My husband and I like to read books together. Recently we read The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy. Since the protagonist was the tyrant and evil dictator from the trilogy as a young man, we did not expect a happy ending. But watching him descend from a decent person to a villain was more difficult than we bargained for.

We finished it late one Thursday night. After the epilogue, I immediately went to the bathroom to get ready for bed. As I stood brushing my teeth, I was reeling about the masterful story-telling and the intensity of the climax, but when I went into the bedroom, my husband was subdued.

As an English major, I have read many a depressing book, and it no longer fazes me. I can appreciate great writing while simultanesouly shaking off a tragic story. My sweetheart is not so calloused. He told me the book had made him sad. Then he said,

“I guess that’s how God feels watching us. He sees our potential. We have the option of choosing Him and being happy, but we don’t.”

His words went through me.

I lay awake for far too long on an already late night thinking about them. I immediately thought of a scripture I’d rarely considered in the book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price, a book of scripture loved by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Enoch is a prophet who has an amazing vision. He sees the City of Enoch taken to the Lord. He sees Satan laughing. He sees God and angels bearing testimony of the Father and the Son. He sees vast numbers of people and places across time and space.

But then something seemingly small catches his attention.

“And it came to pass that the God of Heaven looked upon the residue of the people, and he wept.”

He wept.

It must have been disconcerting for Enoch to watch the all-powerful and glorified God of the universe be overcome by emotion.

Enoch is, at least, confused by the event. “How is it that the heavens weep and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains?…How is it that thou canst weep, seeing thou art Holy, and from eternity to all eternity?”

Surely the God of all things should have no cause to weep?

And Enoch tells him so. He begins to list all the reasons God has not to be sad. “Were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations.”

Look, God, at all the things you’ve created? How can you weep?

“Thy curtains are stretched out still, and yet thou art there, and thy bosom is there; and also thou art just; thou art merciful and kind forever.”

You’re a perfect being, complete in every way. How can you weep?

“And thou hast taken Zion unto thine own bosom, from all thy creations, from all eternity to all eternity.”

I literally just saw you take an entire city of your righteous children up to be with you forever. How can you weep?

“And naught but peace, justice, and truth is the habitation of thy throne.”

You live in perfect peace. There is no suffering or unfairness or lying where you live. How can you weep?

“Mercy shall go before thy face and have no end. How is it thou canst weep?”

It’s an honest question. After everything I know about you, God, weeping is the last thing I would expect from you. So, how? How can you weep?

Well, God’s answer is much more concise than the question.

“Behold, these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands and I gave unto them their knowledge, in the day I created them, and in the Garden of Eden, gave I man his agency; and unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood.”

Why do I weep? Look at these people. They are my children, and I created them. I’ve given them the choice, but I also gave them the knowledge they needed. All I asked was that they choose me and love each other.

But they don’t.

So what causes God, the greatest of all, to weep?

We do.

We do when we don’t choose him and when we don’t love each other.

People will make decisions that change their trajectory sometimes for the rest of their lives. They cause their own misery. And sometimes they never come back from it in this life. And that makes Him weep.

And why should He care so much? Like Enoch said, nothing we do can alter the way God lives. No matter what we do, He still has all power and lives in glory and peace.

He cares because He loves us and our happiness is paramount to Him.

I guess I’d never thought of it in quite this way until my husband pointed it out. How painful it must be for God to love the way He does.

His love is perfect, and so His pain must be severe.

Because of his omniscience, he knows that happiness and eternal life are things that must be chosen. And still how difficult to give us the choice when He has the ability to control us and cares deeply how we choose.

How agonizing to give us the reins when He knew what some of us would do with them.

You might say the Trogdens are getting a little worked up over a fictional novel. But fiction has power.

Yes, Coriolanus Snow is a fictional character. But Adolf Hitler wasn’t. Joseph Stalin wasn’t. Francisco Franco wasn’t. Hugo Chavez wasn’t. And oh the suffering they caused. And they are only the few and the famous, but throughout the ages there have been many people and groups of people who have sunk to unthinkable levels of hate and depravity. There have been many people who chose things that led to a lifetime of misery for themselves and all those around them.

Good fiction is powerful because it rings true, of human nature and the human experience. We must be cautious when we read in assuming we would never. Because people have.

And senseless torture or killing is the extreme, but all those men started as innocent children. And how God loved them. They had talents, and He knew the glory that was their potential. And they grew and life was hard, and they made choices.

But Hitler probably didn’t plan the Holocaust as a ten year old. He chose it slowly over a lifetime until he had become a madman and gone too far to return. All the people who have done unspeakable things to other people made a series of small choices before that.

I am no psychologist, and I don’t know what all those choices were, but I know what they didn’t choose. They didn’t choose God. And they didn’t choose love.

Ultimately, they chose themselves. They chose hatred.

I know I’m a far cry from the actions of murderous tyrants. But still, I find myself daily choosing things besides God. I choose my pride or vanity. I choose frustration and misunderstanding. I choose sin or plain laziness.

