Remembering Francine Bennion, who made sense of suffering

You may not know her name. But she gave “one of the greatest talks given in the history of the modern church.”

Francine R. Bennion passed away this past Sunday. I met her a few times—she is my wife’s great-aunt—but I didn’t realize in those brief conversations what a surpassing and exceptional woman she was.

Francine taught English, music, and religion for 40 years, first at Ohio State University and then at BYU. She wrote curriculum for the Young Women program and for the Relief Society, then served on the Young Women general board in the 1970s and the Relief Society general board in the 1980s. She was educated, accomplished, and served mightily in the Church.

But her enduring legacy—or at least what people may remember her name for, for decades to come—is a talk she gave at a BYU Women’s Conference in 1986, titled “A Latter-day Saint Theology of Suffering.”

Terryl Givens called this “one of the greatest talks given in the history of the modern church.” A quick search on Twitter/X turns up equally effusive praise, from others in the Church:

I think this remains my favorite LDS talk ever given. It's definitely top 3, and most days it's #1.

This may be the greatest talk you've never heard of; give it a listen. It will change you.

Blown away by Francine Bennion's discourse, "A Latter-day Saint Theology of Suffering" from At the Pulpit. Such a well-constructed, provoking piece on suffering and how we make sense of it.

Francine Bennion is one of the noble and great ones.

The talk is, without question, a jewel. Instead of shying away from the toughest questions—“why there is pain, why God doesn’t prevent it, why the innocent suffer”—Sister Bennion looks head-on at “the great cracks in a universe that should make sense but doesn’t.” While most of us settle for the ease of simple aphorisms or analogies to hurriedly move us past the hard questions, Sister Bennion engages with them on a theological level we rarely hear over pulpits in the Church.

This post is a tribute to Sister Bennion. If you’ve never read this inspired talk she gave, take this as a nudge to read it, here.

I’ve included some excerpts below. While there’s little—if anything—I could say to add to her words, I’ve added a few comments to draw attention to the parts that are most meaningful to me right now.

One function of any religion is to explain such a world as this, to provide a theology that makes sense of love and joy and miracles but also of suffering and struggle and lack of miracles. Good theology makes sense of what is possible but also of what is presently real and probable. In this twentieth century, it is not enough that a theology of suffering explain my experience; it must also explain the child lying in a gutter in India, the woman crawling across the Ethiopian desert to find a weed to eat, and the fighting and misery of many humans because of pride, greed, or fear in a powerful few. Satisfying theology must explain the child sexually abused or scarred for life, or the astronaut who is blown up and leaves a family motherless or fatherless. Good theology of suffering explains all human suffering, not just the suffering of those who feel they know God’s word and are his chosen people.

This speaks deeply to me, and is something we don’t talk about much. To paraphrase and simplify, religion must not only explain miracles but also the times that miracles don’t happen. Sometimes the miracle doesn’t come—we aren’t delivered from suffering—no matter how hard we pray for it and no matter how righteous we’ve been. That’s part of our human experience. No matter how firmly you believe in a God of Miracles, you must also believe in a God of Withheld Miracles.

[In the pre-mortal council] We wanted life, however high the cost. We suffer because we were willing to pay the cost of being and of being here with others in their ignorance and inexperience as well as our own. We suffer because we are willing to pay the costs of living with laws of nature, which operate quite consistently whether or not we understand them or can manage them. We suffer because, like Christ in the desert, we apparently did not say we would come only if God would change all our stones to bread in time of hunger. We were willing to know hunger. Like Christ in the desert, we did not ask God to let us try falling or being bruised only on condition that he catch us before we touch ground and save us from real hurt. We were willing to know hurt. Like Christ, we did not agree to come only if God would make everyone bow to us and respect us, or admire us and understand us. Like Christ, we came to be ourselves, addressing and creating reality. We are finding out who we are and who we can become regardless of immediate environment or circumstances.

This perspective rejects the premise of asking why God would allow bad things to happen to good people. Latter-day Saint theology somewhat uniquely puts us in the position of having chosen this for ourselves. We chose to follow the Savior’s plan knowing that some of us would be raised in affluent neighborhoods in Utah and some would be born into abject poverty—and not knowing at the time which we would be. It’s easy to champion this doctrine when we’re the ones born into privilege—would it mean the same to us if we’d been born into immense physical suffering?

Regardless, this is what we wanted. We wanted a world with hunger, pain, and suffering, because we knew the result would be worth the cost.

Nobody is manipulating every human decision that would affect every human experience. If God did, we would have the kind of existence now that Lucifer offered permanently. For God, the agency and real existence of other souls is of prime value, value that exceeds any reason for his arbitrarily controlling all they experience and become. God does not make himself the only reality, or the only source of reality.

It’s not that God can’t intervene in all our decisions, it’s that He doesn’t. This is all but impossible to remember when the suffering is significant, and we feel like we are alone, like our Heavenly Parents don’t see our pain. Sometimes the other plan seems appealing, where all of our decisions would be controlled, and lead to a predictable outcome. When we made our choice to support this plan, I have to imagine we did it with our eyes wide open, knowing how we would feel.

I know the love of God. It is one of the very few things I do know with absolute certainty. I think suffering on this earth is an indication of God’s trust, God’s love. I think it is an indication that God does not want us to be simply obedient children playing forever under his hand, but wants us able to become more like himself. In order to do that we have to know reality. We have to be real ourselves and not dependent on externals. If we are to be like God, we cannot live forever in fear that we may meet something that will scare us or that will hurt us.

Sister Bennion was 88 years old when she passed away on Sunday. I don’t know if she suffered in the final months or days of her life, as many do. Having the understanding that she did of suffering, and why it is part of our mortal experience, wouldn’t have made it easier to endure; understanding the theology, in her words, “does not prevent all hurt and anguish.”

To quote her one more time:

What sound theology can do is to help those who believe it to make some sense of the suffering, of themselves, and of God, such sense that they can proceed with a measure of hope, courage, compassion, and understanding of themselves even in anguish.

I can only assume that when Sister Bennion passed, she did so with that hope, and that courage.