Paul tells us that life in the Spirit results in becoming part of the family of God, joint heirs with his Son. He says, "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together" (Rom. 8:16-17).
The glory of the divine inheritance provided to the disciple of Jesus Christ is wondrous, but the condition put on that bequest is puzzling: "if so be that we suffer with him." Divine glory requires not only the divine suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross. It also requires our suffering with the Son.
The Doctrine and Covenants, a collection of revelations to Joseph Smith, tells us why the Lord suffered: "I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent" (D&C 19:16). Yet it responds to our demand for an explanation of our suffering, not with a method for escaping suffering or a claim that we do not really suffer, but with this rhetorical question: "The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?" (D&C 122:8). If even God himself, the Son of God, cannot escape suffering, how should we expect to do so?
God weeps at our pain and our death. He also, and probably more so, weeps at our sinfulness.
Enoch's response to God's sorrow—the way in which he becomes like God—is to weep like God.
To be like God is to suffer with him on the behalf of others. It is not to weep only with those who weep because they have been wounded (Mosiah 18:9), though that is essential. It also is to weep, as God does in Enoch's vision, for those who wound. It is to take responsibility for the sinner as well as the sinned-against.
Divine power is the power to feel pain with and for others, the power to feel pain and sorrow. To be in the family of God is to accept suffering as Jesus did. It is to respond to God's suffering as Enoch did. We too must stretch forth our arms. Our hearts too must swell wide as eternity. Our bowels also must yearn until eternity shakes. Like Enoch, like God, we must weep for humankind.
Only if we stretch and swell and yearn and weep as God does can we do what those who suffer need. Our righteousness requires our suffering. The redemption of anyone or everyone, whether temporal or spiritual redemption, requires our weeping.
-James Faulconer, "Suffer With Him", Speaking Silence.
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