Endure

Scripture describes endurance as an active remaining under a load while pressing toward completion, and Restoration revelation treats hardship endured well as a source of experience. Mormon transhumanists therefore welcome technologies that relieve suffering while asking whether they also strengthen people to bear what remains.

To endure is to bear hardship without giving way, or to last. The English word comes through French from the Latin indurare, "to make hard," and suggests a person hardened against pain. The Greek verb behind the New Testament's "endure," hypomenō, carries a different picture: it joins hypo, "under," and menō, "to remain," and so describes someone who stays under a load and does not run from it. Latter-day Saints speak so often of "enduring to the end" that the phrase can sound like grim waiting, a matter of holding on until death. Scripture presents a more active and hopeful discipline, one aimed at a goal.

To the End

The scriptures join endurance to completion, and the Book of Mormon describes it as pressing forward.

Jesus told his disciples that "he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved" (Matthew 24:13). The Greek for "unto the end" uses telos, a word for an end that is also a goal or completion, and its relative teleios means complete or mature. One epistle sets the two words side by side: "let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing" (James 1:4). The "patience" there is hypomonē, the noun of endurance, and "perfect" in both places renders teleios, so the Greek allows endurance to be read as the process that brings a person to completion. It has long been recognized that Nephi closes his account of the doctrine of Christ, after faith, repentance, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, with enduring to the end. Less often noticed is the verb he chooses for it: "ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men," and those who "press forward… and endure to the end" receive eternal life (2 Nephi 31:20). Endurance in Nephi's account moves toward something, and the next revelations show what it is meant to produce.

Endure It Well

Revelations given in a Missouri jail teach that hardship endured well yields experience and becomes part of a person's good.

In the winter of 1839 Joseph Smith, held for months in the jail at Liberty, Missouri, received the assurance that "thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high" (D&C 121:7-8). The answer that follows lists every extremity a prisoner might face, and some of its images recall earlier stories: this Joseph might be "cast into the pit," as Joseph of Egypt was by his brothers, or "cast into the deep," a phrase that likely evokes Jonah. The conclusion is that "all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good" (D&C 122:7). Paul describes the same sequence, in which "tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope" (Romans 5:3-4). Christ stands at the head of the pattern, for he "for the joy that was set before him endured the cross" (Hebrews 12:2). In these texts the endurance is purposeful, and its result is a changed person.

Resilience and Relief

Research on resilience supports the scriptural pattern, and Restoration teaching sets it against transhumanist hopes of abolishing suffering altogether.

Psychologists studying loss and trauma have found that most people exposed to them keep functioning in a stable and healthy way, and that a substantial number report personal growth afterward. Engineers and ecologists speak of resilience as a system's ability to absorb shocks and recover, and they warn that systems tuned for efficiency, with no slack, can fail all at once. Some transhumanists propose to abolish suffering through biotechnology, rewriting the brain's capacity for pain and distress. Mormon transhumanists share the hope of relieving suffering, since Christ healed the sick, and they count medicine and mental-health care among the means God provides. Yet the revelations from Liberty Jail suggest that some hardship, endured well, produces goods that could not be had without it. The risk runs in two directions: a faith that honors suffering may refuse relief that God has made possible, while a technology that removes every difficulty may leave people and institutions less able to bear the ones it cannot remove. The test for any technology that addresses suffering is whether it strengthens people and communities to remain under hardship and press forward together, or offers an exemption that leaves them more fragile when the next trial comes.