Family Discovery Day: A Gift Passed from Generation to Generation
Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and his wife Melanie, not only spoke of a gift passed from generation to generation, but demonstrated it in an hour of conversation, interviews with their grandchildren, and scenes from the British pageant during Family Discovery Day at RootsTech 2026.
They noted that as temples are rising across the world, the Lord is eager to link together His eternal family and give us access to power beyond our own. Sister Rasband said, ”In performing crucial temple work of binding together our past, present, and future” we are “uniting families for eternity.”
Elder Rasband said, “We recognize that our faith is not ours alone. It is a gift passed from generation to generation, as we honor the sacrifices and devotion of those who came before us with testimonies often born through trial and unwavering trust in the Lord. Their stories now become linked to and a part of our own.
“Creating a heritage of faith is a sacred stewardship, as each generation strengthens the next. When we link our lives to those that came before and to those who will follow, we form a chain of faith that leads directly to Jesus Christ, giving us purpose and belonging,” noted Sister Rasband.
She pointed to Helaman 5 where Helaman had purposely taught his sons, Nephi and Lehi, about their ancestors’ faith in Jesus Christ and reminded them to “remember, remember”. “Their remembrance gave them strength in moments of peril. And their faithfulness to Christ brought heaven’s power. By living true to our commitment to Jesus Christ, we have our own link to a growing legacy of discipleship,” she said.
Elder Rasband shared two stories of faith from his own ancestors.
“In May of 1833, my fourth great grandfather, Ashael Perry, traveled from northern New York to Kirtland, Ohio. Not yet a member of the church, but yearning, yearning, to meet the prophet Joseph Smith. He arrived just as the first council convened to plan the building of the Kirtland Temple. During that meeting, many objected, because the church was too poor, and the temple project seemed so grand, but Ashael’s faith would not be deterred.
“He and a few friends quietly counted their funds, and despite the cost of their journey home, he stepped forward. My grandfather approached Joseph Smith, pulled out a $5 gold coin, and presented it to the prophet. Joseph stood before the council and held up the coin, then speaking energetically, he said that the work had commenced, and the House of the Lord would be built according to the pattern presented by the Lord Jesus Jesus Christ.
“To me, that act of humble sacrifice was more than a donation. It was a beautiful expression of my ancestors’ budding, yet profound faith. In time, the Perry family joined the church, received their blessings in the Nauvoo temple, and later crossed the plains to Utah and are buried in Springville, Utah.
He continued,“This is one of many stories in my family history that has echoed through the generations, and has touched my soul deeply and united our family. Brothers and sisters, whether you are a first generation member of the church, or a 10th generation member, you can build your family’s legacy of faith that unites and binds generations together.”
Elder Rasband shared a second story about his ancestors.
“The Prophet Malachi taught that in these latter days, the hearts of the fathers will turn to the children, and the hearts of the children will turn to their fathers. My heart, for one, has been turned to my ancestors, and I will be forever grateful for the heritage they left behind, a legacy of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
“My great grandmother, Sarah Elizabeth Moulton, was born in Gloucester, England, in 1837. When she was four-years-old, her family was converted to the gospel and baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At that time, their great desire was to emigrate to America, to be with the majority of the saints. By 1856, the Moulton family had seven children, and 18-year-old Sarah was among them.
“With the help of the Perpetual Immigration Fund, and bits of savings in a fruit jar, the family set sail from Liverpool, England, to America. Before departing, the family was promised that if they would go to Utah, they would make the journey safely without losing even one member of the family. The Moultons arrived in America and ultimately joined the ill-fated Willie Hancart Company.
“It is difficult for me. Surrounded by the comforts and amenities of modern life to imagine the daily misery of Sarah and of the remarkable men and women who traveled with her. Can we imagine, day after day, the blistered feet and hands, the sore muscles, the dust and grit, the sunburn, flies, and mosquitoes, the ever-dwindling food stores and scarcity of water?
“By October, they were trapped in a snowstorm, below Rocky Ridge on the Sweetwater River, about 350 miles from Salt Lake City. When Brigham Young learned of the mortal danger of the struggling travelers, he quickly made a call for men, food, and supplies to leave and render assistance.
“As the rescuers finally reached the Willie Camp, they were greeted with indescribable joy and gratitude from the frozen and starving saints. When the survivors finally completed the journey and arrived in Salt Lake City, 66 of their company had died, and many suffered from frozen feet and limbs. But the promise to the Moulton family, and that blessing in England, had been fulfilled. They had not lost even one of their children, including a baby born on the ship from Liverpool.
“Gratitude and appreciation toward one of the young rescuers, John Bennett Hawkins, blossomed into romance and love for Sarah. On December 5, 1856, they were married, and later had 10 children, including my grandmother, Esther Emily. This great heritage of faith and endurance lives on in the generations that have followed the pioneers by their descendants, as well as those who have been touched by the incredible devotion to a cause greater than themselves.”
A group of performers from Nauvoo’s British pageant then performed the story of Ann and George Cannon, Sister Rasband’s ancestors. The Cannons had heard the gospel in Britian from John Taylor and yearned to come to Zion, saving for some time to make the journey. But Ann never saw the Zion she yearned for. She died on the journey and was buried at sea. Still, through her six children her faith is carried by descendants who number in the hundreds of thousands.
Share Your Ancestors’ Faith; Strengthen Your Grandchildren
So with, stories of faith behind them, the Rasbands look to their grandchildren to carry on the legacy. They were joined on the stage by many of them, including three returned missionaries who shared how knowing their ancestor’s faith had buoyed them in their lives.
Haley, a granddaughter and a returned missionary from Brazil said, “On my mission, there were moments when it got really, really tough, and I would feel the strength and the faith of my ancestors buoying me up when it got hard, and it helped me to keep going, and so for that, I feel extremely grateful.”
Ellen, another granddaughter said, “I love the temple more than anything.” She had been taught to find family names to take to the temple in ordinances ready on FamilySearch, and took that skill to Spain. “I had this friend who had just barely gotten baptized, and she wanted to go to the temple more than anything. She was able to research her ancestor’s names, and we went to the temple and I could see the joy on her face.”
Modern Pioneers
Elder Rasband said, “I have met many modern pioneers throughout the world, and I have seen that legacy carried on through them. As modern pioneers, our personal journeys may be no less daunting, but we are creating a heritage of faith for those who will follow us. As I look upon my own children and grandchildren, and at the host of God’s children across the globe, my fondest hope is that we will continue in this sacred heritage built upon the faith and teachings of Jesus Christ. Whether you have multiple generations of Latter-day Saint ancestry, or if you are the first modern pioneer in your family, build upon and continue the legacy of these great men and women who have come before us.
“What move them on? What pushed them forward? It was a sure testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ. I did not pull a handcart across the plains, but as a great grandson of pioneers, What they felt, I feel and what they knew, I know. That Jesus is the living Christ, the Son of God. I love him, and this is his church.”
See the video of this presentation here:
Mother Eve and the Power to Open the World
Preface
“Our Glorious Mother Eve,” beginning woman, wife, and mother — the last created being to enter Eden’s paradisiacal temple, the Hebrew gan Eden, the Garden of Delight, — and the first to willingly leave it. Her entry into the earth is so paradigmatic, that whether we believe in her or not, we must do something with her story. The story is almost inexplicably powerful, curiously it cannot be replaced, and has merited generations of religious and philosophical discussion. Who is this woman, slandered and defamed by prelates of a past day as “the devil’s gateway,” and as “having fallen away from God’s blessing,”[i] and titled by prophets in our day as our wondrous and Glorious Mother? (D&C 138:39)
Eve and the Mission of Life
And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. (Genesis 3:20)
Eve’s name was not only personal, but a title and pronouncement of an overarching, all-embracing, wondrous doctrine: that of the initiation of life worlds without number. The name, we learn from the Hebrew Havah, means life or life-giver. While this designation points toward the initiation of life on earth, it is meant, in the most holy sense, to point to that ongoing system which will eventuate in the creation of life and generation throughout the universe and beyond. Eve is the personification of the entirety of life’s purpose, and the fact that life stems from only such a covenant mother. The name-title is sacred, as is the word mother which in the Hebrew means bond of the family and adds to our understanding of the eternal plan as it centers in women.
Name-titles establish that which is foundational and, therefore, that which is at the head. Name-titles announce rights and prerogatives, and provide the standard to be emulated by those who come afterward. We understand the governing power of priesthood, and the protective and providing commission pertaining to it. However, the concept of life centers in the covenant of motherhood.
Nothing comes into existence temporally or eternally until the appointed woman, wife, and mother begins the process. Even animal life and plant life do not come into earth’s sentient sphere until Eve evokes it in the joyful fall over which angels rejoiced and which opened the world. It is for this reason that the Prophet Joseph Smith explained that when the Genesis term ruach, or the breath of life “applies to Eve, it should be translated lives.”[ii]
Eve achieved pre-mortal preeminence specifically because she had so conformed to the character, attributes, and principles surrounding eternal motherhood. On any given Sabbath we are wont to sing Eliza R. Snow’s immortal words, “In the heav’ns are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason; truth eternal Tells me I’ve a mother there.” We exult in that Mother, knowing that she presides in holiness and truth as the consort of the Eternal Father. That full measure of creation indelibly marked Eve’s soul.
Her pre-mortal preparation complete, the paradisiacal birth must come. The marvel of this creation is that it sprang from the genetics of divinity. Abraham explains, “So the Gods went down to organize man in their own image, in the image of the Gods to form they him, male and female to form they them.” (Abra. 4:27) The Gods, male and female, Eternal Parents, came into an earthly sphere to create man in their image, male and female.
Elder Bruce R. McConkie explained,
For those whose limited spiritual understanding precludes a recitation of all the facts, the revealed account, in figurative language, speaks of Eve being created from Adam’s rib. (Moses 3:21-25.) A more express scripture, however, speaks of “Adam, who was the son of God, with whom God, himself, conversed.” (Moses 6:22.) In a formal doctrinal pronouncement, the First Presidency of the Church (Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, and Anthon H. Lund) said that “all who have inhabited the earth since Adam have taken bodies and become souls in like manner,” and that the first of our race began life as the human germ or embryo that becomes a man. (See Improvement Era, November 1909, p. 80.)[iii]
Lest there be any confusion on this issue, Elder McConkie said of Eve specifically, “She was placed on earth in the same manner as was Adam, the Mosaic account of the Lord creating her from Adam’s rib being merely figurative.” (Moses 3:20-25.)[iv]
Had we Adam’s book of remembrance our understanding of their union and family preparation would likely be at our perusal. Apocryaphal accounts allude to their youthful nurture by heavenly messengers. Our understanding would lead to a divine nurture by the very characters that sired and bore them.
