Editor's note: This article was originally published in January 2021.
When Brother Bradley R. Wilcox was a presenter at a large youth event in Portland, Oregon, he received a question from a teen that he will never forget:
“If this is called the plan of happiness, then why am I so miserable? #FalseAdvertising.”
In a Church News article, Brother Wilcox, Second Counselor in the Young Men General Presidency, acknowledges that we do indeed have many challenges, including physical, mental, and emotional health issues, low self-esteem, pressure, and stress. But while we may wonder if the plan of happiness is false advertising, he testified that it is not.
“Mortality was Plan A, not Plan B,” he wrote. “The Atonement of Christ was not a last-ditch attempt to salvage the wreckage Adam and Eve had made of the world. It was planned from the beginning (see Mosiah 4:6). Mortality was meant to be a school—complete with hard teachers and difficult tests. God made suffering a required course in life, but growth had to be an elective.”
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Brother Wilcox also encouraged readers to help others choose Christ rather than thinking #FalseAdvertising, giving a reminder of what the plan of happiness is really about.
“God’s plan is called the plan of happiness not because everything is perfectly happy but because it is how we are happily perfected,” he said.
Read the full article on Church News.
