Line upon Line

Editor’s Note:  We are pleased to present this once-a-week, all-summer-long series of articles from Linda and Richard Eyre.  As most Meridian readers know, the Eyres, for five decades, have focused their professional lives on strengthening families.  This focus has ranged from writing New York Times #1 bestselling books to speaking to parents in more than 60 countries around the globe.  But their true passion is for an Inclusive, Eternal Family Paradigm that can’t be fully shared or grasped without the insights of the Restored Gospel. And they feel that the reverse of that is also true:  The Restored Gospel can’t be fully grasped or shared until it is seen through an Inclusive, Eternal Family Lens.  The goal of this series of essays is to more fully integrate Family and Gospel, helping us each to better understand both., “Family” is broadly defined so that each article speaks to us all, whether we are single or married, parents or siblings, aunts and uncles or grandparents.  

Writer’s Note:  We love and trust Meridian Readers, and are pleased to share, in bite-sized chunks, what will later become a book of essays attempting to synergistically connect Church and Family and share a fresh perspective on mortality’s purpose relative to our exaltation.  Since you will be the first to see these essays, we invite you to share your feedback and insights—because by doing so you will be helping us edit the book.  Reach us directly and confidentially by writing to our pseudonym email

Dr*******@gm***.com











where only the two of us will read or respond.

Now one more note, specifically from Richard: I am the voice for these essays, but you need to know that every concept I will try to express in this series was co-created with Linda.  Her summer plate is a bit fuller than mine, so I’m the scribe, but these articles come from both of our minds and both of our hearts. Let us invite you to join us here each weekend this Summer to focus on a new facet of how Church connects to Family and how Family connects to Church. Develop with us the Summer-habit of Family-Focused Fridays.

What is “the Church”?

A friend of mine asked a group of young Church members, some in the midst of personal faith crises, what they meant when they said “the Church.”  Most of them said they meant the Brethren, the Salt Lake Headquarters, the Institutional Church with is organization of wards and stakes, the hierarchy that tells us what to do and how to live.

Not enough of them, in my friend’s view, said that the Church was them, that they were the Church, that the Church was the community of Christ, made up of imperfect people trying to help each other negotiate this beautiful but messy mortality, with the divine help of the Spirit and the Priesthood and the insights and covenants of the Restoration.

Perhaps we all need to think longer and harder about who we are and what the Church is and how it can help and guide us on the course that our Heavenly Parents have set for us which returns us to Them and makes us more like Them. This kind of longer and harder thinking is the purpose and goal of this series of essays which will suggest a fresh perspective or paradigm…

• in which God is our Heavenly Parents who never stop offering to us all that they have;
• in which relationships, particularly family ones, are what is eternal, not the Church;
• in which “family” is broadly defined and inclusive of all;
• in which the Church is the scaffolding with which we build forever families;
• in which temples and covenant paths lead to the joy of extended, connected ancestors and descendants;
• in which the earth escapes being “cursed” or “wasted” because “the hearts of the parents turn to their children,” and the “hearts of the children turn to their parents;”
• and in which Exaltation is the end and Christ, His Church, and His atonement are the means.

Thinking Familycentric, Inclusive, and Long-term

Our beloved President Nelson has said, and frequently reiterates, that the Restored Gospel is “Home centered, Church supported.” Thus, to fully understand the Gospel, we need to think in familycentric terms.

Or, said another way, to grasp the essence of the Restoration, we need to think from the perspective of Eternal Family—both Theirs, and ours. Come to think of it, our Prophet frequently says that too, in the simplest, most direct way, “Think Celestial.”

WAIT, HOLD IT, please don’t anyone stop reading right now because “I’m not a parent” or “I don’t have a family.”  Let’s not define “family” that narrowly.  We all have families, we are all part of families, we are all children in God’s family.  We are cousins and/or aunts and/or uncles and/or siblings and/or children and grandchildren.

This is not to say that single members of the Church do not have some needs and challenges that are different from those of married members, and sometimes the “support” singles need can be a ward or church group that is their family for the time being. But that does not change the overriding understanding that we are all connected, all part of families, all part of God’s family.

It has always been so, (with “always” meaning everything since God begat us spiritually) and organized us from the intelligences we have always been (with “always” really meaning always.)

President Oaks said it profoundly and beautifully: “Our theology begins with Heavenly Parents.”

And he could have said that our theology also ends with Heavenly Parents, or with our hoped-for return to live as linked, connected families that are part of Their family.

So, for the purposes of this series, may we define “family” in the broadest, most completely inclusive terms.  Family is all of us, all of God’s children.

Believing in and thinking of God as Parental rather than a Sovereign can change everything.  It changes how deeply we feel His love, it helps us understand that we are not His creations but His children, and that we are not Christ’s subjects, but His siblings.

God doesn’t separate us by what family roles we have played and what roles we have left to play, so why should we separate ourselves in that way. What a disservice we do when we divide “Families and Singles.” Instead, we should try to perceive all the roles and relationships that exist in families and understand that, in the course of mortality, spirit world, millennium and resurrection, we will all have the chance to play all of those family roles which can connect us in the ways that all parents want their children to be connected.

The theology of the Restoration, the one President Oaks says begins with Heavenly Parents, is infinitely more family-centric than any other theology, doctrine or church.  It truly begins and ends with family, and is perhaps best understood in terms of individual-loving Heavenly Parents who want to give us all They allow and encourage us to become progressively more like Them. They knew (somewhat like mortal parents sending children away to college in recognition that many kinds of progression are facilitated by independence, choice, agency, and the absence of parental control) that the option-rich adventure of earth would facilitate Their gift of ever-growing similarity with Them.

