Why adversities are good

A question I often get as a Christian is in the nature of “How can you believe in a good God when there is so much misery in the world?”. I admit, that is not an easy question. It took me until I got to know the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and learned about the plan of salvation learned, that I understood more of it.

The Plan of Salvation, in short, is why we are here on earth. We are all spirit children of our Heavenly Parents and we lived with them until it was time to gain experience with free choice between good and evil. So there had to be a world with good and evil, a world with opposites. If it were still the Garden of Eden here, there wouldn't be much to learn. As Latter-day Saints, we therefore accept that we encounter pain, setbacks, and misery in life not because God sends them our way (butnor takes them away), to learn from and grow.

A boring comfort zone

When I explain that principle from my faith, I hear many pffffs and see eyes rolling. “That's easily explained,” someone will surely say. Yes, does it have to be difficult to believe? Aren't easy things quicker to understand and believe? However, when I speak to a room full of entrepreneurs and have to explain how an entrepreneur achieves success, I always receive applause and appreciation for my principle “a setback only becomes a failure if you learn nothing from it”. Usually, I also drag in the cliché “there is no growth in your comfort zone and no comfort in your growth zone” and everyone nods enthusiastically and understands that true success comes from perseverance and tackling crisis after crisis.

It's strange that the same principle is laughed away in one context, and yet people pay an admission ticket to hear the same thing in another context. However, whether I stand as a Christian before a church community or as an entrepreneur before a business audience, I am who I am and I carry this principle through everything. I admit that when I tell young people in the church that what we teach them there also leads to success in real life, I also encounter, strange but true, disbelief and have to give an extra word of explanation.

Those who know me know that I love science and secretly love to encourage reflection on the idea that science and faith reinforce each other. May I do that again now? This time I'm using the book The Dopamine Factor by author Anna Lembke. Anna Lembke is a psychiatrist and leads a program at Stanford that researches the neuroscience of addiction. Her expertise includes the opioid epidemic in the US and she was featured in the Netflix documentary The social dilemma.

Why our brain wants to be addicted

The subtitle of the book says a lot: “Why our brain wants to be addicted?”. Lembke's explanation is based not only on psychology but also on neurological facts. In our brain, the pleasure and pain centers are located right next to each other, and that is no coincidence. When we suffer from hunger, we are motivated to find food. Tasty food then provides a dopamine shot and lights up our pleasure center. This creates motivation to repeatedly tackle hardship and turn it into a pleasant experience.

I don't want to reveal much more from the book, but according to her, it explains why so many people become addicted to all kinds of stimuli in this world of abundance. And by that, she doesn't just mean drugs. It could just as easily be pornography or social media. It is simultaneously an explanation for why, despite the abundance in the West, we are massively unhappy, constantly campaigning for better mental well-being and taking antidepressants. We no longer allow unhappiness into our lives, is her conclusion in short.

The usefulness of suffering

Lembke approaches it differently from what I am stating here, although between the lines she establishes the question as a fact: why can we no longer deal with unhappiness? All forms of discomfort must be eliminated. Therapists, pills, drugs, entire industries (for example, include the makers of those delicious chips) thrive on the fact that every discomfort must be eliminated. Lembke states that it is necessary to work on that bond to get our brain back into balance.

I add to that that it is precisely why we need to understand that misery has a meaning. Lembke proves, in my opinion, that if God had created a world where nothing would go wrong, we would not actually be happy. The know-it-all unbeliever may say at this point “then God should have designed our brain better”. Then I can answer “ah, I have already converted you because you now believe in creationism and reject Darwin”. Well, one implies the other, doesn't it?

If I follow Lembke's explanation, then I agree with her, and it is indeed no coincidence that there are many depressions and suicides in Western countries, despite so much abundance. In my opinion, there is a correlation between that unhappiness and secularization. I don't go as far as to say that secularization is to blame for the wave of depression or that more faith in Christ would be salvation for everyone. I do go so far as to say that following the gospel of Christ can contribute enormously.

It's not that depression disappears after your baptism or that the Last Supper is a substitute for your anxiolytic. Anyone who infers that from my argument should go back to the beginning. Conversion in Christ is not an insurance against misfortune. It does give it a place, and it is striking that those who can give adversity in their lives a place can deal with it better. So where Lembke says that we should give misery a place in life again, I say that faith in the Plan of Salvation can make that easier. For more information, you should visit us one Sunday atvisit one of our churches: free admission for everyone.