At the critical moment they were introduced, first Adam, and then Eve, to the Garden of God designed for further learning and for the fall. Here, Abraham explains, Adam and Eve received at the hand of their Father the grand key words of the Priesthood. (Abra. Facsimile 2.3) If we are reasoning, we see they were thus clothed in the robes of the Holy Priesthood. Here, in the presence of both an Eternal Father and Mother, as suggested in the Genesis and Moses accounts, they were counseled and sealed in an everlasting marriage. (Gen. 2:22-24; Moses 3:22-24) These ordinances centering in the coming Atonement, framed the base of their united faith and future actions.
And so to Eden: Adam, President J. Reuben Clark, so exquisitely informed us would receive her there, “radiant and divinely fair, into the Garden he had dressed and kept for her; into the bridal home he had built, there to begin together their earthly life that was finally to bring opportunity for salvation and exaltation to the untold myriads of spirits then waiting for the mortal tabernacles these two were willing to make possible for them to possess.”[v]
And thus the sweetest beginning of the eternal family of which we are a part: a virtuous man and woman who loved God and one another, and all who would follow. From two one, and from one all.
[i] Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988) pp. 114,63.
[ii] Joseph Fielding Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p.301
iii Bruce R. McConkie, quoted in, “Eve and the Fall,” in Woman, Deseret Book,[1988] p. 60
iv Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 2nd ed. [1966], p. 242)
v J. Reuben Clark, On the Way to Immortality and Eternal Life, Priesthood Manual, p. 26)
Podcast: Why We Had to Have a Family Proclamation
Maurine
On Christmas Day in Kirtland in 1832, Joseph Smith received Doctrine and Covenants Section 87, which seemed in part a response to the current events. Congress had passed laws that favored northern factories over southern plantations, and South Carolina nullified the tariff and forbade its collection. In response, President Jackson called out federal troops. In this section, wars are prophesied “beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina” until they became global and resulted in “a full end of all nations.” At first, it seemed that this revelation was not fulfilled. In a few weeks the South Carolina rebellion blew over.
Then, of course, more than two decades after Joseph’s death, the artillery rounds fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina signaled the start of the Civil War. A writer for the Philadelphia Sunday Mercury remarked that he had a pamphlet containing Joseph Smith’s 1832 revelation and he could not help but note the parallels. In the paper, the writer speculated about the prophecy concluding, “The war began in South Carolina. Insurrections of slaves are already dreaded. Famine will certainly afflict some Southern communities. The interference of Great Britain, on account of the want of cotton, is not improbable, if the war is protracted. In the meantime, a general war in Europe appears to be imminent.” Then the article in the Philadelphia Sunday Mercury ended with this stark question, ‘Have we not had a prophet among us?’
Scot
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Maurine
Have we not had a prophet among us? Part of the gift of a prophet, seer and revelator is to see what’s coming. That’s the see-er part of seer. On September 23, 1995, President Hinckley announced and read The Family—A Proclamation to the World to the women of the church in a General Relief Society meeting. It reaffirmed so many things that are precious to us. God’s eternal plan is about families. The plan of salvation is a family story. In fact, the pre-mortal world was a place where we were nurtured by Heavenly Parents who were invested with extraordinary love in our growth and progress. It is not surprising that connection and relationships would be our foremost joy in this life. Our eternal souls were raised in a place of connection. It is what we are made for. It is an eternal yearning inside of us. Our heaven is not a place of lonely individuals who play harps alone on clouds, but a place of families and communities united together in love. It is a people who have learned to love, even when loving seems difficult.
Scot
When that Family Proclamation was read to the church, and by extension the world, nothing seemed surprising, outlandish or different about it. We couldn’t have dreamed at the time that it would ever be a controversial statement or that it might someday be a core belief that would drive us to the margins of our society or that we would have to stand with courage to believe its tenets or that some of us might lose jobs or social standing because we stood by this proclamation.
As members, of course we understood “that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.”
Of course, we knew that “All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny.” Of course, we believed that “the divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave.”
Of course, we believed that “the family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.”
While the world didn’t know the extraordinary eternal meanings of family, marriage and parenting, at least most of the world still sought these goals and acknowledged them as beautiful and important. We couldn’t have imagined the day when family, marriage and parenting, which reflected the wisdom of the ages, would be discarded and discarded quickly. Why would we need these things so clearly spelled out to us as a proclamation issued by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve?
But have we not had prophets among us? The family was about to be hit by a whirlwind.
Maurine
Most of us hadn’t seen the signs, but I had an unusual opportunity to see first-hand what was happening—and it actually wasn’t a whirlwind at all that was brewing, but a carefully calculated, intentional, well-planned, strategically orchestrated ideology whose goal was to deconstruct the family as a basic unit of society. This was all done in the beginning in the name of granting women additional rights, which was a worthy goal, but when you have a good intention based on a faulty ideology, the end can be disaster.
Here was my in-depth exposure to this orchestrated plan to deconstruct the family. When I was young, in 1977, I was invited to attend the International Women’s Year Conference in Houston Texas as a press secretary for the delegates from Utah. This conference is widely considered as a turning point in the women’s movement in the United States.
Delegates from every state had been elected by women in their state to come together to this conference and devise a National Plan of Action for Women that would also be presented at the United Nations to impact the policies of the nations of the world.
The women elected to the Utah delegation were all remarkable. They included general presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints auxiliaries, a legislator, women who owned their own business and public servants on every level. All of them valued the role that family plays in society and in the happiness and stability of adults and children, and all of them were accomplished, powerful women.
What I didn’t know is that this conference had been carefully orchestrated long in advance to place a radical, anti-family agenda before the nation and the UN as the will of American women, and so, the delegates from other states had been carefully managed and recruited to represent that point of view. It was a political operation. They had been connected and communicating with each other for some time. Not only were the women from Utah outliers and marginalized at this meeting because of their family point of view, but when I picked up the press materials, one of the resources was about the women from Utah specifically. The official IWY organization disdained our group and falsely claimed they had been dishonestly elected. The Utah delegation’s so-called crime, of course, is that they were conservative. All the press were given that point of view with their materials.
This conference opened my eyes in every way—first to how radical the agenda was. Family was cast as the oppressor, marriage as a kind of bondage. Children were seen as a relentless burden, and underlying it all was a sense that there was no objective reality, no truth, but only the subjective, expressive, authentic feelings of individuals that should be a guide. Today, we might call it “you do you.” Family relationships were an assault upon womens’ authentic identity and search for liberation.
Thus, about marriage there was this slogan. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Abortion rights, extending through pregnancy and internationally should be the norm. This would become so important that over time, staff would let aborted babies born alive die. Minors should be able to have an abortion without their parents’ knowledge or consent. Teenagers could receive condoms at school, while children should receive extensive and intrusive sex education at school. So-called sexual liberation was the norm that was demanded in every way. The conference was successful in pushing the limit on the Equal Rights Amendment three more years, an amendment which in erasing any distinctions between men and women, also erased many protections for women, including the possibility of being drafted into combat or having private locker rooms.
The hostility toward traditional morality or anyone who represented that was breathtaking, and what was even more surprising is that the press completely supported this conference to the point that anything so radical the general public couldn’t have swallowed was unreported, while conservative, more family-centered women had no voice to tell their story to the press. I remember, as press secretary, approaching Tom Brokaw, asking him how the Utah women and their point of view could be not just dismissed, but officially disdained, and he would give me no answer.
Honestly, it was a day that my idealism was punctured—the air went out– because before that I believed that the press was honest and that people played fair. It was the day that my desire to have my own publication that could tell the truth was born. A consortium of people and powers were going to press a new and harmful agenda upon America that would be an enormous step toward deconstructing the family, and most of us would never know it. It would be claimed to be progress. We would think that over time the family had just unraveled by itself, but in reality, these powerful forces were reshaping our sense of reality and what was true and good. Family was expendable in the name of liberation.
Scot
So now, all these years later, where do we stand as far as family in this land? One journalist writes in an article called “First Comes Love, then Comes Sterilization” about the new trend toward twenty-somethings choosing to become sterilized, because they don’t want to be parents.
She said, “Last year, the number of deaths exceeded that of births in 25 states— up from five the year before. The marriage rate is also at an all-time low, at 6.5 marriages per 1,000 people. Millennials are the first generation where a majority are unmarried (about 56%). They are also more likely to live with their own parents, according to Pew, than previous generations were in their twenties and thirties.
“It used to be that people wanted to make babies…But now, for an increasing number, the question isn’t how to have it all. It’s: why do it at all?
Maurine
This journalist continues, “This psychological reversal didn’t just happen. It took place inside the hurricane of spiritual, cultural and environmental forces swirling around us. But the message…is clear: Life is already exhausting enough. And the world is broken and burning. Who would want to bring new, innocent life into a criminally unequal society situated on a planet with catastrophically rising sea levels?
“The end — is upon us, and this is no time for onesies. So says The New Yorker and NPR … According to a new poll, 39% of Gen Zers are hesitant to procreate for fear of the climate apocalypse. A nationally representative study of adults in Michigan found that over a quarter of adults there are child-free by choice. And new research by the Institute of Family Studies found that the desire to have a child among adults decreased by 17% since the onset of the pandemic.” (https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/first-comes-love-then-comes-sterilization)
Scot
So we are at an all-time low in number of marriages and children born, but what about the children who are born? That is also a grim picture. Now, 40% of children are born out of wedlock. Researchers from the Brookings Institute noted, “since 1970, out-of-wedlock birth rates have soared. In 1965, 24 percent of black infants and 3.1 percent of white infants were born to single mothers. By 1990 the rates had risen to 64 percent for black infants, 18 percent for whites. Every year about one million more children are born into fatherless families. If we have learned any policy lesson well over the past 25 years, it is that for children living in single-parent homes, the odds of living in poverty are great. The policy implications of the increase in out-of-wedlock births are staggering.” (https://www.brookings.edu/research/an-analysis-of-out-of-wedlock-births-in-the-united-states/) The human suffering is staggering because in our society we have lost our family structure.
You add to that that governments are more restrained when families and other institutions like churches are vibrant. Obliterate them, and the government steps in to assume more and more roles.
Our children are addicted to pornography. The youngest ones are taught in school that their gender does not necessarily match their biology and they can choose what works for them.
Loneliness is on the rise. People feel barren and disconnected and depressed. Without satisfying connections, life loses its meaning and we wander in a echoing, heartless wilderness.
Maurine
Without family, everyone suffers. The Proclamation on the Family reflects eternal reality and eternal law. Our spirits, male and female, were born in a place of a loving, divine family, and the way we are made, the very way our spirits are fashioned, is to yearn for those sealed relationships and to be incomplete without them. Infants, who come crying into this world, not yet even knowing how to breathe, are fragile and vulnerable and need the irrational, relentless, undeviating love of parents completely devoted to them. People need the growth that comes from investing in others well-being without restraint or self-serving. That’s what happens in a family.
