No, religious living does not insure us against all tragic experiences in life. Religious people die like everyone else. They become involved in accidents not of their own volition or fault. Sometimes they suffer things that the carefree escape. But religion does spare one from much suffering. The keeping of the Word of Wisdom in its fullest sense will help to keep one physically fit and better able to resist disease and physical and mental strain. In prayer, faith, and administrations to the sick, religion offers one unique aid to health.
Most of the suffering and sorrow man experiences is not physical, but mental and spiritual. It is here that religion makes perhaps its finest contribution. The enemies of good mental health are based largely on a wrong conception of the place of self in the world. The religion of Jesus gives man the true conception of self in relation to other selves. The religious man is spared the life-destroying attitudes of envy and jealousy which result from selfishness; the hatred and licentiousness which follow from a want of sympathy and reverence for life; and the fear, worry, and anxiety which spring from ignorance, wrongdoing, and a lack of proper perspective. (Lowell L. Bennion, “The Fruits of Religious Living in This Life,” in The Best of Lowell L. Bennion: Selected Writings 1928-1988, ed. Eugene England [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1988], 131)
