The following is an excerpt from the book, Falling to Heaven: The Surprising Path to Happiness, by James L. Ferrell. We will share one chapter or excerpt, with permission, each week.
To see the previous chapter, click here.
If we are feeling down and lacking hope, it turns out that we can’t find the happiness or hope we are seeking by trying to increase either our happiness or our hope. Korihor would argue this point, of course, insisting that if we are feeling down, happiness is derived by lifting up our heads, glorying in our strengths, and asserting our rights and our privileges.
But the scriptures we have been considering suggest that it doesn’t work that way. We don’t ascend upward by trying to lift ourselves upward, a lesson as old as the Tower of Babel. The lifting of our souls is achieved indirectly, even paradoxically, as the result of a different quest-a quest not to find ourselves, but to find Him. Hope, and the happiness that comes with it, Mormon taught, is the natural and inevitable result of an increased faith in Christ. This understanding was what Alma began to offer to the humbled Zoramites.
“Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things,” Alma wrote. “Therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” If all you can do is arouse yourself simply to have a desire to believe, he taught, then that will be enough to allow you to experiment upon the word of God and grow that humble openness first into faith and then into knowledge. He famously likened this process to the planting and nourishing of a seed, which, if nourished correctly, “shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life.”
The thirty-second chapter of the book of Alma is often cited as the definitive explanation of faith.
From the context, however, there is nothing to indicate that Alma was interested in or intending to speak about faith in general. He wasn’t at all interested in developing faith in whether the sun will rise tomorrow, for example, or in helping the poor in spirit to develop faith in themselves.
In fact, the latter message would have been antithetical to what he was trying to help them understand. After all, the prospect of a rising sun does not cause a swelling within one’s breast, nor does it enlarge one’s soul, which is what Alma promised would follow the planting and nourishing of this seed. And the only thing that would swell or enlarge if one’s faith in oneself increased would be one’s head. No, Alma was not making a general statement about the principle of faith. He was speaking about a single and specific kind of faith-faith in the only unseen thing that can change one’s soul the way he described.
As we discussed in the previous chapter, the problem facing the Zoramite poor was that they needed to fall in humility before Christ. But why would they feel the need or desire to do that if they didn’t believe in him? These were people, after all, who were despairing that they were not being allowed to enter the synagogue, ascend the Rameumptom, and offer the same anti-Christ prayer as their brethren. Like Korihor, they regarded belief in Christ as foolishness that only shackled and bound down those who were unfortunate enough to possess it.
Alma was inviting them to test that assumption. Alma’s experiment upon the word was actually an experiment upon the Word-that is, an experiment as to the truth of the divinity of Christ. Plant that seed in your heart, he was telling them. Even if you can only desire to believe-that is, be open to believing-that will be enough to try the experiment and to prove Christ. Humble yourselves enough to plant that desire in your downtrodden hearts, and then see what happens. That is what Alma was inviting.
Unfortunately, the first time through, Alma’s audience missed the point of his message. They had no conception yet that Alma was speaking of Christ. They were listening, and they were open. But they hadn’t yet understood the point he was making. In response, Alma immediately began to correct this misunderstanding. He began quoting the writings of prophets who had testified of Jesus. He cited the prophet Zenos, who in his afflictions prayed heavenward, saying:
Thou hast also heard me when I have been cast out and have been despised by mine enemies; yea, thou didst hear my cries. . . . And thou didst hear me because of mine afflictions and my sincerity; and it is because of thy Son that thou hast been thus merciful unto me, therefore I will cry unto thee in all mine afflictions, for in thee is my joy; for thou hast turned thy judgments away from me, because of thy Son.
Can you hear how Alma selected this teaching about Christ precisely because it spoke so directly to the poor Zoramites? They, like Zenos, were troubled because they had been cast out and were despised. Unlike Zenos, however, they hadn’t yet discovered the only antidote for the resulting burden they were carrying. They wanted the blessing of judgments being turned away from them, and Zenos’s words pointed them to the answer: It is only through Christ that judgment is turned away, including the burden of self-judgment.
Underscoring this point, Alma quoted from the writings of the prophet Zenock: “Thou art angry, O Lord, with this people, because they will not understand thy mercies which thou hast bestowed upon them because of thy Son.