If family is so vital to the Lord, it is not surprising that the Adversary attacks it in every way possible. He discourages family formation by shaming and shrinking young men and women through pornography addiction. Once a family is formed, he preys upon marriage partners, emphasizing their complaints and irritations and fanning flames of discontent. He urges distress and despair so large in one’s mind and thoughts that they become blind to another’s need.
He sets children against parents and parents against children.
Scot
But do we not have prophets among us? Yes we do, and they said in the Family Proclamation, “we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.” We already see it. We’ve noted some evidence here. Our great nation is in decline because we as citizens have failed to invest in our families and we have taken on secular worldviews that ultimately disintegrate families.
Where issues of family, sexuality, gender, anger, division, pornography, moral relativity, and so much more are concerned, we can look nothing like the world. President Dallin H. Oaks noted, “Jesus corrected Peter for not savoring the things that be of God, but those that be of men,’ declaring, ‘For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Matthew 16: 23, 26)…
“Similarly,” President Oaks said, “the writings of Jesus’s early Apostles frequently use the image of ‘the world’ to represent opposition to gospel teachings. ‘Be not conformed to this world’ (Romans 12:2), the Apostle Paul taught. ‘For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God’ (1 Corinthians 3:19). And, ‘Beware,’ he warned, ‘lest any man spoil you … after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ’ (Colossians 2:8). The Apostle James taught that ‘the friendship of the world is enmity with God[.] Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4).
Maurine
President Oaks said, “Those who do not believe in or aspire to exaltation and are most persuaded by the ways of the world consider this family proclamation as just a statement of policy that should be changed. In contrast, Latter-day Saints affirm that the family proclamation defines the kind of family relationships where the most important part of our eternal development can occur.” (Dallin H. Oaks, The Plan and the Proclamation https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2017/10/the-plan-and-the-proclamation?lang=eng ).
Now some complain that The Family Proclamation does not include them because they are not married or cannot marry or because their family situation looks much less than ideal. But the Lord promises the righteous that eternally they can attain all He has. That surely includes all the blessings of a fulfilled and harmonious, and yes, glorious family life and bonds of affection and love that eternally surrounds and encircles us. We may not see that now, but those who trust the Lord know with Nephi, that even when we do not know the meaning of all things , “I know that he loveth his children” (1 Nephi 11:17).
Scot
Being a part of a family will teach us all the godly attributes: love, patience, long-suffering, forgiveness–sometimes seventy times seven, resourcefulness, empathy, courage, persistence and how to pray intently about the people you love. We find quickly that our own intellect and wisdom are insufficient for the problems we face and our hearts break their old boundaries with the love that grows. This is what investment looks like. No matter what your position of responsibility or influence is in the world, you will have to know more to be a mother, a father, a sister or brother. More character will be required, more charity, more unrelenting devotion.
As a family we are in it together for the long haul. That means, of course, that we see each other up close and personal over the journey. We remember each other’s foolhardiness and mistakes. We have to forget old wounds and weaknesses and let people move on. In our love for each other, we forget differences and seek to see each other’s eternal souls.
Maurine, from the beginning you and I planned what our marriage would look like. We sat down on our honeymoon with pen and a notebook and discussed how we would do things. We decided to be intentional in our choices, and I really love that world intentional. We wanted to think and act toward each other in the way we planned that was according to our deepest values, rather than just come what may and ride on our emotions. We wanted to be intentional in the way we talked to each other, studied the gospel together, worshipped God, planned together, dreamed together, prayed together. In a world that is sometimes tough, critical and judgmental, we wanted to be each other’s safe harbor–and it has taken us to a place of the most remarkable unity and love.
Maurine
Your face is my happy place.
Scot
In the Family Proclamation, it says, “We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God.” Since marriage is ordained of God, then he is our partner, if we let Him be. We take our problems to Him. When we lack wisdom—which is often when you are parents—we ask of God. We talk to Him constantly. We judge our actions by His teachings. We seek to change.
Maurine
I really love the result. Just before our youngest daughter, Michaela, got married, I wrote her a letter that said, “So I want to send you off to marriage with a secret. Dad and I just recently celebrated an anniversary while leading a tour at the Yellow Mountains in China. We each awoke that morning, and secretly in our corners of the room, began a gift of writing for the other. We did not consult with each other, nor let on to what our scheme was, but when we were finished we exchanged phones where we had written on a note pad and our gifts were surprisingly born of the same idea. I had written for him a list of thirty things I loved about him. He had written for me a list of thirty things which he prayed for me.
“We both had a hard time stopping at thirty, for we could have gone on and on.
“It was tender and affectionate, and we wept together at how clearly we saw each other. ‘You really know my heart,’ Dad said. ‘In all the world, you are the person who sees who I am.’ I said the same thing as I read the thirty things he prays for me. ‘You know what matters to me. You see me. Your prayers for me are more thorough and insightful about my concerns than my own prayers for me are.’
“How did you know?” we both sighed to each other. “How do you know me so well and see me so clearly?”
Scot
Maurine continued her letter: “There is a greeting in the movie Avatar that is the secret I want to share for a joyful marriage, the secret that we were expressing on our anniversary morning together. It is “I see you.” The lyric to the song says, “I see me through your eyes.”
“There is a similar sensibility in Nepal, where people greet each other with their hands placed together, palm to palm, below their chin and say ‘Namaste.’ That means many things, but one translation is ‘the divine in me sees the divine in you.’
“I remember, Michaela, when you were just about four years old, I came into the living room calling your name, and teasing you, pretending that I couldn’t see where you were. ‘Michaela,’ he called. ‘Michaela.’ You answered two or three times, ‘I’m here, Daddy. I’m here.’ I just kept calling to make you laugh. But finally you said with a bit of confusion why I couldn’t seem to see you, ‘I’m right here, under my hair.’
“It is a funny moment, but reminds me of something you’ve told me often—that is that more than anything else in the world you want to be known, you want someone to see you. I think that is what we all want—and that is the gift that spouses can give to each other.
“Life is tough. It rocks and assaults us; it presents problems we couldn’t have anticipated. It stretches our sense of well-being to thinness. Sometimes it is tedious and tiring. It plies us with uncertainty. The Lord kindly puts us face to face with our weaknesses. And one of the casualties amidst this journey, is sometimes our sense of self. We forget who we are. We are blind to what we can do. The divine spark in ourselves sometimes flickers and dims. We get lost.
“We think we are no more than a list of duties to do and half-kept resolutions. We know there is a swelling something inside us once in awhile that tells us we are more, but the days can beat it out of us. The mists of insecurity shroud our peaks.
“How utterly magnificent it is, then, to live with someone who really knows you and sees you for who you really are and will be. That steady vision from your spouse gives you hope. It reminds you of your true self on the days when you’ve forgotten.”
Maurine
I continued my letter to our daughter, “When I have fallen on my face, when my ankles have been thick as fence posts in pregnancy and I don’t recognize myself, when I have cried in disappointment about a weakness of mine, there your Dad has been, smiling at me, and seeing something more. ‘I see you,’ he seems to say. ‘God has told me who you are. I know you. You are not just a bundle of broken sticks. I can never forget who you are.’
“It goes both ways.
“When things don’t work out, when he wonders if he is enough, when his best efforts are not recognized and his sacrifices are unseen, I still see him. I tell your Dad that things will work out because I trust him. I tell him that I know him. I see who he is. I remind him of all the good things he is and has done. I have a great sense of his eternal soul. I am actually dazzled by it.”
“So there we are together, through a lifetime, validating each other’s worth and saying in every way that we can, “I know who you really are.” If I have a weakness, your Dad sees it as temporary and already paid for by the atonement. If I am discouraged for a day or a year, he never seems to lose the vision of who I am. I do the same for him.
“Once during a long drought when I felt my prayers were not being answered, I said to Dad, ‘God must not love me.’ He answered, ‘No. He loves you. He sent me to tell you that He loves you.’ I believed him.
I told Michaela, “Dad is never cold. Truly. I am cold when the temperature plunges only a few degrees. He sees me and picks me up at the door of the restaurant or theater while he goes out in the bracing cold to collect the car. He doesn’t just say, ‘It’s warm. Buck up.’ He knows who I am.
Scot
Maurine, you wrote, “We both work not to forget the eternal majesty of the person we married despite whatever mortal mask we are wearing now. I love this quote from C.S. Lewis, ‘It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship…
“’There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, [and] marry.”
“Lewis also said, ‘If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot not imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness.’
Maurine
“It is an awesome thing to marry an immortal soul and to have the most impact on him—and he on you—than any other person. Both of you, plead with the Lord to see each other as He sees you, to know each other as He knows you. Pray that you can be that steady source of light to each other, especially for those days when your spouse is tempted to believe he is only a shadow of his real self and you are inclined to look into the mirror darkly.
“’I see you.’ ‘The divine in me sees the divine in you.’ That is the secret that your Dad and I have attempted to live, and felt it again recently. In the faraway Yellow Mountains of China, I felt home, because I was with him, the one who sees me best.” (https://latterdaysaintmag.com/a-secret-for-my-daughter-about-to-marry/)
Scot
It is an awesome power to impact an eternal soul as we do in families, and we do it with constant revelation from the Lord as he polishes our souls toward higher virtues.
The altar in the temple at which an eternal family begins as we kneel together is profoundly significant. It is an altar that symbolizes the great, atoning sacrifice of our Savior. Why would the Lord have us sealed across this altar?
His atonement means at-one-ment, and it is through this stunning, unimaginable gift that we can again be reconciled to God, made at-one with him, our face turning home again, the veil rent.
Surprisingly, it is also through the Lord’s atonement that we become one with each other, that two who have lived their lives separately and singly can be joined for eternity, never to be entirely separated again.
Maurine
Oneness in marriage is actually made possible through the atonement and the gradual change and expansion in us that is promised if we accept this gift. We are to leave behind our old, smaller selves.
Satan’s work is to scatter and divide us. The Greek word for Satan is “diabolos” meaning to divide or separate. This name means “He who places division.”
It was Satan’s work to scatter the Children of Israel, and the Lord’s to gather them in one again. Those who ultimately live in Zion will be of one heart. Satan sows division. The Lord invites us to oneness.
Scot
We come to each other in marriage incomplete and somewhat fragmented. We are still children about so many things. The Lord says, “I will take you on a journey to wholeness. The broken things in you I can mend. The incompletion, I can complete.”
