that if it is ultimately for our good. I’m going to say it again. God does not now nor will he ever do to you a destructive, malicious, unfair thing ever. It is not in what Peter called the divine nature to even be able to do so by definition. And in fact, God is perfectly and thoroughly always and forever good, and everything He does is for our good. I promise you that God does not lie awake nights trying to figure out ways to disappoint us or harm us or crush our dreams or our faith.”

John Bytheway: 32:24 Great statement.

Hank Smith: 32:26 Yeah. I have a couple thoughts here, Larry. One, when you said a lot of our trials are created because of our own choices, that just made me chuckle a little bit because I have to admit that a majority, I think, of the difficulties I face are because of my own poor choices, my own things I do without thinking. It’s almost as if I can hear the Lord saying, “Well, I could give you trials, but you do a great job making your own. You do a good job making your own.”

  32:55 The other thought I had was I think this is why our doctrine of the premortal life is so important because we signed up for this, that is our doctrine, that we wanted this. And if we were born into mortality without that choice, if there was no premortal life and we just were born and created at the moment of our birth, we didn’t sign up for this, but agency is in a paternal part. So, I can almost hear the Lord saying when we’re angry, “Hey, we talked about this, that you were going to face these things.” I think that’s a supporting doctrine to what we’re talking about.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 33:28 But to be kind to ourselves. Preexistence is where we were taught in theory. I’ve heard that language.

Hank Smith: 33:36 Driver’s ed.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 33:38 A driver’s ed. And just like little kids, “You sure you don’t want to wear your coat?”

  33:43 “No, I’ll be good.”

  33:44 “You sure you….?” And then they’re cold. I’m sure we were told, “Hey, to become like heavenly parents, you just need to do these things.” And we’re like, “How hard can that be, right? I just need to control what I eat, control my body, its appetites, its passions.”

Hank Smith: 34:05 Yeah, suffer a little bit, I’m sure.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 34:07 And then we get here and we learn about Swiss chocolate and, “Oh okay,” how good food is and different things. And being in this body, we have to go through it again and truly understand. I wish that we could remember how badly we wanted it as kids, “I want to grow up to be like you.” And if we could remember that, I think it’ll help us when we are grappling with these things. And that’s what I believe we’re being taught here. To make sure where we’re going, let’s read once again 4:15,

Hank Smith: 34:46 2 Corinthians 4:15, “For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.” I might have to look up another version of that just to make sure I know what he said.

John Bytheway: 35:00 Redound.

Hank Smith: 35:01 Yeah. I just used that yesterday, didn’t you, John?

John Bytheway: 35:04 Yeah, I knew what a rebound is, but what’s a redound? I don’t know.

Hank Smith: 35:08 Let me read that verse. I’m going to read it in the NIV just to give everybody another take on it. The NIV says, “All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.” A little simpler there.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 35:26 It is. We read that, “For all things are for your sakes.” And I think… Or for your good, for your benefit. So it makes it feel like the trial was exactly what we needed to teach us to help us become, to help us develop an attribute. A Christian writer in a fictional account put it this way, “I just love the language and I couldn’t craft it any better, but writing from the perspective of God, just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn’t mean I orchestrate the tragedies. Don’t ever assume that my using something means I caused it or that I need it to accomplish my purposes. That will only lead you to false notions about me. Grace doesn’t depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering, you will find grace in many facets and colors.” And that’s William P. Young who’s writing that.

  36:30 But bringing it back to the language of the scriptures would be turning to Alma chapter 7 verses 11-13, where we are taught just exactly what the Savior’s experiencing. We often think about it’s suffering for our sins. But 11-13 makes it very, very clear by what comes first what he wants us to know when we’re in the midst of our challenges. Do one of you have Alma 7?

Hank Smith: 37:05 John has it memorized.

John Bytheway: 37:06 So Alma 7 starting in verse 11, “And He, the Son of God, shall go forth suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind. And this that the word might be fulfilled, which saith He will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of His people and He will take upon Him death that He may loose the bands of death which bind His people. 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.”

  37:43 Now here’s verse 13. “Now the spirit knoweth all things, nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he may take upon him the sins of His people, that He might blot out their transgressions according to the power of His deliverance. And now behold, this is the testimony which is in me.”

Dr. Larry Nelson: 38:01 Those verses are my favorite verses in all of Holy writ. Our Savior experienced in Gethsemane everything that we’re going through, not just our sins though, which I’m so grateful for, but our pains, our infirmities, our sufferings. And so if there is somebody with us listening to this asking, “Does that really mean that he experienced what I’m going through?” Yeah, that’s exactly how it feels to have your… Not generally. Your anxiety, depression, battle with infertility, broken heart caused by miscarriage, enduring an experience with an eating disorder, struggles with pornography, experience of bullying and disability and on and on, that very personal nature so that He can be there with us. And here’s the key, if we will allow it, because He knows what we’re going through, He knows how to get us through it. The fact that he experienced all that so that He knows me well enough, I need to remember that I need to do as He did, which is after He experienced it, He didn’t stay in the garden, he got up and left the garden.

