Sought for Happiness in Doing Iniquity

In the recent general conference, Elder Clark Gilbert gave us four examples of people “finding their way home.” He summarized these stories with these words, “Feeling we don’t belong, struggling with doubts, or being limited by traditions are just a few of the reasons we don’t immediately answer the call to come home. But even as societal pressures pull people away from their faith, life’s deeper questions do not go away. As President Nelson taught, ‘The truth is that it is much more exhausting to seek happiness where you can never find it!’ President Oaks declared that the journey home starts by reanchoring on the Savior. Only Jesus Christ can fully restore that light and joy into your life. We all struggle. We need patience, service, and love from others.” This quote from President Nelson reminds me of the words of Samuel the Lamanite to the Nephites who would not repent: “But behold, your days of probation are past; ye have procrastinated the day of your salvation until it is everlastingly too late, and your destruction is made sure; yea, for ye have sought all the days of your lives for that which ye could not obtain; and ye have sought for happiness in doing iniquity, which thing is contrary to the nature of that righteousness which is in our great and Eternal Head” (Helaman 13:38). Despite the fact that life may feel exhausting when we seek to do what is right and stay true to our covenants, it is more tiring to seek for happiness in doing iniquity.

            In Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, one of the characters named Darya Alexandrovna took a trip to visit Anna. Anna had left her husband for a man named Vronski and was living with him, having abandoned both her husband and her son. Darya had a difficult home life because her own husband (who was Anna’s brother) was unfaithful to her, and she also bore all the weight of the parental responsibilities. In addition, she had serious financial problems because of her husband’s wreckless spending. As she went in her wagon to see Anna, she contemplated her difficult life: “And all this, what’s it for? What is to come of it all? That I’m wasting my life, never having a moment’s peace, either with child, or nursing a child, forever irritable, peevish, wretched myself and worrying others, repulsive to my husband, while the children are growing up unhappy, badly educated, and penniless…. even if we suppose the greatest good luck, that the children don’t die, and I bring them up somehow. At the very best they’ll simply be decent people. That’s all I can hope for. And to gain simply that—what agonies, what toil!... One’s whole life ruined!” Pondering her challenges, she imagined herself doing what Anna had done: “‘Anna did quite right, and certainly I shall never reproach her for it. She is happy, she makes another person happy, and she’s not broken down as I am, but most likely just as she always was, bright, clever, open to every impression,’ thought Darya Alexandrovna,—and a sly smile curved her lips, for, as she pondered on Anna’s love affair, Darya Alexandrovna constructed on parallel lines an almost identical love affair for herself, with an imaginary composite figure, the ideal man who was in love with her.” But her experience visiting Anna changed her mind. She found herself terribly uncomfortable and empty in her visit to Anna, and as she came to see in its true light the situation of Anna, Darya realized it was not at all what she wanted. Anna eventually confessed to Darya as she explained her longing to have both her son and the man she was with: “I’m simply unhappy. If anyone is unhappy, I am.” Anna could not have her son whom she loved because of the life she chose, and her situation was far less romantic and enviable than Darya had imagined in her mind. Despite Darya’s many problems at home, at the end of her brief visit with Anna, “She had felt for Anna with all her heart while she was speaking to her, but now she could not force herself to think of her. The memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar charm quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any account spend an extra day outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go back next day.” Happiness was there with her children and her family, and not in abandoning her promises or being unfaithful to them. As she drove home, her coachman remarked, “It seemed to me sort of dreary there, Darya Alexandrovna. I don’t know what you thought.” She replied simply, “I thought so too. Well, shall we get home by evening?” Indeed, it is dreary there in a life of sin—the best place for all of us is to come home to our covenants with God and our family.

            At the end of his talk, Elder Gilbert quoted these words of one of our new hymns: 

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling—

Calling for you and for me.

Patiently Jesus is waiting and watching—

Watching for you and for me! 

Come home! Come home! Ye who are weary, come home!

Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling—

Calling, O sinner, come home!       

Peace and rest are found in coming home to Him, staying true to our covenants with Him. The grass might look greener on the other side as Darya Alexandrovna thought for a brief moment, but these words of Alma to his son Corianton will always be true: “Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness” (Alma 41:10). When life is hard and the world makes it looks like “the proud [are] happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up,” we must hold fast to these words of King Benjamin: “And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. O remember, remember that these things are true; for the Lord God hath spoken it” (Malachi 3:15, Mosiah 2:41).