The promises for this journey are more than finite minds can comprehend, but the sacrifice is not just Christ’s–it will involve your sacrifice as well—the sacrifice of a broken heart and a contrite spirit. We must be willing to grow, discard the parts of you that are small and contracted. We must shed parts of ourselves that are burdening the way—even our favorite, most habitual, and long justified weaknesses.
Oh, that is hard! Happiness is built on repentance and changing–and expanding yourself is happily not your job alone. Christ has taken that on long ago.
Maurine
It may be tempting to think that we come to marriage to change our spouse. If you don’t think it now, there may be times in the future you might be convinced that is your job.
It is tempting to think we have a better plan for our spouse’s way of being. But be very wary of having a plan for how anyone can change. When you are dealing with another person’s identity, you are on sacred ground. Take off your shoes where you stand.
If we and our spouse build our marriage on the Lord, it is He who will change both of you as you submit your heart to Him. You don’t need to do His work for your spouse.
Scot
A repenting couple is a happy couple–repenting particularly in the sense that you are both humble and willing to enlarge your understanding and perspective, willing to change what is trivial and weak about yourself.
When we marry, we are deciding to take a journey together back into the Lord’s presence. That means both husband and wife are committed to finding an expanded, better version of themselves and we trust that the Lord’s gift can work this in each other. It is, in fact, only the Lord’s gift that can work this in you.
Maurine
If we want a powerful, loving marriage, decide to become devoted disciples of Jesus Christ together. Pray together morning and night. Life will be hectic and demanding. We may feel that there is so much to do that we have to just hit the ground running to even survive. But build into your very system this unshakeable habit of talking to the Lord together.
In your prayers remember to express your gratitude for each other in the most specific ways. Be grateful for the gifts you gave each other that day and the service that was rendered. Watch each day for the inspiration that the Lord has given you. Remember it and thank him aloud and specifically in your prayers for His gift to you this day.
Of course read your scriptures, attend the temple, watch for opportunities to serve. Say to yourselves from the beginning, this is who we are, this is what we do. With this firmly in place we become slower to gripe about our spouse and sooner to celebrate the good things they are and do.
Scot
When husband and wife are bonded together with the Lord as their partner, that union becomes a source of security for all the children. Parents understand that they have been called not only to nurture them, sit up feverish nights with them, and love them, but to teach them. And that is not just to teach them any old thing, but their eternal identity. Growing up as Latter-day Saints in this tumultuous world, they will have to learn how to be courageous, how to know God, and how to receive revelation. They must know how to work hard and be responsible. Who will teach them if their parents don’t or if their parents are casual about it or think instead, their job is merely to entertain them?
I love this parenting motto: “Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.” This matters because we are constantly told, that our job is to prepare the road, giving our children the easiest, most entitled way. We are about something bigger than that.
Maurine
We are told falsely today, that suggesting constraints on our children can be damaging to them, that helping them learn self-governance is too challenging, that teaching them to stretch to understand and do hard things is asking too much. But we should never abandon them to following their own untrained willfulness.
Jordan Peterson, a psychologist gave this rule. “Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.” “Children must be shaped and informed, or they cannot thrive… Children are damaged when those charged with their care, afraid of any conflict or upset, no longer dare to correct them, and leave them without guidance… More often than not, modern parents are simply paralyzed by the fear that they will no longer be liked or even loved by their children if they chastise them for any reason. They want their children’s friendship above all, and are willing to sacrifice respect to get it. This is not good. A child will have many friends, but only two parents—”
Scot
Peterson said, “It is an act of responsibility to discipline a child. It is not anger at misbehavior. It is not revenge for a misdeed. It is instead a careful combination of mercy and long-term judgment. Proper discipline requires effort—indeed, is virtually synonomous with effort. It is difficult to pay careful attention to children. It is difficult to figure out what is wrong and what is right and why.” (end quote)
Yet, that difficult job is what we are called to do, and we know from the Proclamation on the Family, that our charge as parents is a loving and sacred one, and we will receive heavenly help if we ask for it.”
I love this school called family. When we are together, I always say, “This is heaven to me.” I think that is because it is heaven, and for those times when it is not, hang on with hope.
Maurine
That’s all for today. Thanks for being with us. Next week is our Christmas podcast. Special thanks to Jenny Oaks Baker for the beautiful music and Michaela Proctor Hutchins who produces this program.
See you next week.
“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” Performed by Jenny Oaks Baker. Used with permission © 2003 Shadow Mountain Records
Your Hardest Family Question: Is there hope for me to have an eternal family?
I was born into a loving Latter-day Saint family. I was raised in the Church and was active until I reached my teenage years. I lost my testimony in high school and chose to become inactive when I left for college. I dated non-Latter-day Saint men and, as a result, I married my husband 36 years ago. After learning about the gospel, he didn’t take kindly to my religion, but because I was inactive, it didn’t matter to me.
Then, our sons came along, and I had a desire to have them blessed. My husband reluctantly agreed, and my father gave them both their blessings, but my inactive life kept going along; nothing changed. I always believed the Church was true, but just didn’t want to make the effort to go, especially knowing my husband’s anti-Mormon feelings. I also knew he did not want our sons to become Mormon. Every time we spoke about my going to Church, I could tell he was not happy.
In my forties, I started going to Church and held a calling in Relief Society. My activity lasted about a year, and due to many arguments and a lot of sadness, I stopped attending. He even said that if this continued after our youngest graduated from high school, we would have to divorce. I was devastated because I knew he meant it. So here we are, almost 37 years into our marriage, and I go to Church when I can, read my scriptures when I can, pray, and always do the best I can! I love my husband. He’s been a wonderful husband, father, and grandfather! He believes in God and loves his fellow beings. I pray every day for my husband’s heart to be softened towards the Church. If my husband never joins the Church, and our marriage never becomes eternal, what can I expect will happen with my family in the eternities?
Answer:
I think it’s understandable that you would wonder about the eternal future of your family, especially since none of you share the same beliefs. However, in the same way you have been on a lifelong journey of discovering a meaningful relationship with Heavenly Father, please recognize that your husband and children are on that same individual journey. Remember that this journey didn’t begin on this earth and doesn’t end once we pass through the veil at death.
As I read your question, I can only imagine what your journey has been like for your husband. Even though the seeds of the gospel were planted in you at a young age, there were no signs of growth when your husband met and married you. I’m sure this gradual move toward the Church has been confusing and threatening to his concept of who you are, especially in relation to what you both shared as you started your family.
I don’t know the entire context behind your comment about him threatening divorce if you continue to go to church after your youngest leaves the home. Perhaps this was said in a moment of exasperation when he didn’t know how to communicate his frustration about the different directions he saw you both taking. My guess is that this is a conversation that needs to be revisited so you can both find a way to honor each other’s needs.
You have built a solid marriage under the difficult conditions of a mixed-faith family. That is not an easy thing to do, and your efforts speak to the love and tolerance you both have for each other. Those are the conditions that actually qualify families for eternal joy, as taught so eloquently by Elder Robert D. Hales in the October 1996 General Conference:
As taught in this scripture, an eternal bond doesn’t just happen as a result of sealing covenants we make in the temple. How we conduct ourselves in this life will determine what we will be in all the eternities to come. To receive the blessings of the sealing that our Heavenly Father has given to us, we have to keep the commandments and conduct ourselves in such a way that our families will want to live with us in the eternities. The family relationships we have here on this earth are important, but they are much more important for their effect on our families for generations in mortality and throughout all eternity.[1]
Granted, you don’t have the blessings of the sealing at this point, but you do have everything else Elder Hales describes as ingredients to a healthy family. Keep working on building a loving, tolerant, and committed family environment, even if you don’t see the sealing power in mortality. There is much more to come and much more going on than we can see or understand.
Of course, you can always continue to deepen your personal relationship with your Savior and your Heavenly Father without the blessing of your husband. These private devotions are critical to your ability to live with gentleness, meekness, and love unfeigned.[2] The logistics of you formally worshipping at church or in the temple are something you’ll need to continue to navigate with your husband. You noted that he has been supportive of it in the past, so it’s likely you’ll discover a way you can build this into your marriage. If your marriage is as strong as you describe, then I encourage you to rely on that shared commitment to each other to find a way to support one another in this challenging division.
I’m touched by the Book of Mormon author, Omni, in the way he was able to bless those of us who believe, even though he himself wasn’t a believer. We don’t know much about his story, but we do know that he did his best to protect his people, even though he described himself as a wicked man. What inspires me the most is that even though he personally didn’t worship, believe, or participate in the work of salvation on earth, he was respectful enough of the record and the traditions of his people that he passed on what he could to his son, which provided a bridge between believers.[3] This is no small thing.
Likewise, your husband is co-constructing a loving family, even though he doesn’t share your same beliefs. You have more in common than you might realize. Don’t let the differences discourage you to the point where you give up hope for the future. You are not done with your journey home, and neither is your husband.
About the Author
Geoff Steurer is a licensed marriage and family therapist in St. George, UT. He is the owner of Alliant Counseling and Education (www.alliantcounseling.com) and the founding director of LifeStar of St. George, an outpatient treatment program for couples and individuals impacted by pornography and sexual addiction (www.lifestarstgeorge.com). He is the co-author of “Love You, Hate the Porn: Healing a Relationship Damaged by Virtual Infidelity,” available at Deseret Book, and the audio series “Strengthening Recovery Through Strengthening Marriage”, available at www.marriage-recovery.com. He also writes a weekly relationship column for the St. George News (www.stgnews.com). He holds a bachelor’s degree from BYU in communications studies and a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy from Auburn University. He served a full-time mission to the Dominican Republic and currently serves on the high council of the St. George, Utah, young single adult second stake. He is married to Jody Young Steurer, and they are the parents of four children. You can connect with him at:
Website: www.lovingmarriage.com
Twitter: @geoffsteurer
Facebook: www.facebook.com/GeoffSteurerMFT
VIDEO: New First Presidency Discusses Key Issues and Shares Hopes for the World
A Tour Bus of Witnesses: Thoughts on President Russell M. Nelson
We were leading our annual Church History Tour with a bus load of faithful Latter-day Saints when we heard the news of President Nelson’s passing. Maurine and I asked our participants if they would like to share some of their feelings about our beloved prophet. The following responses are from about a dozen of our group.
A Gentle Giant
For me, President Nelson has been a gentle giant, teaching me that the safest place to be in these tumultuous last days is within my temple covenants. He has taught me to keep an eye focused on the Lord, and to “think celestial,” not to get hung up on what’s happening around me. He has proven, again and again, the prophetic promises of temples dotting the earth in the last days, and given us something to look forward to in the future . . . Some of the Lord’s greatest works! His homecoming on the other side of the veil is something I would have loved to see. He was a very special prophet.
— Sarah Smith
We Will Miss Him Terribly
I loved President Nelson’s humor and positivity, like when he told us to eat our spiritual spinach and hang on for what’s ahead. His encouragement for us to do better and be better was given with love. We will miss him terribly, but happy to have had him as our prophet during our lifetime.