  39:33 And so, while I am going through these same things, I can’t just… Here’s the attitude or the perspective that you mentioned previously, Hank, is I can’t just sit there and focus on it. I need to get up and leave the garden. I need to keep moving forward, but knowing He can help turn that experience into something that benefits me, that changes me.

  40:04 We could listen to a thousand general conference talks on patience and at a cognitive level understand patience, but only when we’re struggling with something come to truly become patient. I can hear so many talks and elder’s quorum lessons on forgiveness, but until somebody who I care about hurts me deeply do I all the sudden understand then in order to become as Christ is, I need to do as He does and live as he lives, and by so doing become forgiving as He is forgiving. These are the things that if we will allow him to succor us through, can turn our challenges into things that are for our sake as Paul’s teaching.

Hank Smith: 41:03 Larry, that seems to be what Paul is saying here in 2 Corinthians 4 if we continue down the verses we read, “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we look not at the things which are seen, we’re looking for the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” Doesn’t that seem to fit exactly what you’re saying here? Paul is saying, these trials, these difficulties, this suffering is creating in me or creating a new creature,” as he says then in the next chapter.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 41:40 And the thing is he’s saying, “We may find ourselves focused on the thing that we can see, the pain, the struggle, the challenge, the harm done to us. That’s what we can see. And too often that’s where our focus ends up instead of what we can become because of it.” Coming back to development, how often do we as parents, as our children growing up, do we keep a growth chart? Do you have a place in your home, in your child’s room where the date and the mark and you watched them grow? But you didn’t do that on a daily basis because day to day-

John Bytheway: 42:21 You wouldn’t see it.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 42:23 You wouldn’t see the growth. I can’t see that. I wish that we had a spiritual growth chart to where we could take marks and at the end of that trial-

Hank Smith: 42:37 Say, “Wow, look how much you grew up.” Yeah.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 42:40 “Look at the growth. Look at what you’ve become.” Those things that we can’t see in the moment just as we can’t see the physical growth moment to moment, but can we hang on to what the Savior can help us become through our trials? I wish we could see those things. But that’s the perspective that the Atonement of Jesus Christ provides us. Not to say it’s easy when we’re going through it, not to say the pain isn’t real or that we should just dismiss it and be happy. It’s not that easy, it’s real, but we can sit with the pain. We can’t stay there. The Savior got up and left the garden and we need to move forward with Him at our side because He can succor us and help us become like Him through these very things that we’re experiencing.

Hank Smith: 43:36 Larry, there’s something about the Savior that you mentioned there in Alma 7, that the Savior was willing to suffer as well. “I’m not going to send you down to this mortal classroom and suffer so much. I’m going to come with you.” Elder Holland said this, “Salvation never was easy. We’re the church of Jesus Christ. This is the truth. He is our great eternal head. So therefore, how could we believe it would be easiest for us when it was never ever easy for Him?” So, kind of the expectation, if you want to become more like Christ, He suffered. He suffered and you’re going to join in that suffering in some way.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 44:18 Part of that is going through the challenges of mortality. Elder Patrick Kearon said it so well in the challenges we have in a talk principally focused on abuse but can be applied to all of our challenges and the role the Savior plays in our lives. He concludes his talk by saying, “Dear friends who have been so terribly wounded, and for that matter, anyone who has borne the injustices of life, you can have a new beginning and a fresh start. In Gethsemane and on Calvary, Jesus took upon himself all of the anguish and suffering ever experienced by you and me, and He has overcome it all. With arms outstretched, the Savior offers the gift of healing to you. With courage, patience, and faithful focus on Him, before too long you can come to fully accept this gift. You can let go of your pain and leave it at His feet.”

  45:11 “Your gentle Savior declared, ‘The thief cometh not but for to steal and to kill and to destroy. I am come that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly.’ You are a survivor. You can heal and you can trust that with the power and grace of Jesus Christ, you will overcome and conquer.”

  45:33 Jesus specializes in the seemingly impossible. He came here to make the impossible possible, the irredeemable redeemable, to heal the unhealable, to write the unwritable, to promise the unpromisable. And he’s really good at it. In fact, he’s perfect at it.” He can turn everything out unimaginably painful and hard into something for our sake and our benefit, meaning for our becoming like Him.

John Bytheway: 46:12 I love that you used the word succor a couple of times, and that’s what Alma uses in those verses. He says, “According to the flesh” twice, He’s reminding us He’s going to be here. As Elder Holland reminded us, “It’s the wounded Christ who comes to us letting us know that even the pure and the perfect might suffer wounds in the house of their friends,” he said. Wow, what a statement.

