Essay

Opposition Inside the Plan of Happiness

Why Is Life So Hard If This Is the Plan of Happiness?

Maybe you have wondered, If I am trying to follow God, why is life still this hard? Why would a loving Heavenly Father send us into a world with heartbreak, illness, loneliness, disappointment, family problems, death, and things we cannot fix? And if this really is the “plan of happiness,” why are there seasons when I do not feel happy at all?

Those are important questions. Let’s look at what the plan of happiness actually means. Before you were born, you lived with Heavenly Parents and accepted a plan that would allow you to receive a body, exercise agency, gain experience, make covenants, and become more like Them through Jesus Christ. That plan was never a promise that every part of mortal life would feel happy. It was a plan that could eventually lead you to lasting joy.

That distinction matters. Some of the most important things you came here to learn—how to choose well, love deeply, keep covenants, repent, forgive, endure, serve, and trust God—can only be learned in a world where choices and difficulties are real. Jesus Christ did not come simply to make mortality easier. He came to help you become someone who can live with God.

Why Does God’s Plan Include Opposition?

Lehi explained this doctrine to his son Jacob, who already knew something about suffering. Jacob had grown up watching conflict in his family and had experienced hardship because of the choices of his older brothers. Lehi taught him that there must be “opposition in all things.”

Lehi’s point was not that everything painful is good. He was explaining that meaningful agency requires real alternatives. Without opposition, there could be no real choosing between good and evil, no growth in righteousness, and no opportunity to become through the choices we make.

Later in the same chapter, Lehi taught that people exist so that they “might have joy.” Opposition is part of the journey, but it is not the destination. God is preparing His children for joy, eternal life, and a fulness of life with Him.

The Family: A Proclamation to the World helps place that in a larger picture. It teaches that before mortality we knew and worshipped God as our Eternal Father and accepted His plan. We came here to receive bodies and gain earthly experience as part of our progress toward eternal life.

Mortality is therefore more than something to get through. You are learning what to do with freedom, relationships, responsibility, disappointment, weakness, love, loss, and opportunity. Most importantly, you are learning to come to Jesus Christ and let Him help you become more than you could become on your own.

Jesus Knew His Disciples Would Have Hard Lives

Near the end of His mortal ministry, Jesus sat with His Apostles knowing that within hours He would be arrested and crucified. His disciples were about to face fear, grief, persecution, uncertainty, and eventually the deaths of people they loved.

In that setting, He told them, “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

Jesus did not tell faithful disciples that hardship meant they had taken a wrong turn. He told them ahead of time that tribulation would come. But He also gave them a reason not to be overcome by it: He had already overcome the world.

That can change the way you look at your own difficulties. You do not have to know now how you will handle every hard thing that may come. You need to keep learning how to stay close to Christ. He can give you strength, wisdom, forgiveness, and direction as you need them.

Arthur Brooks on What Hard Things Can Teach Us

Arthur Brooks has spent years studying happiness, and he also speaks personally about the role difficulty can play in a meaningful life. In this Instagram reel, he talks about the way going through hard things can help people discover strength and resilience they may not have known they had.

Watch Arthur Brooks’s reel:

His point is not that suffering is automatically good or that we should go looking for it. Some things should be prevented, treated, repaired, or escaped. But a life with no difficulty would also leave little room to discover courage, patience, endurance, or the confidence that comes from learning that you can face something hard and keep going.

Elder Holland: Following Christ Will Ask Something of Us

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught a similar principle while speaking about missionary work. Missionaries sometimes wonder why doing something the Lord has asked them to do can still involve rejection, exhaustion, discouragement, and disappointment.

Elder Holland asked, “How could we believe it would be easy for us when it was never, ever easy for Him?”

Watch Elder Holland teach this principle:

Elder Holland was not saying that God sends every painful circumstance or that disciples should simply accept anything difficult that happens to them. He was teaching that following Jesus Christ will sometimes require sacrifice. Christ Himself walked through suffering, rejection, loneliness, and tremendous opposition while perfectly doing His Father’s will.

The Lord taught something similar to Joseph Smith during the terrible months surrounding Liberty Jail. He told Joseph that his experiences could “give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.” The injustice Joseph experienced was not good. But even that experience was not beyond God’s ability to use for Joseph’s growth and future service.

