I’ve been reading a fair amount of Church history lately. As always, I am amazed with the challenges that early members of the Church had to overcome. Houses and farms were burned, they were physically beaten, they were driven from their homes in Illinois, Missouri and Ohio. 1842 and 1843 were an especially spiritually challenging time, in my opinion: how do you remain a faithful Church member when your leadership admits to secretly — and then openly — promoting polygamy?
So, I had always assumed that our time was much easier than theirs, that it is easier to be faithful now than then. But, and here is the question for our dear readers: is it? Are our challenges, though different, just as difficult as the challenges in the pioneer days?
Again, at first glance, the answer has to be: no way. I can openly tell people I am a member of the Church, and nobody is going to threaten to kill me or beat me up or burn down my home. We are in a great time in the history of the world were people are very tolerant and respectful of religious differences. Even people who virulently disagree with me are not likely to organize mobs against me.
In addition, I often think we underestimate the challenge of being a member of the Church during the Nauvoo times. Many of the early members were from very conservative Puritan stock. Many still were against dancing and singing and the like (even though the Prophet was not). So imagine their horror as rumors spread about secret acts of polygamy going on. Imagine the scandal when John C. Bennett, that great apostate and Assistant President to Joseph Smith, seduced women saying Joseph had given him the right to practice “spiritual wifery.” How different exactly was that in the minds of many people from the news that Joseph Smith had several extra wives and that several other Church leaders were now polygamists?
The point here is that it was a tremendous test of faith. I would imagine every single thoughtful Latter-day Saint suffered tremendously as they wrestled with the test of whether or not to continue to follow the prophet. And then, very quickly, Joseph Smith, the great leader, was dead, and a new leader was telling the people they needed to leave and head to an unknown desert wilderness. Wouldn’t it have been very easy to follow the path of Sidney Rigdon and simply abandon the Church (at least temporarily), telling yourself that you still loved God and Jesus Christ but that God couldn’t really want you to suffer and follow a polygamist leader?
It seems like a horrible test, and I’m not sure if I would have been able to overcome it. But the interesting thing is that it is not my test. My test is to be born in the second half of the 20th century. Is my test any less challenging?
Now we face a world filled with different types of spiritual challenges. How do you raise a family and keep in together when pornography and violence are everywhere? How do you honor the Sabbath day when nobody else does? How do you keep yourself morally clean when there are so many temptations that didn’t exist 160 years ago?
Isaiah and Nephi gave us a warning. In 2 Nephi 15:20 we read a message especially apt for our times: “Wo unto them that call evil good, and good evil, that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.” We are in the times when evil is often re-cast as good, and so many people are so easily fooled.
So, which times were more difficult and challenging, the pioneer days or now? What believest ye, M* readers?