  46:33 But I looked up, and you see succor, S-U-C-C-O-R, when I was a kid and I heard succor, I thought, “That’s a lollipop. That’s what mom gets at the drive-thru at the bank.” But in Webster’s 1828 dictionary, which is all online, you can look up succor and it makes Alma 7:11 and 12 even more beautiful when it says that succor means literally to run to, to come to aid in time of need. And when you read that, “That He may know how to succor His people, that He may know how to run to His people in their time of need because He’s been here,” it makes that so powerful.

  47:11 One other thing. I just found myself writing next to verse 15, “All things are for your sakes,” I was like, “We just talked about this somewhere.” But it was Romans 8:28, a couple of weeks ago, that says, “All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.” So, as you said, some problems are caused by a natural product of being in the world, some are imposed by the misconduct of others, but God can use that for our good as you so beautifully said.

Hank Smith: 47:45 Larry, I like what you’re saying here, and I think Paul is kind of showing us as an example of he’s got this perspective which makes him able to talk this way about his own suffering. Back in chapter 4, “We are troubled on every side, yet we’re not distressed. We are perplexed, but not in despair.” I read that in the New Living Translation. He says, “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed but not driven to despair. We’re hunted down but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.”

  48:31 So it seems that Paul understands this perspective and is able to at least see his trials in a way that will make them bearable and even he sees them in a way of even opportunity. You mentioned that trials can be crucibles. In your research, in your experience in this field, what are the keys that help human beings use trials as crucibles for good to create growth, like you said?

Dr. Larry Nelson: 48:57 So we talk about resiliency a lot in this study of flourishing individuals who flourish, who overcome so much. In language, that may sound more familiar to many, it involves acting rather than being acted upon, looking for growth. Those children who are resilient, they don’t do it on their own. They look for and accept the help of mentors.

  49:29 So I study the transition to adulthood as one of my areas of specialty, and we know those who have come from difficult backgrounds and who change the course of their lineage through their choices, we know that they tend to do things like they set their mind to it. They are intentional about wanting to change. They start to distance themselves from those who may try to prevent change. And that’s interesting. We could spend some time there. Come, Follow Me talks about who we surround ourselves with. Individuals distance themselves from those who may try to prevent change. They seek an education, so light and truth, ways that will help them.

  50:20 So for example, if they come from homes with abuse and poor parenting, they seek out parenting skills. So, there’s pursuit of education, of light and truth. They surround themselves with support groups. We can look at the power of that. Of course, wards and congregations would fit the description here, surrounding yourself with those who can build you up and strengthen you and help, reading good books on the topic. So, their intentional acts to grow and to change and become who it is they want to become so they can change the lineage of their families as well as their own development for good.

Hank Smith: 51:11 You’re the change agent, right?

Dr. Larry Nelson: 51:14 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 51:14 I don’t want to say evil traditions, but the weaknesses of your forebearers that have been passed down, they stop with you.

John Bytheway: 51:21 I’ve heard it called a chain breaker. Dr. Carlfred Broderick in one of his books talks about giving a woman a blessing who could not understand why as a child she had to go through this. And in that blessing, Dr. Broderick was inspired to tell her that she was sent to break that chain for her future posterity. So instead of feeling like God doesn’t love me, it completely changed that God loved her so much and trusted her to go and change that in that family, this kind of family… What did you call it, Hank? These kind of bad habits or horrible sins that had been kind of been generational and she was sent there to be a chain breaker, is another way I’ve heard it, to stop that from continuing. Just an amazing idea.

Dr. Larry Nelson: 52:19 I tell my students on the last day of class every semester that they’ve now put in a semester’s worth of work through their efforts to be in class, to read, to learn the material. They’ve done all that. And now what will they do with it? I tell them very clearly that I truly hope that something we covered in class benefits them, benefits their development, benefits their lives. And that I hope in the process of going through the semester with them, they felt my love for them and what I hope they can become. But I tell them very honestly that while I love them, I actually teach the class for their children, hoping that now everything they’ve done, they will implement it, they will become the types of parents and teachers and leaders and members of their communities who will benefit the next generation.

  53:23 And if every single one of us were to improve upon, we don’t even have to go to the real weaknesses that are great, if every single one of us could remove one of the impurities in our family’s line, each one of us, every generation will improve until I think we’ll have one ready to meet the Savior at His second coming.

Hank Smith: 53:48 That’s awesome. What a great idea. Larry, this discussion has been fantastic. I think we could probably talk about trials and difficulties and pains for the rest of eternity and trying to grasp why, but I hope people are feeling some of the healing that comes from just what you’ve taught us from understanding and then maybe some energy to do the things you said. Go out and take on these trials and difficulties. Act instead of being acted upon.

John Bytheway: 54:18 Please join us for part two of this podcast.