On the future end of eternity, the Restoration’s perception of heaven—an eternal, family-within-family progression, both individual and collective, of relationships and connection—differs dramatically from the traditional Christian heaven of eternal rest (although that “rest” part sounds particularly desirable to most young parents.)

The overarching point of this series is that it benefits us to see both our earthly and eternal lives through an inclusive family lens.

Again, we all have families, we are all part of families, and we all have the chance and the capacity, here or there, to create new families wherein we are sealed in a Oneness bond and have the chance to bring children into that sealed relationship. Thus, dividing the Church by Marrieds and Singles is a false dichotomy. Even worse is “those with family and those without.”

Exaltation and the Three-scene Middle Act of Eternity’s Three-Act Play

President Nelson also teaches that “Salvation is an individual matter, but Exaltation is a family matter.” It could not be otherwise, since we know that the part of the Celestial Kingdom where our Heavenly Parents dwell will be populated by families and couples living in the restored New and Everlasting Covenant.

The beautiful sweep of perspective that the Restoration gives us allows us to see forward to that time, and to see back to when that plan was first presented to us all.

We know few details of that premortal counsel, but we do know that our eldest Brother presented our Heavenly Parents’ plan of agency and progression and offered Himself to atone for our inevitable mistakes. Thus, Christ and later His Church and Restoration became the means by which we can reach the end of Exaltation.

Another intriguing thing we know about that great counsel is that at some point we “shouted for joy.” Perhaps we might even speculate that this may have happened twice: First when we learned of the plan to create an adventure/agency earth where we would have all the ingredients necessary to become, in important ways, more like our Heavenly Parents.

But I wonder, after the initial jubilation of the idea, if we may have realized how perilous the round-trip journey would be—knowing that no unclean thing could dwell with God and knowing that all of us would fall short. Then Christ made His supremely magnanimous offer to atone, to intervene, to make it possible for us to return. Perhaps that was when, for the second time, we shouted for joy.

President Boyd K Packer, nearly 30 years ago, used the metaphor of eternity as a three-act play. Here, now, on this mortal earth, we exist in the short, pivotal middle act of this play—with the first act of the premortal world stretching out forever behind us and the third act of celestial glory rolling out forever in front of us. Here in this second act, we have the Restoration-given opportunity to make and live the covenants that will bring us back to where we started, once again living in the presence of our Heavenly Parents, only this time being more like Them, with our families as part of Their family.

This middle act has three scenes: this Mortality, the Spirit World, and the Millennium.  Before the act ends, we will all have opportunity to complete the covenant path—to do and to become what we must in order to return to and dwell with Them.

It can be well-argued that this returning, this exalting, and the covenant path that gets us there, was and is the substance and the purpose of the Restoration.  The Holy Bible that survived the Apostacy gives us most of what we need to know about Salvation, but so much was lost about Exaltation, and the Priesthood and Keys that could bring it to pass.  How blessed we are to be the recipients of this ongoing Restoration and to have both the knowledge and the family-connecting ordinances that can bring us home.

And may we think of these gifts not as exclusive but as inclusive, being made available to all at some point in this three-scene, middle act of God’s drama.

The Lord tells us the goal or the end—“the immortality and eternal life of man”—the connected, sealed families and “eternal lives” of the Celestial Kingdom.  And He gives us, eternally and through the Restoration, the means of His Church, His Covenants, His Priesthood, His Temples, and most importantly His Atonement.

A Perspective that Prevents or Mitigates Faith Crisis

Just as this Church-perspective helps and supports us in connecting our families, a clear Family- perspective and priority can help us to understand and stay committed to the Church. The means-and-end paradigm can take some of the angst out of our personal doubts and fears.

When we think of the Church not as the end that measures us but as the means that supports us and our families, we start to become more inclined to accept and receive, and less inclined to criticize and judge. We understand that it is not the Church but our families that are eternal, and we look for and welcome the support and help and back-up that we can receive from our wards, from the Temple, and from the insights of the Restoration.

In this context, finding something in Church History that bothers us or that we don’t understand, or having a Bishop that makes mistakes, or not liking a statement about children of gay parents, or Joseph’s interpretation of hieroglyphics, or apparent inconsistencies between scriptural history and DNA testing—each become less disturbing or threatening.  We understand the humanness of Church administration and leaders and the imperfection of the lay ministry that we are all a part of. And we understand that what matters is how much the Church and its covenants, doctrines, programs and perspectives can help us believe in and understand Christ, and how much they can help and support and supplement our families, and guide us on our return journey to our Heavenly Parents.

Bottom line: The Church (and the Restoration) helps us understand the eternal-nature of Family and the goal of Exaltation; and the Family Paradigm that results helps us understand the invaluable but temporary support-nature of the Church. Taken together—blended and connected, they make both Church and Family less stressful and more enjoyable.

The 12 essays of this series will expand these themes, and try to add both the nuances of perspective and the specifics of implementation.  Join us here every summer weekend between now and September.

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When Richard was 31 and Linda was 28 the Eyres were called as Mission Leaders to London.  That mission presidency changed their career course from business and politics to what became their life-long focus on marriage, parenting, and work/family balance. Now, nearly 50 years and 50 books later, they focus their writing and speaking on grandparenting and 3-generation families and on the eternal family connections that they believe are the essence and the purpose of the Restoration.