— Debbie Smith
He Was a True Prophet
I remember when President Nelson was first called to be the President of the church. I remember receiving a strong impression that he was a true Prophet. I kind of wondered about it because I didn’t doubt his position as the prophet. The Come Follow Me program he instituted changed my life. It helped me understand my Savior, Jesus Christ, and the importance of reading the scriptures daily. I try harder to be a peacemaker and be a better person and family member. I know he was and is a true prophet.
— Eloise Cuslidge
My Comforting Friend
Living in Atlanta, I’ve never met President Nelson. However, listening to his messages through the years, I have felt his love and concern for the world.
On April 5, 2020, I sat alone and depressed in my home watching general conference. President Nelson began delivering a previously recorded message from the Sacred Grove: Restoration of the Fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ a Proclamation to the World.
I felt as if I were right there with him, a dear friend sharing a message of hope and love with me. As I stood and did the Hosanna Shout with him, tears filled my eyes, and I was comforted. The Holy Ghost testified to me once again that this is Christ’s church led by a living prophet…my friend Russell M Nelson. I look forward to seeing him again.
— Romy Lakip
Learn to Be a Peacemaker
We love Pres. Nelson. One of our favorite quotes from him is: We were born to die and we die to live. As seedlings of God, we barely blossom on earth; we fully flower in heaven. We can feel joy even while having a bad day, a bad week, or even a bad year!
We also love his talk on Peacemakers needed.
We were asked to team-teach this talk, the second hour, to a new group of seventeen saints and investigators in Akrofuom Ghana. This was one of our first weeks serving as senior missionaries in Ghana. Only a couple of them spoke English, so the branch president translated our discussion into their language, which is “Tw.” Our meeting was held in an abandoned school with no lights or running water.
Pres. Nelson’s message was: Learn to be a peacemaker by treating others with charity, respect, and understanding. The branch president called a few weeks later and asked if we could pick up a family of five and take them to the nearest “real chapel”, twenty minutes away, so that they could be baptized on that Sunday, along with three others.
A year later, before we left, there was a branch formed with a new building and fifty-three attending, including those faithful saints that were peacemakers and examples to those in their community.
We will miss Pres. Nelson, but know that he is fully flowering in heaven.
— Kraig and Maggie Loveland
I Know Him to Be a Prophet of God
Studying President Nelson’s words and trusting in his relationship with Jesus Christ has made me love him immensely. I know him to be a prophet of God, and I believe what he has taught us. A few of my favorite quotes are: “Seek and expect miracles. Few things will accelerate your spiritual momentum more than realizing the Lord is helping you to move a mountain in your life.” “…The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.” And “as you prayerfully study the Book of Mormon every day, you will make better decisions —every day. I promise that as you ponder what you study, the windows of heaven will open, and you will receive answers to your own questions and direction for your own life. I promise that as you daily immerse yourself in the Book of Mormon, you can be immunized against the evils of the day, even the gripping plague of pornography and other mind-numbing addictions.”
I love President Nelson! And I am grateful for direct revelation from God to our prophet. I love being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
— Sterling Jenson
His Impact on the World Cannot Be Measured
The cumulative impact of the life of Russell M. Nelson on this world cannot be calculated with equations or expressed in words. If we were to consider only his medical career, or his ministry as a prophet, or the great legacy he has left in his posterity as separate accomplishments, the mark he has left on this world would still be far more significant than most people could ever dream of leaving.
He revolutionized open-heart surgery. He led the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through the COVID pandemic, announced the construction of 200 temples across the world, and motivated us to hasten the work of the gathering of Israel.
President Nelson taught us in ways that were spiritually digestible and practically applicable. He was also a wonderful husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, gently directing his descendants’ gaze towards the Savior as the remedy for all of life’s challenges.
He taught us the importance of temple attendance, the need for peacemakers in the world, to think celestial, the concept of spiritual momentum, and many other things that have inspired individual lives and entire families to follow the Savior more closely. We love and appreciate him for all of these things.
One thing I am particularly grateful for during President Nelson’s time as a prophet is the emphasis beginning in 2019 of moving towards home-centered and church supported gospel living. Having the Come Follow Me manuals for family study and having more time to study the gospel at home with my family has truly transformed my entire family as a unit. Our testimonies of Jesus Christ, his atonement, the Book of Mormon, and this restored church of Jesus Christ have been strengthened and deepened. I can’t think of many things in the world that have brought my family closer and facilitated more unity than this family-centered church.
President Nelson’s inspiration also prepared members of the church for the COVID pandemic because when we were not able to attend sacrament meetings in our chapels, we had already been focusing on gospel study at home.
Also, my family was sealed in the temple as an eternal family on September 9th, which is President Nelson’s birthday. Even though these events obviously did not fall in the same year (1924 and 2022), we still enjoy celebrating the birthday of the Prophet along with our anniversary.
It almost feels trivial to try to express the depth of my gratitude for the life of President Russell M. Nelson, but I love him I hope and pray to be able to express this to him someday.
— Christy Lakip
An Example of the Compassionate Life of Jesus
President Nelson’s zest for life and deep love for all was uplifting to me. His life was an example of the compassionate life of Jesus Christ.
— LeAnn Mitchell
He was Speaking Directly to Me
No personal interactions with President Nelson for me. It just seemed that each time he talked, he was speaking directly to me. I just had such a high regard for his Christlike qualities. I feel like I have lost my best friend.
–David Dibb
A Rare Combination of Virtues
President Russell M. Nelson: He never seemed to age!
I loved how he shared stories of his personal life as a doctor and father. Our youth need examples of integrity and conviction.
Russell M. Nelson was a rare combination of virtues that inspired and blessed the world. I was motivated to be a better person through his example of integrity, love of God and family, intellect, humility, honesty, virtue, kindness, and so much more.
I was able to attend a funeral of a dear friend of President Nelson’s, Dr. Douglas Heiner. Their families developed a close association as young doctors living in Boston, Massachusetts. Both men were driven to do their best in their fields of study: Russell Nelson, the heart, and Doug Heiner, discovering a cure for milk allergies.
Years later, when Dr. Doug Heiner passed away, President Nelson was the prophet with a very busy schedule. The Heiner family was told he might be able to speak at the funeral. Right before the service started, President Nelson was able to come and speak. The family was truly honored by this gesture of friendship.
— Jolene Jenson
Like a Father to Me
Even though I have not physically been in the same room as my dear President Nelson, I have invited him into my home and sat in front of him in my living room. I have been taught at his feet on my TV. I have felt the power of his spirit and testimony enter my heart. He has spoken Christ’s words that have taught me how to become like Christ, and shown me the path to return to my Heavenly Parents. My Prophet’s love and example have personified Christ’s love for each of us. I cherish his simple, yet profound teachings – Think Celestial, Remember Him, Just be Kind, and his final conference talk: Confidence in the Presence of God. Each inspired message has stretched and taught me deeper meanings and personal ways I can change. President Nelson has been like a father to me, and I love him – as he has loved me. He has tearfully expressed that love every time he speaks to me – and each of us. Thank you, President Nelson, for your Christlike leadership, love, and example. I love you too, President Nelson!
–Cyndi Cordell
Remembered in China
When we were on tour with many others in China, our knowledgeable tour guide learned that we were Latter-day Saints. He immediately said with great enthusiasm that he had done some guiding in China with a member of our faith. He described it this way: “He was the nicest man I have ever met. He was such a gentleman, and he was so kind to me personally. I don’t remember his name, but I know he was very high up in your church.” We pulled out a picture of President Nelson and asked, “Is this the man?” “Oh yes,” he smiled. “That was him, and I’ll never forget the way he made me feel.”
–Maurine Proctor
He is My Hero
I have deeply admired Russell M. Nelson from the time I first met him in the late 1970s—before he was called into the Twelve. There was something about him—a presence—that I felt from that first moment I stood beside him.
I have carefully studied in succession all 114 of his general conference talks a number of times, and I can say with all my heart that he has changed, blessed, lifted, and inspired my life. I have no need to look to the world for some hero or super hero—he completely fills that need. I admire his intelligence, his gift with languages, his insights into health and the human body, his deep and powerful teachings of the atonement of Jesus Christ, his insights into the gathering of Israel on both sides of the veil, and his calling us Latter-day Covenant Israel, a people who let God prevail in their lives. That’s what I want more than anything, and he has clearly shown me the way to do that.
I am so grateful for the life and teachings of President Russell M. Nelson, and I know that he wants us all to carry on and to press forward with a perfect brightness of hope. What an incredible example he has been for all of us, and for this, I am eternally grateful.
–Scot Facer Proctor
Finding Purpose and Power in The Family Proclamation
Editor’s note: This week, we are celebrating the 30th anniversary of The Family: A Proclamation to the World.
September 23, 2025, marks 30 years since the First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints introduced The Family: A Proclamation to the World.1 In our increasingly complex world, I have chosen to write this article as a letter to our youth and young adults who are navigating exciting opportunities, difficult challenges, and important decisions during this pivotal time of their lives.
Does the Proclamation Apply to Me?
When President Gordon B. Hinckley read The Family Proclamation during a General Relief Society Meeting in September 1995, it came as a bold declaration of restored eternal truth regarding individuals and families to warn the world and call everyone to action. The Proclamation can be seen as an “ensign to the nations” and a beacon on a hill.2 But does its light shine for you? Is it still relevant to you, our youth and young adults who make up the rising generation of the church? This season of your life brings numerous challenges and opportunities. You are discovering who you are, where you fit in the world, and what you can contribute. You are navigating relationships, school, work, and your physical and spiritual health amid rising risks and responsibilities. It’s a lot to manage, and sometimes these pressures can rupture your sense of self and leave you doubting your capacity to handle it all. You may not know much about The Proclamation, or if you do, it might seem out of date, irrelevant, or unreasonable, considering your current realities, but please consider how it might relate to the very questions you are asking God about your life right now. President Nelson recognized how important this stage of life is for you: “You are establishing priorities and patterns that will dramatically affect not just your mortal life but also your eternal life.”3
A Beacon, not a Benchmark
It might be easy to read the Proclamation as a checklist, with benchmarks you must meet to live up to God’s expectations. But your journey is unique and evolving. As you find your way, remember that God’s words are a beacon, not a scorecard for measuring success. The Proclamation lights the way by telling your true story – from creation into eternity. It declares truths that crystallize your divine worth and potential. God’s work and glory is to bring to pass your immortality and eternal life (Moses 1:39). Mortality, however, is the messy middle of God’s plan. When you are in the middle of confusing decisions and difficult relationships, with losses and disappointments piling up around you, you may wonder, How can this be God’s plan? However, the “mess” is the essential material for creating enduring love, beauty, and joy. In the mishmash and mishaps of mortality are your opportunities to build something real and eternal with God. Elder Bednar has taught that your hope for a loving eternal family “begins with you!”4 All your experiences, good and bad, can lead to learning and growth that will benefit your current or future family relationships. The Lord Himself said, “know thou…that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good” (D&C 122:7). In this life, you are developing the desires and abilities to become, through Jesus Christ, whole and complete, securely connected in loving family relationships.5 If you desire it, family is your destiny.6
Truth, Agency, and Correct Principles
God established the plan of salvation and exaltation to enable your learning and growth so that you can receive all that He has. The conditions of mortality may seem pointless or cruel to some, but they are necessary for you to realize your divine potential. They include opposition, a Savior, a physical body, moral agency, absolute truth, and temple ordinances and covenants. Don’t doubt God’s plan. Jump in, you’ve got this!
