Some incorrectly think that the closer you draw to God, the less you will suffer. Do you think that God does not feel pain? Jesus bled from every pore because of the things he suffered. Enoch saw God weep. God suffers more than any man can. Do you think you will suffer less as you draw closer to him? God has the most joy because he is capable of enduring the greatest suffering. His commandments instill us with the same capability to the degree that we obtain his light and truth by seeking and obeying him in all things.
The purpose of life is to maximize joy. In order to maximize joy, you must acquire the greater light and truth required to contend with the equal and opposite suffering that always co-exists with joy.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the path to maximized joy, not minimized suffering. The question is not whether you will suffer, but how much joy you can have in spite of suffering. Learning truth does not free you from suffering. Instead, it will increase your suffering. What the acquisition of truth changes is not the presence of suffering, but the purpose of suffering.
Those who possess little truth suffer because they are ignorant of cause, effect, and reality. Your actions will change when your understanding of reality changes: your understanding of cause and effect; your understanding of consequences and constraints; your hoped-for outcomes. All of this is driven by your beliefs, and your beliefs will change when you are exposed to something that indicates that your current beliefs are incomplete or incorrect in some way. “Faith comes by hearing” (Romans 10:17), or through expanded observation and understanding. This is always from God, even when it is difficult or painful.
If pleasure unalloyed with pain is not attainable in this life, and if greater suffering accompanies greater happiness, then why bother progressing? One reaction we can have to the chaos is to become jaded—our hearts can wax cold and we can become apathetic. A loss of feeling will deprive us of the deep love of others that is required to keep going through the toughest of trials.
In the face of such a risk, it is important to realize that the gospel is the plan of happiness with respect to the default . It is not the plan of pleasure, because truth produces radical disillusionment, and that doesn't feel good. However, with respect to reality, the gospel is the most direct path to unveiling it. Reality is atrociously harsh. It exists independent of God. God, being aware of it to a greater extent than any of his children, provided a means for them to experience joy in spite of the harshness. To experience the greatest amount of joy, one's desires must be aligned with how things really are. Those who desire what cannot be will be miserable, even if in the short term they encounter pleasure.
If you seek to minimize suffering, you will inadvertently maximize ignorance. You will still end up with a great deal of suffering, just without any of the commensurate joy that would have come had you instead attempted to maximize joy.
Pleasure can come from truth or illusion. Worldly happiness is a fleeting illusion. Pleasure devoid of knowledge is pain whose inevitable bill has not yet come due. This is the fate, for example, of both the wicked who have pleasure for a season and self-proclaimed Christians who stop short of all God has to teach them, satisfied with a childish understanding of the gospel.
The joy of anyone whose suffering is limited is merely a temporary illusion. It will be violently ripped from them in the moment they are exposed to a greater share of reality than they are presently aware. There is no pleasure based on illusion that is ever worth experiencing because, in the end, the cost will always exceed the benefit. “Wickedness never was happiness.” (Alma 41:10)
It pays to discover all the truth you can, because doing so is the only way to maximize your joy and minimize the suffering you can avoid.