President Boyd K. Packer, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, explained that opposition helps us grow stronger: “Life will not be free from challenges, some of them bitter and hard to bear. We may wish to be spared all the trials of life, but that would be contrary to the great plan of happiness, ‘for it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things’ (2 Nephi 2:11). This testing is the source of our strength” (in Conference Report, Apr. 2004, 81; or Ensign, May 2004, 80).
President Ezra Taft Benson explained that opposition provides choice:
“The Book of Mormon teaches that ‘it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things’ (2 Nephi 2:11)—and so there is. Opposition provides choices, and choices bring consequences—good or bad.
“The Book of Mormon explains that men ‘are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil’ (2 Nephi 2:27).
“God loves us; the devil hates us. God wants us to have a fulness of joy as He has. The devil wants us to be miserable as he is. God gives us commandments to bless us. The devil would have us break these commandments to curse us.
“Daily, constantly, we choose by our desires, our thoughts, and our actions whether we want to be blessed or cursed, happy or miserable” (in Conference Report, Apr. 1988, 5; or Ensign, May 1988, 6).
Elder Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles commented on how opposition relates to happiness: “Indeed, without the existence of choices, without our freedom to choose and without opposition, there would be no real existence. This is so much like Lehi’s metaphor of how, in the absence of agency and opposites, things would have resulted in a meaningless, undifferentiated ‘compound in one’ (2 Nephi 2:11). In such a situation the earth would actually have ‘no purpose in the end of its creation’ (2 Nephi 2:12). It is a fact that we can neither grow spiritually nor thereby be truly happy unless and until we make wise use of our moral agency” (One More Strain of Praise [1999], 80).