Start by finding and understanding eternal truth. President Nelson unequivocally stated that truth is not relative, “There really is absolute truth-eternal truth.”7 Real, solid, unchanging truth is empowering. And you have the ability (and responsibility) to discern truth from error through the Spirit. Moroni wrote, “by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things” (Moroni 10:5). You are swimming in a turbulent ocean of information. Chaos and deceit flood every part of life. President Nelson warned, “One of the plagues of our day is that too few people know where to turn for truth.”8 In this confusing environment, you can turn to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ for eternal truth.
Next, you must act on the truth you know. God gave you your agency to choose right from wrong, and the power to act. Your righteous use of moral agency is fundamental to your learning and growth. Elder Bednar taught that “[agency] is the capacity and power of independent action.”9 Moral agency is both a divine gift and a sacred responsibility. Because God is bound to His own laws of agency, His Spirit will not force or compel you. You must choose to act, for we “should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of [our] own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness” (D&C 58:26–28). As a free agent, you must seek and receive spiritual knowledge and apply the truths you discover. Your spiritual growth depends on it.
Finally, you need to identify the gospel’s guiding principles and apply them to your specific circumstances. Elder Bednar described principles this way, “[A] gospel principle is a doctrinally based guideline for the righteous exercise of moral agency. Principles derive from broader gospel truths and provide direction.”10 Jesus Christ and His prophets teach with correct principles rather than proliferating a list of specific rules so that you can learn to govern yourselves.11 Rules can break down when circumstances change, but principles adapt and remain relevant and valuable. Apostle Richard G. Scott said that “principles are concentrated truth, packaged for application”, and they add clarity even in “the most confusing and compelling circumstances.”12
When you identify and apply correct principles in your life, you gain spiritual knowledge and wisdom, line upon line (2 Ne. 28:30). Elder Pingree described this process, “Once the Holy Ghost confirms a specific truth to us, our understanding deepens as we put that principle into practice. Over time, as we consistently live the principle, we gain a sure knowledge of that truth.”13 Gaining knowledge and understanding is a gradual process of seeking and applying true principles to see if they bear fruit. This takes time and effort, but I think your generation is primed and ready for truth. “The youth of the Church are hungry for things of the Spirit; they are eager to learn the gospel, and they want it straight, undiluted. They are not doubters, but inquirers, seekers after truth. [They] sense the hollowness of teachings that would make the gospel plan a mere system of ethics.”14 It is your great opportunity to learn truth by faith and apply true principles of the gospel in your life. You will learn wisdom and receive the vital blessings of spiritual strength, direction, and protection.15
Additionally, Elder Uchtdorf observed that principles “don’t make decisions for you.”16 Rules might, but principles never do. Principles provide the reasons for making a righteous choice or decision. It has been my experience working with youth that you care deeply about the reasoning behind things. A humble, curious disciple wants to know “why?” That question can be so valuable to your spiritual learning. Understanding the rationale for an action or behavior fosters your desire, your internal motivation, to do it. “Because I said so” doesn’t cut it, whether it’s coming from your parents or Church leaders. Reasons motivate better than checklists—and they are far more powerful. The Lord wants you to ask questions and search for truth. Dive into the scriptures and the writings of the prophets and ask your questions in humble prayer. He will guide you.
You can lean on The Proclamation to teach you righteous principles, derived from eternal truths, that will guide your choices about earthly and eternal families. However, you are in charge of understanding those principles and making your own decisions. Elder Renlund makes this important distinction, “Our Heavenly Father’s goal in parenting is not to have His children do what is right; it is to have His children choose to do what is right and ultimately become like Him. If He simply wanted us to be obedient, He would use immediate rewards and punishments to influence our behaviors. But God is not interested in His children just becoming trained and obedient ‘pets’… No, God wants His children to grow up spiritually and join Him in the family business.”17 The teachings and principles of Jesus Christ are always most impactful when you choose to follow Him with all your might, mind, and strength (Moroni 10:32).
How Do I Apply the Principles of the Proclamation?
The Proclamation amplifies these simple, profound truths: as a child of Heavenly Parents, you are sacred, family is sacred, and new life is sacred. Knowing your divine origin and worth changes how you see yourself and others. Family becomes a sacred laboratory where love and faith can begin to grow and flourish. The eternal perspective of who you are and who you can become will motivate you to live the Proclamation’s principles as best you can, even when things are hard. You may not quickly reach the ultimate goals you set for yourself, but you can keep moving in the right direction. If the duties and responsibilities in the Proclamation feel overwhelming, remember you do not need to do them all at once. Listen for what the Spirit is prompting you to learn about yourself, your family, and your divine destiny, and focus on that.
I invite you to engage with the language of the Proclamation and seek revelation from the Spirit to understand and live the principles it teaches. As you do, you will discover the wonderful things God has prepared for your beautifully unique, eternal journey.
The Family Proclamation: Distilling Principles
As you explore the Proclamation, it can help to group the principles by theme. Below, I selected specific sections from the Proclamation that I found useful to study and supplemented them with recent prophetic teachings to enhance my understanding. This is just one way to view the Proclamation. Let’s explore the Proclamation’s truths and principles through the lens of our fundamental relationships – our individual relationship with God, the marriage relationship, and parent-child relationships.
Individual – Woman and man are the beloved son or daughter of heavenly parents created in the image of God—male and female—with a divine nature and destiny. Men, women, and children receive priesthood power and blessings by faithfully living ordinances and covenants, including the promise of an eternal family. Man and woman are equal in God’s eyes.18
Marriage – Husband and wife enter the holy order of matrimony and together receive priesthood power and blessings for themselves and their family, including eternal life.
- Being united in marriage requires a full and equal partnership, sharing responsibilities.19
- Their decisions should be made in unity and love, with full participation of both.20
- The government in the family follows the patriarchal pattern, which entails that wives and husbands are accountable directly to God for fulfillment of their sacred responsibilities in the family. These special responsibilities do not imply hierarchy and exclude any abuse or improper use of authority. There is no president and vice president in the family.21
- The teachings of Jesus Christ lead to happiness and success in family life.
Parental – Mother and father are commanded to create life but only within the bonds of marriage. Husbands and wives have the solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and their children. Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, and to teach them to love and serve one another, observe the commandments of God, and be law-abiding citizens.
- Fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Parents work in unity to fulfill these responsibilities.22
- Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In unity with her husband, a mother helps her family. Together, they foster an environment of love in the family.23
- In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. They should prayerfully counsel together and with the Lord.24
- Circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation, and extended families should lend support when needed.
After studying the truths and principles that guide our individual, marriage, and parental relationships, do you understand them better? What did you discover about how these principles can apply to you? When you connect the responsibilities directly to the eternal truths, you can begin to see how these principles are meant to guide your decisions rather than enumerate rules to follow. This type of study can give you a fuller picture of why families are so important and how to apply the principles to benefit your life.
How Do I Make Marriage and Family a Full and Equal Partnership?
The ordinances and covenants you make in the temple, both the endowment and the marriage sealing, are vertically and horizontally integrated, uniting you to God and to your spouse in love and godly power. Because of this covenant relationship, husband and wife lead and guide the family together in full and equal partnership with each other and with the Lord.25 As part of this commitment, Christ invites spouses and parents to sacrifice and consecrate themselves to a shared family stewardship.
What can we learn from the Proclamation about the responsibilities specifically assigned to fathers and mothers? Elder Soares explains that mothers and fathers should view their responsibilities as “opportunities, not exclusive limitations,” and recognize that nurturing and presiding are “interrelated and overlapping responsibilities.”26 In a family, loving and caring for each other is never done alone. You are truly better together. Every family is a unique combination of people, personalities, desires, weaknesses, and strengths. Your family benefits from mobilizing your collective resources in the loving care of one another. Mutual support and collaboration nurture growth and connection for everyone involved.
Family is often an “all hands on deck” situation. Help may come from extended family, friends, church members, mentors, schools, and communities. Sometimes, resources are thin and support is scarce, which can be discouraging, but Elder Christofferson reassures you, “Much that is good, much that is essential–even sometimes all that is necessary for now–can be achieved in less than ideal circumstances.”27 In reality, nobody has ideal circumstances or an ideal family. Imperfection is the condition and purpose of mortality. Only through Jesus Christ are we, eventually, made perfect.28
This statement by Elder Holland beautifully describes how our hope in Jesus Christ, however dim, can carry us through the difficulties of family relationships, “So when our backs are to the wall and, as the hymn says, ‘other helpers fail and comforts flee,’ among our most indispensable virtues will be this precious gift of hope linked inextricably to our faith in God and our charity to others.”29
Years ago, my husband and I reached a point in our family when it felt like our backs were to the wall and we had to act in faith to consecrate our efforts, in full and equal partnership, for our family stewardship. We had a young child, a toddler, and a newborn. I wasn’t working, and my husband’s income didn’t cover our expenses, even though he traveled most of the week. The demands of my children overwhelmed me, and everything felt like too much to handle. One night, after a long day for both of us, everything boiled over. Following a heated argument, I broke down in tears, pleading for help. To my surprise, my husband echoed my feelings, saying, “I can’t do this anymore; I need help too.” In that moment, we both realized we had reached our breaking points and felt compassion for each other. We understood we couldn’t give any more than we were already giving, yet we decided to keep going because we believed in our family.
In the days that followed, I spent a lot of time seeking reassurance from the Lord, hoping that our sacrifices would prove worthwhile. We didn’t regret having our three precious children; we simply felt overwhelmed and disappointed by the challenging reality we faced. I worked to make sense of the difficulties and adversities we encountered. Piece by piece, I discovered the beautiful, eternal things God had in store for our struggling family. My worries and challenges persisted, but rays of light and truth began to enlighten my perspective—an understanding of my covenants and hope in the Lord’s promises. My husband and I continued to give our all, doing our best with faith and hope that the Lord would support us and restore our righteous desires for our children and for each other.
