Editor’s Note:  This is the final essay in Richard’s 18-article series on the insights and benefits of viewing the Restored Gospel through a familycentric lens.  Meridian is grateful for this illuminating perspective and for the many comments and responses from our readers. (to see all of the earlier articles in the series, click here.)

Author’s Note: As I wrap up this series on the Familycentric lens, I feel like it is more of a beginning than an end. I am trying to continue to unfold this family-focused perspective in an introductory online class that is free to senior Meridian readers. Check it out and sign up at https://valuesparenting.com/how-to-live/

Personal Stories—Ours’ and Every Ones’

Please indulge me (or forgive me) for being somewhat personal in this final installment of this 18-part exploration of how the Restored Gospel looks through a familycentric lens. I’m feeling a trust level with you who read these articles so I want to be real and vulnerable—I may even go so far as to tell you how (really) old I am!

I want to close with something of a testimony of the truth and veracity of God’s eternal family of which we are all a part, and my belief in the blessings that come from both thinking of and living the Gospel as a blueprint for family exaltation and the pattern of our Heavenly Parents’ eternal order.

When I was 30 and Linda was 28, I was preparing to run for the U.S. Congress. We had four small children, and I was busy with my own political and management consulting firm in Washington DC.  I had done an MBA at Harvard because I was convinced that what congress needed was better management and more competent administrators

Then one day everything changed.  We were called by President Spencer W. Kimball to be Mission Presidents (Mission Leaders) in London, and everything else went on hold.  During our cherished three years in England, we realized that each of our more than 600 missionaries was essentially a product of his or her parents and of the family that produced them.

By the time we came home, I was, at 34, convinced that my path to make a difference was not politics or business—rather it was doing what Linda and I could do to strengthen families.  We gave up our company and our political aspirations and began writing books for parents on the management of families and on something we called “parenting by objective.”  We started Joy Schools and valuesparenting.com and were blessed with bestsellers, regular appearances on national talk shows, and invitations to speak around the world.

More importantly, we turned our prime personal attention and priorities to our own family, which had increased to 6 children during our mission, and created a motto or mission statement that bridged into our new writing and speaking company “Fortify Families, by Celebrating Commitment, Popularizing Parenting, Validating Values, and Bolstering Balance.” We have lately added another alliteration, “Glorifying Grandparenting.”

We have known, ever since those early days, that our deepest commitments were to Christ, and to Family, and to Church, but it took time to realize that this was not three commitments, but one —that God’s Church and Family are inseparably connected, that the “end” is to return as families to our Heavenly Parents family, that Christ is the indispensable “means” by which that is possible, that “the Church is the scaffolding with which we build eternal families,” and that this applies to all of us, married and single, children and parents, uncles and aunts and cousins and in-laws of all varieties. We are all part of families, and all part of His family.

We have also come to feel that the best way to make sense of the Gospel and all of its truths and covenants, is to see it through a familycentric lens.

This series has been an attempt to use, look through, and explain that lens.

It reveals an all-loving parental God, a Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother whose firstborn spirit Son and only begotten physical Son implemented and made possible Their plan of Eternal Progression and Exaltation of our families within Their Family.  We are all, within that inclusive plan, spiritual siblings, whose greatest aspiration is to be like our spiritual Parents. Christ’s Church, containing His perfect Gospel but administered by us imperfect humans, is here not to judge us but to help us—through Priesthood and programs, commitments and covenants, and friendship and fellowship—to emulate Them.

Now, some might read “our story” and conclude that we were divinely pushed into a familycentric life by that early calling and what followed it.  But that is not the point I am making here.  The point is that we are all living familycentric lives whether we fully realize it or fully magnify it or not.

Another story:  We have a friend who we believe has lived a life that is as familycentric as ours—but in very different circumstances.  She has never married or had children, though she knows those opportunities will come.  She is deeply involved with her siblings and her ageing parents and her cousins and her many nieces and nephews, all of whom seem to regard her as their favorite aunt.  She works in a profession that serves and often saves children.  She serves in the Temple and is a remarkable genealogist, perpetually excited about discovering extended family and doing vicarious work and ordinances for them. Her mind and heart is at least as devoted to family as mine.

And there are endless other stories about family devotion, family priority, family focus, and they are all, in my view, beautiful.  But here is a deeper claim: We are all living as part of a familycentric existence, whether we recognize it or not, because we are all the literal spiritual offspring of Heavenly Parents.  Embracing this, and living within its perspective, can change our lives.

Familycentric

When we ask a dictionary, or google, to define this term…(Wait, lets update that sentence.) When you ask AI to define it, it answers “Family-centric means putting the needs of family members first, and treating them with respect and dignity.”

When we ask ldsbot.com (a gospel-oriented version of AI) it goes a little deeper and tells us “Family-centric” generally refers to a focus or emphasis on the family as the central entity or priority in one’s life, decision-making, and values. This can mean prioritizing family relationships, activities, and responsibilities over other aspects of life, such as work or social commitments. In the context of Latter-day Saint beliefs, being family-centric aligns with teachings about the importance of family as the fundamental unit of society and eternal life.”

In this series, we go even further. We drop the hyphen and use the word as a lens through which to view the Restored Gospel and as a way of reminding ourselves that we believe, uniquely in all the Christian world, is a Parental God and in the Eternal Progression that can return us to Them and make us more like Them.  We think of it as a word that can guide how we perceive both our mortal lives and our eternity.

