God Does Suffer Much

Tonight, in our Family Scripture Study, we read 1 Nephi 13, including the following passages:

. . . thou seest that the Lord God will not suffer that the Gentiles will utterly destroy the mixture of thy seed, which are among thy brethren. 

Neither will he suffer that the Gentiles shall destroy the seed of thy brethren.

Neither will the Lord God suffer that the Gentiles shall forever remain in that awful state of blindness, which thou beholdest they are in, . . .
1 Nephi 13: 30-32

When I heard this, I remarked that it sounds like the Lord God isn't going to suffer much! Then, in my heart, the Holy Ghost told me "But He does."

God does suffer much, both in the sense that He allows a lot of things to happen and in the sense that it hurts Him to allow it. He doesn't want to see His children sin, and He doesn't want to see His children suffer, for their sins, for others', or for any other reason. Yet, He knows that it's essential for us to have our agency, even when we use it in ways that hurt ourselves and others, and He knows that, while the natural results of the laws of physics can be painful, they must be obeyed. He allows pain and suffering to exist, both ours and His, because this is the best way to bring about the greatest possible good.

So, yes, God does suffer much, both because He loves us enough to let us have our agency and because He loves us enough that it hurts Him to see us misuse it. God may not allow certain world-shaping events to happen, but He generally lets us do whatever we want, even if it hurts people. Let's not do that. Let's try to use the agency He suffers us to have to try to make sure He doesn't have to suffer any more than He already does.