Will God Keep His Promises?
Amid the mortal tangle and struggle, you can trust that the Lord will keep His promises to you. As you rely on His words, hope brightens (D&C 50:24). He will guide you as you humbly try to forge loving family relationships. Like Sara, who yearned for a child, you can “judge him faithful who has promised” and come to know that His promises are sure (Hebrews 11:11). When fear and pain surround so many families, the Lord asks you to “exercise a particle of faith” or even just a “desire to believe” in your own divine potential (Alma 32:27). When your efforts feel wasted, Christ promises to restore the lost and mangled pieces of your life to their “proper and perfect frame” (Alma 40:23). Offer your “two mites” of righteous desire and effort, and the Savior will redeem and restore all that He has promised.30 He will give you His peace and make you whole and complete.
You are the loving fulfillment of your Heavenly Parents’ eternal procreative power. Amazingly, you also have the inherent, divine nature “to create a human body…a genetically and spiritually unique being never seen before…and never to be duplicated again…a child, your child–with eyes and ears and fingers and toes and a future of unspeakable grandeur.”31 As you press forward, look to Christ, trusting and hoping that the words He has revealed to you about your eternal family are true. As Elder Holland shared, “We all need to believe that what we desire in righteousness can someday, some way, somehow yet be ours.”32
Here are some questions to help you reflect on the Proclamation’s principles:
- How does knowing you are a child of Heavenly Parents impact your views of family?
- How can the duties and responsibilities be viewed as principles rather than rules? How does that change things?
- How can temple covenants enhance your understanding of a parent’s duties and responsibilities?
- How can the assignments, responsibilities, and obligations of the Proclamation be viewed in light of the priesthood power husbands and wives share?
- How does the principle of full and equal partnership guide your decisions?
- How does counseling together improve the success of a family?
- What can you each contribute to your family? What burdens do you each bear?
- How do the teachings of Jesus Christ improve your family relationships?
- What helpful insights have apostles and general officers provided?
Footnotes
1 The Family: A Proclamation to the World. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world?lang=eng
2 Isaiah 30:17. See also Gordon B. Hinckley, “An Ensign to the Nations, a Light to the World,” Ensign Nov. 2003.
3 Russell M. Nelson, “Choices for Eternity,” Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults, May 15, 2022.
4 David A. Bednar, “A Welding Link,” Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults, Sept. 10, 2017.
5 See Hebrews 11:40, JST. “God having provided some better things for them through their sufferings, for without sufferings they could not be made perfect.”
6 Sharon Eubank, “A Letter to a Single Sister,” Ensign, Oct. 2019.
7 Russell M. Nelson, “Pure Truth, Pure Doctrine, and Pure Revelation,” Liahona, Nov. 2021; see also D&C 123:12.
8 Nelson, Nov. 2021.
9 David A. Bednar, “Seek Learning by Faith,” Ensign, Sept. 2007.
10 David A. Bednar, “The Principles of My Gospel,” Liahona, May 2021.
11 See Teaching of Presidents: Joseph Smith, 2007, 284.
12 Richard G. Scott, “Acquiring Spiritual Knowledge,” Ensign, Nov. 1993.
13 John C. Pingree Jr., “Eternal Truth,” Liahona, Nov. 2023.
14 J. Reuben Clark, “The Charted Course of Church Education,” 1938 address.
15 Bednar, Sept. 2007.
16 Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Jesus Christ is the Strength of Youth,” Liahona, Nov. 2022.
17 Dale G. Renlund, “Choose You This Day,” Ensign, Nov. 2018.
18 General Handbook 3.5, 3.6, 2.1; Ulisses S. Soares, “In Partnership with the Lord,” Liahona, Nov. 2022.
19 General Handbook 2.1.2.
20 General Handbook 2.1.2.
21 Soares, Nov. 2022.
22 Handbook 2.1.3.
23 Handbook 2.1.3.
24 Handbook 2.1.3.
25 Soares, Nov. 2022.
26 See Soares, Nov. 2022. “One person may have a responsibility for something but may not be the only one doing it. When loving parents well understand these two major responsibilities, they will strive together to protect and care for the physical and emotional well-being of their children.”
27 D. Todd Christofferson, “Why Marriage, Why Family,” Ensign, May 2015. “No one is predestined to receive less than all that the Father has for His children.”
28 Jeffrey R. Holland, “Be Ye Therefore Perfect–Eventually,” Ensign, Nov. 2017.
29 Jeffrey R. Holland, “A Perfect Brightness of Hope,” Ensign, May 2020.
30 See Mark 12:41-44
31 Jeffrey R. Holland “Personal Purity,” Ensign, Nov. 1998, emphasis added.
32 Holland, May 2020.
Eternal Families and Same-Sex Marriage (Part 2): Families in Heaven
This article includes excerpts from The Heart of Our Covenants: Temple Principles that Draw Us unto Christ by Valiant K. Jones. Used by permission. See www.valiantjones.com or www.cedarfort.com.
While addressing the conflict between same-sex marriage concerns and Church doctrine in August of 2021, President Jeffrey R. Holland admonished the BYU community to do better in teaching our doctrine, encouraging them to find “better ways to move toward crucially important goals in these very difficult matters—ways that show empathy and understanding for everyone while maintaining loyalty to prophetic leadership and devotion to revealed doctrine.” He then spoke of a “need to define, document, and defend the faith.”[i]
This series of articles is intended as a faithful response to that request. The first three articles in this series focus primarily on “loyalty to prophetic leadership and devotion to revealed doctrine,” and the final two articles focus primarily on “ways that show empathy and understanding for everyone.”
See the previous article in this series here.
Families in Heaven
As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we often talk about the blessing of living together as families in the celestial kingdom. But how will each family unit be composed? Will families be groupings of a husband and wife living in a heavenly household with their children who are sealed to them? If so, will I live eternally as a single young man in a household led by my parents, or will my wife and I be adult parents with our children existing as youths in that eternal world? I can’t be both a single youth and a married adult at the same time. How will eternal families be organized?
Before answering this, let us look at Church teachings regarding those who die as children. The restored gospel teaches that children who die before the age of accountability will be saved through the Atonement of Jesus Christ (see D&C 29:46–47; Moroni 8). In addition, Joseph Smith taught that these children will rise in the Resurrection to be raised by their faithful parents in a family setting. Sister M. Isabella Horne told of the following experience that she witnessed while with the Prophet as he ministered to the wife of John Taylor.
Sister Horne reported, “In conversation with the Prophet Joseph Smith once in Nauvoo, the subject of children in the resurrection was broached. I believe it was in Sister Leonora Cannon Taylor’s house. She had just lost one of her children, and I had also lost one previously. The Prophet wanted to comfort us, and he told us that we should receive those children in the morning of the resurrection just as we laid them down, in purity and innocence, and we should nourish and care for them as their mothers. He said that children would be raised in the resurrection just as they were laid down, and that they would obtain all the intelligence necessary to occupy thrones, principalities and powers. The idea that I got from what he said was that the children would grow and develop in the Millennium, and that the mothers would have the pleasure of training and caring for them, which they had been deprived of in this life.”[ii]
We presume that deceased children of parents who do not qualify to come forth in the morning of the First Resurrection to raise their children will be raised by suitable, worthy surrogate parents. Regardless, after these children have grown to maturity, they will be given all the opportunities of the faithful who lived longer lives on earth.
President Lorenzo Snow taught, “There is no Latter-day Saint who dies after having lived a faithful life who will lose anything because of having failed to do certain things when opportunities were not furnished him or her. In other words, if a young man or a young woman has no opportunity of getting married, and they live faithful lives up to the time of their death, they will have all the blessings, exaltation and glory that any man or woman will have who had this opportunity and improved it. That is sure and positive.”[iii]
This truth applies equally to those who die in their infancy as well as to those who die after the age of accountability. President Joseph F. Smith taught, “Our beloved friends who are now deprived of their little one, have great cause for joy and rejoicing, even in the midst of the deep sorrow that they feel at the loss of their little one for a time. . . . Such children are in the bosom of the Father. They will inherit their glory and their exaltation, and they will not be deprived of the blessings that belong to them; for, . . . all that could have been obtained and enjoyed by them if they had been permitted to live in the flesh will be provided for them hereafter. They will lose nothing by being taken away from us in this way.”[iv]
So those who die young will be resurrected during the Millennium at the same age at which they died, and they will be raised in a family setting by resurrected parents. After they mature, such children will have the opportunity to find a companion and receive eternal marriage and all the blessings of exaltation.
Those who die when they are older will be transformed into perfect bodies when they are resurrected. Amulek described the ultimate state of our resurrected bodies, saying that in the Resurrection, “the spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; . . . every thing shall be restored to its perfect frame” (Alma 11:43–44). Alma similarly taught that in the Resurrection, “all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame” (Alma 40:23). President Dallin H. Oaks described this ultimate resurrected state as being “in the prime of life.”[v] So in the end, everyone, whether they died as children or as aged adults, will have eternal bodies that appear to be about the same age.
Now let us return to the question of what will constitute a nuclear family unit for eternity in the celestial kingdom, after the Millennium has passed. Such families will necessarily be comprised of only a husband and wife plus any of their children sealed to them but who, for whatever reason, are not themselves sealed to an eternal companion. Likely these single children who are heirs to celestial glory will be relatively few in number, given the statements above assuring that no righteous person will be denied any desired blessing, and they will serve their families as ministering angels (see D&C 132:16). Other worthy earthly offspring of each couple who are themselves sealed eternally to a spouse will form their own separate family unit. Each couple is linked to other couples through sealing bonds, but at the nucleus of most eternal family units in the celestial kingdom, there will be only a husband and a wife. This nucleus will be added to as the couple perpetuates eternal offspring, but it will begin with only a husband and a wife.
Until a few years ago, my aged parents were both alive, and they lived independently as a couple. My siblings and I had also reached the age where most of us were “empty nesters.” Although our children were just beginning to raise their own offspring, the older two generations were comfortable living only as couples. When children leave the nest, each couple remains an independent family unit even though they are linked to their parents and to their children and grandchildren. In modern times, technology makes it possible for us to maintain loving communication and have influence with all the other families we are connected to. This is similar to how families will be constituted in the celestial kingdom. We will initially be mostly couples linked to other couples. Add to this the additional blessing and complexity that each covenant husband and wife comes from a separate family, each with its own network of sealing bonds, and we see that the eternal family network is bounteous and strong, with connecting links in many directions.
