Deep Fears, Deeper Love

Most everyone has something they're deeply disturbed or frightened by. For some people, it's snakes. For some, it's sharks. For some, it's heights. For some, it's public speaking. And for some, it's spiders. These fears can have a very powerful affect on us. The other night, I was just falling asleep when I felt a tickling sensation on my cheek. Turns out a spider was crawling on my face. I didn't sleep very well that night.

Sometimes these aversions cause us to do irrational things. There are stories of people who burn to death in buildings because they're too scared to climb down the fire escapes. Our fears can cause very visceral, almost uncontrollable reactions. I've been thinking lately, and the thought I had was, "what if the thing that Christ most feared was the atonement?" Now, I don't know what went through Christ's head, and I can't say whether or not He feared His suffering. I do know that He was perfect in all aspects of His life: in virtue, in bravery, and in the "perfect love [that] casteth out all fear" (Moro 8:16).

However, if it can be said that Christ ever feared anything in His life, it must certainly be the atonement. We do know that immediately preceeding His suffering in Gethsemane, Christ became "exceeding sorrowful unto death" (Mark 13:34), and we know that He twice prayed, asking "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Matt 26:39). Speaking of the atonement in revelation to Joseph Smith nearly 2000 years later, Christ's descriptions still ring with poignancy and emotion: "Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink" (D&C 19:18).

If Christ feared the atonement, then it certainly was not an irrational fear, like most of our fears, for the atonement was the suffering that contains all other sufferings. In the atonement, Christ experienced the sum total of fear, pain, guilt, affliction, and sickness experienced by the entire family of Adam (Alma 7:11). In fact, Christ suffered more than this: sums of finite amounts remain forever finite, and Christ's atonement was "infinite" (2 Ne 9:7).

However, as in all endeavors in His life, Christ approached the atonement with perfect propriety. He met the challenge bravely and nobly. The Old English poem, "The Dream of the Rood," portrays Christ as a "young hero . . . strong and stout-minded" (39). In this poem, Christ is not led passive and helpless to his atoning sacrifice. Rather, he strides to the cross himself and embraces it: "He mounted high gallows, // bold before many, when he would loose mankind. // I [the cross] shook when that Man clasped me" (40-2). The scriptures agree in ascribing Christ honor and bravery. When Christ prayed that the cup might be removed from Him, He always included the caveat, "not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Matt 26:39). Although Christ wished to be saved "from this hour," he realized "for this cause came I unto this hour" (John 12:27). The atonement was Christ's primary mission on earth, and it was a mission that He undertook willingly in the pre-mortal life, saying, "Here I am, send me" (Abr 3:27).

Christ remained similarly willing during His anticipation of and carrying out of the atonement. Christ was a voluntary participant in his sufferings on the cross; He had power over life and stayed until the atonement was complete and He chose to depart (John 10:18, 19:30). I presume He had a similar control to experience or end His spiritual sufferings in Gethsemane. We know, of course, the end of the story--Christ was true, even during His darkest hour, and all creation that knows this fact rejoices. As He relates the story in revelation to Joseph Smith, Christ Himself rejoices (while giving characteristic glory to the Father): "Glory be to the Father, and I partook [of the bitter cup] and finished" (D&C 19:19).

It is perhaps useless to debate whether or not Christ faced His darkest fear in the atonement. Perhaps more worthy of discussion is the fact that He faced our darkest fears. He faced down my worst nightmare and your worst nightmare (with all of the teror that we associate with them) and He triumphed over them. The scriptures say that Christ bore our infirmities so that He could know how to help us through those same infirmities (Alma 7:11). This suggests to me that he bore them in the way that we bear them, and that during the atonement, he experienced them as we experience them. In some inexplicable way, Christ really knows the depths of our fear, guilt, pain or exhaustion, because He has gone through it. He has, in some way, experienced that which is darkest and most trying in our lives, and has done it while remaining perfectly, purely white. And because He has done it, He has given us the power to do the same.

Christ defeated death, and in so doing created a way for us to live again. He defeated sin, and made it possible for us to be sanctified and forgiven. Perhaps it can be said that in a similar way, He has conquered over fear, sadness, and pain by taking them upon Himself, and that because of His victory over them, we can be healed from them in the due time of the Lord. Perhaps this is what John means in one of the most beautiful passages of the Book of Revelation: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (Rev 21:4).