Octogenarian Overview

I have always loved octagons.  They are essentially round, but with corners.  They are strong structurally, and they seem to speak of the perspective of seeing things from numerous angles and the awareness of things mirrored back on themselves.  Thomas Jefferson built an octagonal house that he called Poplar Forrest, and more than a quarter century ago, when I had a chance to build on a jutting promontory overlooking Bear Lake, I chose to make it a glass octagon, with each side aligned with one point on the compass.

I’m not sure that I love the title Octogenarian as much as I love octagons—but I’m starting to think that I might.  It’s a new title for me, and I’m still getting used to it, but it carries within it a certain freedom and bountificity. (We can even make up our own new words now!) Eight is the beginning age of accountability, and perhaps Eighty is the beginning age of wisdom. And octogenarian is often the harbinger of other titles, some with superlatives attached to them, like “Great Grandparent.”

One thing I know for sure is that my paradigms and perspectives are now more familycentric than ever before. The fact that family matters more now than ever before is clear, and I am grasping that that “mattering” extends far beyond this life, irrespective of where we each are in the mortal and eternal family cycle of forever.

President Oaks classic statement, around which much of this series is based, rings ever more true: “Our theology begins with Heavenly Parents, and our greatest aspiration is to be like them.”  And other prophetic quotes that I have repeated all of my life now seem like definitive statements of the obvious: President McKay’s “No other success can compensate for failure in the home” and President Lee’s “The most important work you will ever do will be within the walls of your own home.”

President Lee also said “The Church is the Scaffolding with which we build eternal families.” And in that context, I think I can answer the question “Are families here to teach children about the Church, or is the Church here to teach us all about Families?” (I know, I know, the best answer is “both.”)

I am currently finishing up a new book on Grandparenting, and a friend and fellow octogenarian of mine just sent me a “blurb” for the back cover that is about as familycentric as it gets. (Keep in mind that he is, among other things, an All-American College Basketball Player, the former CEO of corporate giant Black and Decker, and a former Area Authority Seventy in the Church.)

“Anything I have done or accomplished in this life pales in comparison to the joy I have with children, their spouses, and our grandchildren. This is our legacy.”

Should we be jealous of someone who has had that much of family in this life, or should we trust the Lord’s promise that all of us will have those same opportunities in his own time?

One thing I know for sure at this age:  Physical and Mental decline are inevitable—and my goal, it seems, is not to reverse or change that inevitability, just to slow it down, to make it more gradual.  And the other side of that goal-coin, the Spiritual and Emotional side, is where the growth potential remains—brighter and more enhanced than ever–the goal to dramatically progress and climb spiritually and emotionally in our capacity to love.  Everything can change in that paradigm, even how we pray.  Instead of saying “We would like to thank Thee for Thy blessings” we say, more directly and more personally and more simply “Thank You” and we say it more often than ever before.

An Ever More Familycentric Church 

I see, through my lens, a Church that is becoming as familycentric as the Gospel has always been.

When I mentioned earlier our call to be “Mission Presidents” I put the new terminology is parenthesis “(Mission Leaders)” and whether the titles have caught up yet, the Church has Temple Leaders, Ward and Stake Leaders, and even regional and General Church Leaders where couples work in partnership within the Kingdom, and manage to prioritize their families even above their Church callings.

This trend, and the growing inclusivity with which Church members view all family roles and all demographics as well as all Church doctrine, is evidence of an institution more and more focused on family relationships, family priorities, and family foreordinations, and family destiny.

One Lens for Each Eye 

Like most of us at this age, Linda recently had cataract surgery, but in her case (and this is common), the lens in one eye is for distance vision, and in the other for close vision, and miraculously her brain makes them work perfectly together.

And before I conclude my lens metaphor in this series, may I say that what I hope for is a similar “two-eyed” vision where one lens is familycentric, and the other is Christcentric, and where they work perfectly together to help us understand that the end – God’s work and glory – and our highest eternal destiny, is Family Exaltation; and that the means – the fulfillment of the Plan and the incomprehensible atonement, is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 

Optimism 

It seems that, more often than we used to, we hear the phrase “Hasten the Day” in the Church. And we hear it in so many different contexts.  Sometimes the implication is that if we can reach enough people, and convert them to the Restored Church, it will allow the Lord to come sooner.  Another context is that the ever-expanding evil and wickedness in the world will hasten the day as it did the flood.

I would rather be more inclusive and more expansive and more optimistic in the familycentric context that our Heavenly Parents love all of their children equally and that those children, in collective balance, are progressing—with less war, less poverty, and perhaps less bigotry and intolerance in the world than ever before.  If there was a grade for all mankind, despite all of the existential mistakes and selfishness, perhaps we get a higher mark in most subjects than we did even 200 years ago, with the notable exception being how we are doing in “family subjects” like chastity, fidelity, multiplying and replenishing. Arguably, human beings, despite all of our weaknesses and wrongs, are scoring at least slightly higher on nine of the ten commandments.

Perhaps the day will be hastened if we raise our grade in that one all-important area.  Perhaps the Second Coming, to happen in the way God wants, requires a certain number or percentage of strong, faithful marriages and committed (if not covenanted) families. Would not that world maximize the number of people who would flock to Christ and His Gospel at His Second Coming?

Thanks for reading, thanks for thinking with me, thanks for staying in touch.

When Richard Eyre returned from his Mission Presidency in London at age 34, he turned his back on his Harvard-inspired political and management consulting company and on his own political ambitions and, in partnership with Linda, embarked on a 50-year career as an international writer and speaker on marriage, parenting, life-balance and family management. He feels that this series (and the book it will become) on Familycentricity within the Restored Gospel, will stand as his most complete treatise of what he believes.