” It was at this point in his teaching that Alma explicitly revealed the identity of the seed he was calling upon them to plant in their hearts:
Cast about your eyes and begin to believe in the Son of God, that he will come to redeem his people, and that he shall suffer and die to atone for their sins. . . . And now, my brethren, I desire that ye shall plant this word in your hearts, and as it beginneth to swell even so nourish it by your faith. And behold, it will become a tree, springing up in you unto everlasting life. And then may God grant unto you that your burdens may be light, through the joy of his Son.
Plant this word in your hearts-the word of the divinity of Christ-then will your burdens be made light through his joy. This was Alma’s message both to us and to those who were down. Would you not now humble yourselves and begin to test whether or not this Christ can lift you? Alma is asking. There is nothing so down that He can’t lift it. As the tree of his divine reassurance and testimony grows within us, the promise is that it will lift our burdens and soothe our souls.
So if I am feeling down, the answer is to seek for an increase in my faith in the One who “descended below all things.” If I feel that I have been treated unfairly, the answer is the same-increased faith in him who suffered all of the unjust mistreatments of man. If my whole world is crumbling around me, only faith in the One who can resurrect and restore all things will bring peace to my troubled soul. If we are down but do not yet feel lifted with hope, then we perhaps are not yet down enough before Christ. Perhaps we are down because we feel bad that we are not as up as other people seem to be. Or maybe we are depressed, as a friend recently told me she was feeling, because we feel that the enormity and weight of our own imperfection is too much for even the Lord to lift.
To the degree we are struggling to find ourselves, to find hope, and to find happiness, we would do well to experiment upon the Word, as Alma taught, and see whether the discouragement or despair we are feeling is not displaced by the swell of the Lord’s love. How can we do this? The way Alma taught us-by learning all the words about Christ that we can learn, and by planting and nourishing each of them, individually, within our hearts. All that is good and true will produce the growth, and light, and life that Alma promised. As Lehi and Nephi taught, it is the fruit of that tree that has the capacity “to make one happy” and to fill our souls with “exceedingly great joy.”
Years ago, when I was a young man, I finally worked up the courage to go and speak to my bishop about something I had done. I didn’t know whether it was something I needed to speak with him about, but as I read the scriptures and listened to talks and lessons at church, it weighed on me more and more. The longer I went without speaking to him, the heavier I felt. And the heavier I felt, the worse I thought of myself.
How can you reveal to one you love and admire something that might hurt that person’s opinion of you? That wedge of self-worry-the desire to impress that is the offspring of the doctrine of up-ness-kept me mired in despair. Like the self-pitying poor of the Zoramites, having accepted the doctrine of up-ness, I had set myself up to wallow in the self-pity of down-ness.
I don’t remember how it happened, but somehow, some way, that younger version of me eventually went to see his bishop. And that good, loving man, Bishop Nolan Brown, heard what I had to say and loved me none the less for it. That meeting was my first real lesson in the lifting, redeeming power of the Lord Jesus Christ. To this day, more than thirty years later, I still remember my walk home as the lightest, most freedom-filled moment of my life. The Lord had lifted my burden to such an extent that it literally felt like I was floating. His yoke was easy and his burden was light, just as he had promised. Even with all the wonderful things I have been blessed to experience since, I don’t know if I have ever felt closer to heaven than I did that afternoon as a fifteen-year-old boy.
When I was burdened by my unconfessed worry, I certainly would not have described myself as happy. Given the choice, I probably would have wished that I could have avoided those down moments altogether. But had I been relieved of feeling them, I never would have discovered the unspeakable joy and happiness made possible through Christ. If others had tried to relieve me of the guilt I was feeling as a teenager, they might have thought they were doing me a favor. But the relief would have been to my condemnation. It would have kept me from falling down before the Lord and enjoying the fruit that is “desirable above all other fruit”-the fruit that fills with joy and makes one happy.
Truly, what a blessing it is to be lowly in heart-for, just as Alma promised, when we seek to repent, we shall find mercy. But what of the times that I am not compelled to be humble? What about the parts of me that continue to “look up with boldness”? If these blessings begin with a fall before Christ, what will awaken me from my slumber of pride and help me to see what I am not yet seeing?
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My hope in this case lies in a sentence-not as in a string of words, but as in a declaration of guilt. In mortality, freedom depends on a finding of innocence. Guilt seems a negative and bad thing, something to be avoided at all costs. But this is exactly wrong with respect to eternity. Regarding spiritual matters, our prospects actually depend on the degree to which we are willing to recognize and admit our guilt! This means that anything that awakens us to our guilt is actually a most cherished and divine gift.