You may be developing strengths now that you will need later. Courage, patience, discernment, compassion, faith, and the ability to help someone else often grow slowly through experiences we would not have chosen.

When Hardship Starts Changing the Way You See God

Difficulty can become especially discouraging when we begin treating it as evidence of what God must think about us. You may start wondering, If He really loved me, wouldn’t He have fixed this by now? An unanswered prayer can gradually begin to feel like proof that He is not listening. Someone else’s easier circumstances can make you wonder whether God is more pleased with them.

You can understand why those conclusions sometimes feel convincing. Pain makes us want an explanation, and when an answer does not come quickly, we naturally try to make sense of what is happening.

But hardship is not a reliable measure of God’s love.

Scripture describes Satan as “the father of lies” and “the accuser.” One way he can use suffering is by encouraging you to draw conclusions God has never asked you to draw: You have been forgotten. Your prayers do not matter. Other people have a better life because God loves them more. Things will always be this way.

Jesus had already told His faithful Apostles that tribulation would come. Hardship therefore cannot automatically mean spiritual abandonment. Sometimes it simply means you are living in mortality.

What Research Helps Us See

Research offers an interesting glimpse of something similar. In a multiyear study of 2,398 U.S. adults, Mark Seery, E. Alison Holman, and Roxane Cohen Silver looked at people’s histories of adversity and their later well-being.

They found that people who had experienced some adversity tended, on average, to show better later well-being than people who reported either no adversity or very high levels of adversity. They also tended to be less affected when new difficulties came.

That does not mean suffering automatically makes people stronger, and it certainly does not mean more suffering is better. It suggests something more ordinary and hopeful: people can develop resilience and confidence as they learn to handle difficulty.

The gospel adds something that kind of research cannot measure. You are not growing through difficulty by willpower alone. Jesus Christ can strengthen you, teach you, and help your experiences become part of who you are becoming.

Some Hard Things Should Be Changed

There is also an important distinction here. The doctrine of opposition does not mean every painful circumstance should simply be endured.

Some difficulties come through illness or loss. Some come because another person misuses agency. Some come because of our own choices. Sometimes faith means patiently carrying something that cannot yet be changed. Other times faith means doing something about it.

You may need to see a doctor, talk with a counselor, leave an unsafe situation, set a boundary, ask for help, repent, repair a relationship, or talk with your bishop. Seeking help is not a refusal to accept God’s plan. Using your agency wisely is part of the plan.

God knows the difference between what happened to you and what you chose. He also knows what can be changed now and what may need to be entrusted to Him for a time.

A Few Questions Worth Thinking About

• What have I been assuming my current hardship means about God’s love for me?
• Am I measuring whether God is with me mainly by how comfortable my life feels?
• Is this situation asking me to endure faithfully, or is the Lord prompting me to change something, repent, seek help, or take action?
• Looking back over the last few years, what strength or wisdom may already have developed in me?

What Can You Do This Week?

Start by reading 2 Nephi 2 and John 16:33. Pay attention to what Lehi teaches about why opposition matters and what Jesus promises His disciples in the middle of it.

Then pray about the actual difficult thing in your life. Ask Heavenly Father for the relief you sincerely want. You can also ask, What would You have me do next? If an impression comes to make a call, keep an appointment, apologize, repent, set a boundary, ask for help, return to the temple, or simply keep going faithfully, act on it.

Let other people help where that is appropriate. God often answers prayers through parents, friends, bishops, doctors, counselors, teachers, ward members, and people who know how to help with a problem you were never meant to solve by yourself.

The plan of happiness does not mean pain is happiness. It means Heavenly Father knows where mortal life is leading, and He has given you Jesus Christ to help you reach that destination. Through the Savior, you can be forgiven when you make mistakes, strengthened when something is difficult, guided when you are unsure what to do, and eventually healed from things that cannot be made completely right in mortality.

There is still a great deal of life in front of you. You have people to love, relationships to build, gifts to develop, covenants to keep, and good work to do. As you keep choosing Christ through the opposition that comes with mortal life, He can help you grow into someone increasingly capable of the joy, strength, and eternal life Heavenly Father intended for you from the beginning.