Time and the cardinal attribute of enduring (Elder Neal A. Maxwell)

In the April 1990 General Conference, Elder Neal A. Maxwell shared a touching message titled, ‘Endure it Well’. He has some great discussion about the benefits of time that is worth reviewing on MostMovedMover. This post should be read along with my two other posts about Elder Maxwell’s views on time (7/19 post and 3/20 post). As we work through his quotes, I highlight a couple of questions about progression, endurance, time, and mortality. You can watch the entire message below.

Maxwell’s quotes on time

I listed the quotes in their order of appearance in his message (I added the numbers). In the first quote, he sets the premise that endurance and salvation are wrapped up in time. The second quote builds on this message.

We tend to think only in terms of our endurance, but it is God’s patient long-suffering which provides us with our chances to improve, affording us urgently needed developmental space or time. (See Alma 42:4–5.)

[T]rue enduring represents not merely the passage of time, but the passage of the soul—and not merely from A to B, but sometimes all the way from A to Z.

I like his concept of time being a spiritual process.

When you and I are unduly impatient, we are suggesting that we like our timetable better than God’s. And thus, while the scriptural phrase “in process of time” means “eventually,” it also denotes an entire spiritual process: “The Lord showed unto Enoch all the inhabitants of the earth; and he beheld, and lo, Zion, in process of time, was taken up into heaven.” (Moses 7:21; see also D&C 38:13; Gen. 4:3; Gen. 38:12; Ex. 2:23; Judg. 11:4; 2 Chr. 21:19.)

These next two quotes start to make definitive statements about time and how it’s necessity for progression. He even states that enduring, which, in its definition, is bound up with time, is a cardinal atttribute. I notice that he describes the ’laboratory time in this second estate’, which seems to imply that time may not exist outside of mortality.

[R]eflection and introspection require time. So many spiritual outcomes require saving truths to be mixed with time, forming the elixir of experience, that sovereign remedy for so many things.

Thus, enduring is one of the cardinal attributes; it simply cannot be developed without the laboratory time in this second estate. Even the best lectures about the theory of enduring are not enough. All the other cardinal virtues—love, patience, humility, mercy, purity, submissiveness, justice—they all require endurance for their full development.

Finally, he bears a stirring witness of the Atonement with a witty reference to ’time and space’.

Therefore, one of the most powerful and searching questions ever asked of all of us in our sufferings hangs in time and space before us: “The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?” (D&C 122:8.) Jesus plumbed the depths and scaled the heights in order to comprehend all things. (See D&C 88:6.) Jesus, therefore, is not only a fully atoning but He is also a fully comprehending Savior!

Do we need time to progress or endure?

Elder Maxwell seems to have appropriately wrapped the description of endurance within its dependence on time. The Cambridge Dictionary defines endurance as, ’the ability to keep doing something difficult, unpleasant, or painful for a long time.’ He even makes the effort to explain that living in time is not endurance. He seems to have wrapped endurance and progression together into a very similar meaning.

The cardinal attribute of enduring existed before our arrival on earth and will be with us eternally after our death - as we await resurrection and then as resurrected beings. As mortals, we have a unique time experience that Alma calls probationary and Elder Maxwell labels laboratory giving the mortal experience_ of time heft or importance in our eternal journey. However, if progression and endurance are atributes outside of our mortal experiece then time exists in those spaces as well¹.

Can we love without the attribute of endurance?

Paul and Mormon both explicitly state that charity (or the love of God) requires endurance.

And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. -Moroni 7:45-

[Charity] beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. -1 Corinthians 13:7-

We have connected progression, endurance, and charity as intertwined virtues that include time. ‘It is God’s patient long-suffering which provides us with our chances to improve, affording us urgently needed developmental space or time’ both in mortality and throughout our eternal past and future. With the ’elixer of experience’, we can enjoy all that God enjoys.

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