How Can the Atonement Lighten Our Burdens

In Matthew 11, Christ says something that seems like a gift with wrapping so tight as to be unopenable. It is both alluring and frustrating.

28 ¶Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

29 Take my yoke upon you … and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

How can this be? His yoke doesn’t seem easy, or light.

And how does this square with other gospel requirements that do not seem light, but heavy. Consider the Savior’s command to take up His cross (Matt 10: 38), or to forsake houses, bretheren, sisters, parents, wife or children or all that we have and are for the Gospel’s sake (Matt 19:29).

Are these burdens light? If they are not, we may be mistaken in how we are living the gospel.

C.S. Lewis put it this way:

"The ordinary idea which we all have before we become Christians is this. We [start with] various desires and interests. We then admit that … 'morality' … interfere[s] with [our] desires … [and we stop some wrong things and start doing other right things].

“But we are hoping all the time that when all the demands have been met, the poor natural self will still have some chance, and some time, to get on with its own life and do what it likes. In fact, we are very like an honest man paying his taxes. He pays them all right, but he does hope that there will be enough left over for him to live on…

"As long as we are thinking that way, one or other of two results is likely to follow. Either we will give up trying to be good, or else we become very unhappy indeed…

"The Christian way is different…. Christ says 'Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You.…" (Lewis, p. 1076-1077).

A human yoke allows a person to carry much more by balancing the burden over the person’s center of gravity. He asks for our burden and he gives us His yoke. We come with arms full of a few disposable things—mostly guilt and grudges. He gives us a yoke of love and vision, and yes, some responsibility. But it sits on the strongest structures of our capacity and is therefore bourn more lightly. And now our arms are free.

As it grows in weight or as our strength wanes, through prayer the Lord can make our burdens seem so light that they are bourn with ease (Mosiah 14:14-15).

But this point is important. Part of the burden is lighter just by accepting the gospel whole-hog (2 Chron. 16:9). When we stop picking and choosing, it is easier. There’s no more deliberating over this or that; there’s no more rationalizing. There is no more keeping up the gospel ledger in our mind, making sure we are doing “enough”.

After all, our will is the only thing we can give Him that is truly ours.

But how does this occur. How do we actually give away our burden and pick up His lighter yoke?

He indicates so plainly “Come unto me”; we come unto Him by repenting of our sins. We cleanse ourselves and His will becomes ours. The two things happen, almost together. They are in the same stroke. Because they are the same thing.

This is the process of sanctification. It is the process by which we are (at once) cleansed of our sins and our very will is subsumed by the Father’s. It is a process that occurs as we actively receive the Holy Ghost (Alma 5:54, Alma 13:11-12; 3 Ne 27:20). By prayer and fasting we grow our faith and deepen our humility which enables us to “yield to the enticings of the Holy Ghost” (Helaman 3:35; Mosiah 3:19). This is how our natures can be changed.

The Savior’s invitation is fundamentally one to give up the heavy weight of sin and guilt and to have our natures changed. We swap burdens; Christ will carry or undo our burdens as we carry His. And it’s not tit-for-tat; it isn’t as if he holds out unless we do as He asks. The fact is that His burden serves to displace our own. It is not possible to give up our burden without picking up His.

Two other insights may be helpful.

The atonement has lessons. That we are not alone. That Christ, our judge, has experienced the pain and trial of mortality. But perhaps most crucially, that God loves us. Let me tell you why I believe this message appears to be so important.

Three experiences from three people. The message of each was, the same: an expression of love.

The first is Harvard Nuerosurgeon Eben Alexander who had severe E. Coli meningitis which shut down the cerebral cortex responsible for perception and emotion. During his coma, he found himself perceiving (somewhat impossibly) a vast jumbled darkness and was rescued by a spinning ball of light which took him to a beautiful world of vivid color guided by a woman who he had never met but later found was his birth sister adopted by another family who had died a few years prior. Her central message in the vision was “you are loved.”

Second is a story from Ty Mansfield who was on the Church’s new websites about gays in the church. He is attracted to men, served a mission, taught at the MTC while at BYU, and left the church temporarily. While he was on this walk-about, he had a powerful spiritual experience which brought him back in. He was enveloped in love. There was no affirmation or rebuke…just a message “I know you and I love you” which contributed to his re-entry to the Church.

Third, on my mission I met a Baptist professor of business and psychology. The fascinating thing of her story is her uncommon conversion. Baptists believe that resurrected beings and angels are gender neutral, that they have wings, and that human existence begins at birth, that we did not pre-exist our mortality. While she was teaching English in the Philippines there was a terrible earthquake that left her life in shambles. After a few weeks she went down the stairs of her building. At the top of the stairs, there appeared a petit beautiful, woman floating a few feet above the floor in a plain white robe. She had no wings. The woman said “Joan, I love you” and shortly vanished; Joan sobbed uncontrollably. Joan, as she heard her voice, had the strange feeling that she had known this woman for eons and eons of time (her words, not mine). She found Elder Ballard’s book “Our Search for Happiness” and wrote him. She had written Elder Ballard to inquire about her experiences; his response was emphatic: the experiences are true, and you are onto a good thing. She was shortly baptized.

But these experiences, one from a member, one from someone who became a member, and one from a non-member scientist, all have this incredible component. When the Lord reaches through and makes himself known expressly, the message he prioritizes is that he loves us. What a remarkable thing. It must be the most central aspect of his nature and the most effective message in urging us home.

What may be lost in the story is the implication of God’s love that may be clearer first hand than second.

It’s not, “I love you and you can do whatever you want,” but “I love you and I want you back with me.”

In short, my points can be summarized as follows

1. The atonement eases the way by replacing our unmanageable burden with a meaningful yoke

2. This occurs as we give up our sin and replace our will with His; Ironically a lighter burden requires a fuller commitment

3. The atonement has buoying lessons in that it gives sustaining evidence that God knows our pain and loves us.

There is a final point which I’ve made only briefly and in passing. These three points are the straightforward effects of the atonement on our burden. There is one final effect by which he, as if by magic makes our burdens easy to bear.

The Lord can and will lift our burdens as we pray and have faith enough and keep our covenants.

Mosiah 24:13-15

I know that the Lord loves and protects his people. He is eager to not only support us but deliver us from our trials and troubles and afflictions to the extent we trust in God (Alma 38:5).