The political climate in this country over the past year has led to more division and more hatred, not less. I feel caught up in anger at the opinions or actions of others I perceive as irreconcilably different from me.

Then something like this happens. And as I fall asleep, my last prayer is “I’m sorry, Father, if I’ve made you weep. I will try to choose thee and to love my brothers and sisters.”

But humans have a painfully short memory. And before long, I’ve forgotten what was so clear to me when my husband spoke. And all of us go on choosing misery when we could choose joy.

And so God weeps.

And really, we ought to weep with him. We ought to weep to see what a person is willing to do to another person. We ought to weep at the injustice in the world. We ought to weep at the suffering we cause. We ought to weep for those who choose to ruin their own lives when they didn’t have to.

Enoch did. After he realized why God wept, he wept repeatedly, four times in one chapter. As God allowed him to see what He saw, Enoch wept until he felt hopeless and said “I refuse to be comforted.”

But…

After all that, the God who wept said, “Lift up your heart, and be glad. And look.”

And look.

Look at what?

Well, He will come in the Meridian of time.

“And behold, Enoch saw the day of the coming of the Son of Man…and his soul rejoiced.”

He saw the Savior. He saw all that the Savior would suffer for us. Even then, he wept for the suffering of Christ and the pain of the people before and after.

But God assured him that, after all that, the day would come when the Savior would come again. “And Then shalt thou and all they city meet me there, and we will receive them into our bosom, and they shall see us; and they shall fall upon our necks, and we will kiss each other…”

And Enoch saw. He saw it all. More than I think I could handle. But finally “he saw the day of the righteous, the hour of their redemption, and received a fulness of joy.”

A fulness of joy after all that weeping?

Yes.

Because the God who weeps is also the God who hopes.

Despite the very real truth that people choose misery, God knows that it is not the end. That is why He sent his son. His trust in Christ is complete. Everything will be alright.

And Enoch never forgot.

“Enoch and all his people walked with God.”

They chose him.

“And he dwelt in the midst of Zion; and it came to pass that Zion was not, for God received it up unto his own bosom.”

So, yes. We cause the Heavens to weep by our choices. And yet, there is hope.

Christ is real.

People do change.

We can be redeemed.

At any point, we get to decide, “I am done choosing things other than God and love.”

And we can decide as many times as we need to until finally:

“God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain (Revelation 21:4).”

So, I’ll weep with God for the hatred and suffering in the world.

But after I weep, I will choose hope. I will choose Him. I will choose love.

And if I know anything, I know that, one day, He and I will weep no more.

After I wrote that piece, I asked Tyler to read it. When he was finished, he told me he had written something too. I was deeply touched by his words. He is not a writer and yet expressed his heart so well, I asked if I could include it. Gosh, I love that man.

Here is Tyler,

“Last night, Jenni and I finished the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. As we finished it, I was blessed to learn a great lesson, that is, Heavenly Father is beside himself with grief when we, His children, choose paths that ultimately alter the course of our lives for the worst.

He has a plan for our lives from the beginning, which, if followed, will lead us to true happiness, but ultimately it is our choice whether we live that life or not. There are innumerable choices which will either lead us to or away from this life, but we don’t have to guess about what choices we should make because He is constantly guiding us. We just need to let Him.

I also learned that I need to be more patient and forgiving to those whose choices I do not understand or that I do not agree with. I do not know what people are thinking or what kind of life has led them to reason as they do. In the story of their lives, they are the protagonist, and if I could see their life, then I’m sure they would be the one I was rooting for.

Coriolanus, the protagonist of this book, had a good chance of being truly happy, despite very difficult odds. He could have had friendship and love, all before a few decisions, choices he made that took those opportunities away. He was so close, but little by little, the seemingly insignificant choices he made shaped his character. Like all of us, he was selfish at times, calculating, or prideful, but he was also unselfish and kind, loving even. He had the power to be the champion of his life and the lives of others. But ultimately, his pride and vanity won out, he fell from grace and gave up love and friendship (though he never consciously thought that) for luxury, fame, and power. A very, very poor trade indeed.

Let us not make the same mistake. It starts with the seemingly insignificant choices of our lives and what it is that is motivating us to make such choices. If you stop and look long enough, you’ll find that in your heart of hearts, there is good and there is bad. There are things that may startle you or even scare you to death; things that you wish were not there. These things can be removed with time and effort, with God’s help. He is always there watching, even now, hoping that you’ll realize the glorious future that can be yours just for the choosing.

I understand better how God could weep because of the choices of His children. He grieves and his anger is hot when we make choices that will ultimately harm ourselves and others because He knows what we are choosing to give up, true happiness and love. Surely there is no hell except the one we create for ourselves.

Perhaps it was not all Coriolanus’s fault for what was in his heart of hearts. This does not excuse the very conscious choices he made, but perhaps he would have chosen differently if his heart of hearts were a little different. I believe this part of us is shaped from very early on, as soon as we’re born, and at some point it may settle (that’s not to say it cannot be altered, because truly God can alter it if we let Him). In our very early years, others help shape what’s in our heart of hearts, so we should be careful and aware of how we’re shaping others.”