The Gentle Light of an Easter Dawn

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 456th week, and we’re covering the Saturday afternoon session of the October 2006 General Conference.

Elder Wirthlin started his talk, Sunday Will Come, with he and his future wife’s real life meet cute:

I remember the first time I met her. As a favor to a friend, I had gone to her home to pick up her sister, Frances. Elisa opened the door, and at least for me, it was love at first sight.

I think she must have felt something too, for the first words I ever remember her saying were, “I knew who you was.”

Elisa was an English major.

To this day I still cherish those five words as some of the most beautiful in human language.

He then shared what President Hinckley said at Elisa’s funeral: “it is a devastating, consuming thing to lose someone you love. It gnaws at your soul.” Elder Wirthlin added simply: “He was right. As Elisa was my greatest joy, now her passing is my greatest sorrow.”

Then came the heart of this talk:

Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays.

But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come.

No matter our desperation, no matter our grief, Sunday will come. In this life or the next, Sunday will come.

These words mean all the more to me because Elder Wirthlin said them when the grief of losing his beloved Elisa was still gnawing at his soul. When he was still in his greatest sorrow. In other words, it was still Friday for Elder Wirthlin when he got up in front of the Church and testified of the glorious Sunday that, for him, had not yet arrived.

The Resurrection transformed the lives of those who witnessed it. Should it not transform ours?…

Because of our beloved Redeemer, we can lift up our voices, even in the midst of our darkest Fridays, and proclaim, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

When President Hinckley spoke of the terrible loneliness that comes to those who lose the ones they love, he also promised that in the quiet of the night a still, unheard voice whispers peace to our soul: “All is well.”

I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder when it comes to certain secular theories that seek to explain why the religious instinct is so universal in humanity if, as a secular theory must affirm, there is no God to explain it all. One common theory is that religion is basically a form of death denial. That, in the mists of time when our evolutionary ancestors were first kindling the flickering candle flame of early intellect, they came to realize that, as mortals, they must die. And so, like children afraid of the dark, they created religion as a series of comforting fables to distract from the fear of the unknown. 

The main reason that I don’t like his religion-as-death-denial theory is that it suggests that religion is a kind of, well, opiate. A way to numb the pain. As though, for the religious, we somehow don’t feel it when we lose a loved one. As though death hurts us less. And I simply don’t believe that’s the case. And I challenge anyone to hear the Elder Wirthlin’s simple, raw expression of grief and think that he feels less keenly the separation from his dear Elisa. 

The pain of separation is just as keen for anyone, regardless of their religious belief, because the part that hurts is not being with the one you love. That pain is an elemental pain, completely uninterested in your beliefs. It simply is. Friday feels the same to everyone.

So what’s the point of religion? It offers hope. Hope is not an antidote to pain. If the pain went away, why would you need hope? To have hope for something is, by definition, not to have that thing yet. This hope is not a get-out-of-pain-free card for the religious. It’s something else entirely.

I have always admired atheist existentialists, especially Albert Camus. There is something incredibly romantically tragic about someone who believes there is no intrinsic meaning to life nonetheless insisting on behaving decently.

But existentialism is ultimately hollow. As poetic as it may sound to shout into the wind, the looming heat death of the universe erases the shout, the shouter, and the storm, too.

An ideal approach to life is one that somehow merges the best of existentialism–doing what’s right when there’s no benefit to it–with a hope that, after all, there is meaning in the end. That’s what religion offers, especially the Restored Gospel.

We are down here in a veil of tears where the sun shines on the just and the unjust. There good guys do not always win, and even a prophet, seer, and revelator staggers under the weight of loss and shrinks at the prospect of finishing a long life of service alone. You want to be an existential hero? A fallen world is your chance.

But sooner or later the power of darkness and pain overwhelm us all. We can as soon finish a single lifetime without giving in as we could defeat the ocean in physical combat. And when we falter and fail, there is this simple Good News: God saves. 

The Good News is not that we are exempt. It is not that we will not suffer. That we will not lose what we care about most dearly. The Good News is not that we will not die. The King of Terrors awaits us all. 

The Good News is that after we lose, we will get back what was lost. That after we die, we will live again. 

The Good News is not that we can avoid Friday. It is the simple hope that Friday cannot last forever. The hope of those in still in darkness for the gentle light of an Easter dawn.