Imagine a three-dimensional net.[vi] Each knot in the net is a married couple, and they are linked in multiple directions to many other knots: to the husband’s parents, to the wife’s parents, and to each of their own children who themselves have spouses. Each of these pairs is likewise connected to similar knots formed by eternal sealings in other directions. The sealing ordinances also connect each person to our heavenly parents and to Jesus Christ. This is why we should not be worried about eternal family bonds if our parents get divorced and are later sealed to someone new—it just means we have more couples we are connected to. Likewise, we should not worry if parents or other ancestors have not lived true to their covenants and therefore are not included in the net. No faithful person is left dangling. All who keep their covenants are bound by so many ligatures in so many directions that their covenant belonging is secure. We who are sealed by covenant ceremonies in holy temples of God on earth will be bound by a network of eternal covenant connections in heaven.
Again, the knots at each locus in this celestial family network will be formed by couples, sealed together for eternity in the new and everlasting covenant of marriage, and the connections between them will be formed by sealings between parents and children. The promised innumerable seed that will come to these eternal family couples will be spirit offspring that will emanate from them after these couples progress further and have established their own eternal kingdoms.
This family network organization will be led by our first parents, Adam and Eve. And prominent in leadership among all the couples will be Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob along with their wives. These ancient patriarchs and matriarchs form the model for fulfillment of the promises given to all couples who are sealed for eternity in the holy temples of God.
The Abrahamic Blessing of Posterity or Seed
The scriptures are replete with promises of fruit and seed both in this life and in the next. God promised Abraham, “I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore” (Genesis 22:17). The blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are likewise promised to us when we are sealed as husband and wife in the temple.
Fruit and seed are instructive euphemisms. In the plant world, fruit and seed cannot form if the plant’s flowers are not pollinated by another plant or another part of the plant. I remember learning in my high school biology class that these different plant parts are designated maleorfemale.
Consider the following scholastic description: “Flowers are how plants produce seeds to reproduce. In many cases, the flower contains male and female parts, roughly equivalent to the male and female sexes of animals. The male parts of the flower are called the stamens and are made up of the anther at the top and the stalk or filament that supports the anther. The female elements are collectively called the pistil. The top of the pistil is called the stigma, which is a sticky surface receptive to pollen. The bottom of the pistil contains the ovary and the narrowed region in between is called the style. The male contribution or pollen is produced in the anther, and seeds develop in the ovary. Many of the fruits we eat are the thickened ovary walls surrounding the seeds.”[vii]
So the use of fruit and seed in the scriptures to imply the offspring of sexual fertilization has a basis in biology. Elder Milton R. Hunter taught: “The Prophet Joseph Smith explained that this continuation of ‘the seeds’ forever and ever, meant the power of procreation; in other words, the power to beget spirit children on the same principle as we were born to our heavenly parents, God the Eternal Father and our Eternal Mother. Therefore, a man cannot receive the highest exaltation without a woman, his wife, nor can a woman be exalted without her husband (1 Corinthians 11:11). That is the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the plan of salvation.”[viii]
The Bible is anchored in stories about families, each formed by the marriage of a man and a woman. It begins with the story of the formation of the first family through Adam and Eve. We also learn of Noah and his wife and family that repeopled the earth after the flood. We are then introduced to Abraham, the father of many nations, and his wife Sarah. The covenant promises to Abraham could only be fulfilled with Sarah. Likewise, there could be no greatness in Isaac without Rebekah and no fulfillment of covenant blessings for Jacob without his wives.
Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote, “Every person married in the temple for time and for all eternity has sealed upon him, conditioned upon his faithfulness, all of the blessings of the ancient patriarchs.”[ix] These are the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These are the blessings of being heirs of the Abrahamic covenant. This covenant includes promises of posterity, priesthood, and a promised land along with the blessings of prosperity and exaltation in the presence of God eternally. However, it is important to recognize that these promises will be fulfilled in their fulness only after the Resurrection and only for those who qualify for the highest level of the celestial kingdom. There, each couple will be blessed with posterity as numerous as the sands of the seas or the stars of the heavens. There, each couple will enjoy the blessings of priesthood power together. There, each couple will inherit their own prosperous eternal promised land and kingdom. There, each couple will experience the joy of exaltation under the tutelage of our heavenly parents as we emulate their godly ways.
Brigham Young taught, “The Lord has blessed us with the ability to enjoy an eternal life with the Gods, and this is pronounced the greatest gift of God. The . . . Lord has bestowed on us the privilege of becoming fathers [and mothers] of lives. What is a father of lives as mentioned in the Scriptures? A man who has a posterity to an eternal continuance. That is the blessing Abraham received, and it perfectly satisfied his soul. He obtained the promise that he should be the father of lives.”[x] Likewise, Sarah became the mother of lives.
Taken together, the ordinances that we receive in the temple point us toward eternal marriage and the fulfillment of the blessings of the ancient patriarchs. The temple ordinances are a continuum that prepares us for exaltation as gods and goddesses. In the initiatory ordinances, we are washed and anointed and given promises that point toward eternal marriage. In the endowment, we enter into holy covenants whose purposes are to perfect us and make us godly. These covenants also become the core of our marriage covenants. And in the marriage sealing ceremony itself, we are bestowed the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Joseph Smith revealed the desired outcome of these ordinances: “And they shall pass by the angels, and the gods, which are set there, to their exaltation and glory in all things, as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever. Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue” (D&C 132:19–20).
We should remember the purpose of the blessings promised in the temple. President John Taylor said, “Have you forgotten who you are, and what your object is? Have you forgotten that you profess to be Saints of the Most High God, clothed upon with the holy priesthood? Have you forgotten that you are aiming to become kings and priests to the Lord, and queens and priestesses to him?”[xi]
President Joseph Fielding Smith added, “The main purpose for our mortal existence is that we might obtain tabernacles of flesh and bones for our spirits that we might advance after the resurrection to the fulness of the blessings which the Lord has promised to those who are faithful. They have been promised that they shall become sons and daughters of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ, and if they have been true to the commandments and covenants the Lord has given us, to be kings and priests and queens and priestesses, possessing the fulness of the blessings of the celestial kingdom.”[xii]
The stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their wives demonstrate that women matter and therefore gender matters. The promises to the ancient prophets could not be fulfilled without their covenant wives. It is the same for us. In the highest level of the celestial kingdom, there will be no king without his queen, no priest without his priestess, no god without his goddess. If the Church were to eliminate the need for gender distinctions, this would diminish the eternal role of women. This will never happen. As President Russell M. Nelson has said, “The kingdom of God is not and cannot be complete without women who make sacred covenants and then keep them.”[xiii]
Besides the biological necessity of joining male and female for procreation, the combination of the two sexes in marriage joins two different but complementary natures that can only become whole and complete when sealed together as one in eternal union. Elder Bruce D. Porter said, “The differences between men and women are not simply biological. They are woven into the fabric of the universe, a vital, foundational element of eternal life and divine nature.”[xiv] Both are needed. President Henry B. Eyring demonstrated this when he said, referring to the complementary relationship he had with his wife, Kathleen, “Our differences combined as if they were designed to create a better whole.”[xv]
Elder David A. Bednar elaborated on this topic: “The natures of male and female spirits complete and perfect each other, and therefore men and women are intended to progress together toward exaltation. . . . For divine purposes, male and female spirits are different, distinctive, and complementary.
“After the earth was created, Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden. Importantly, however, God said it was “not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18; Moses 3:18), and Eve became Adam’s companion and helpmeet. The unique combination of spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional capacities of both males and females were needed to implement the plan of happiness. Alone, neither the man nor the woman could fulfill the purposes of his or her creation.
“By divine design, men and women are intended to progress together toward perfection and a fulness of glory. Because of their distinctive temperaments and capacities, males and females each bring to a marriage relationship unique perspectives and experiences. The man and the woman contribute differently but equally to a oneness and a unity that can be achieved in no other way. The man completes and perfects the woman, and the woman completes and perfects the man as they learn from and mutually strengthen and bless each other.”[xvi]
The divine feminine can be found in ancient scripture, often associated with such characteristics as wisdom, spirit, mercy, compassion, and love,[xvii] whereas the divine masculine is sometimes associated with companion attributes such as knowledge, strength, justice, vengeance, and law. These are balancing characteristics. Both natures are needed to complete the whole. Elder D. Todd Christofferson taught, “It is [God] who in the beginning created Adam and Eve in His image, male and female, and joined them as husband and wife to become ‘one flesh’ and to multiply and replenish the earth. Each individual carries the divine image, but it is in the matrimonial union of male and female as one that we attain perhaps the most complete meaning of our having been made in the image of God—male and female.”[xviii]
We have both a Heavenly Mother and a Heavenly Father who are cocreators of our spirits. This is likely the reason we read in the Creation story, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26; emphasis added). In ancient Semitic languages, El refers to God, and its plural form in the Hebrew language is Elohim. When we hear this plural name, we may wonder if our Father in Heaven is subtly trying to tell us that He is not alone. Perhaps Elohim is a name that signifies the Entity that is our Heavenly Father united with our Heavenly Mother. Only together are they a complete God—male and female—and it will be the same in eternity for all who attain exaltation.
Elder Erastus Snow elaborated on the necessity of both male and female in Deity: “If I believe anything that God has ever said about himself, and anything pertaining to the creation and organization of man upon the earth, I must believe that Deity consists of man and woman. . . . I sometimes illustrate this matter by taking up a pair of shears, if I have one, but then you all know they are composed of two halves, but they are necessarily parts, one of another, and to perform their work for each other, as designed, they belong together, and neither one of them is fitted for the accomplishment of their works alone. And for this reason says St. Paul, “the man is not without the woman, nor the woman without the man in the Lord.” In other words, there can be no God except he is composed of the man and woman united, and there is not in all the eternities that exist, nor ever will be, a God in any other way. I have another description: There never was a God, and there never will be in all eternities, except they are made of these two component parts; a man and a woman; the male and the female.”[xix]
Paul’s seminal statement on marriage, “Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:11), is true both in earth life and in exaltation. Only in the union of the two sexes can be found the best family environment on earth and the only exalted family arrangement in heaven. President Nelson said, “No man in this Church can obtain the highest degree of celestial glory without a worthy woman who is sealed to him. This temple ordinance enables eventual exaltation for both of them In God’s eternal plan, salvation is an individual matter; exaltation is a family matter.”[xx]
The divine role of women alongside men is critical in our beliefs. Our doctrine takes the sectarian view of Mother Eve and flips it on its head. Other traditions denigrate all women because Eve was the first to transgress a commandment from God, but we see her differently. Although we acknowledge that Eve was beguiled and thus needed a Savior, we also see her as a wise woman who came to recognize a greater purpose in her choice to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. She realized that this was the only way to learn the attributes of godhood and to fulfill the first commandment of God to multiply and replenish the earth (see Moses 5:11). We honor her for her choice, which opened the door for the rest of us to come to earth, making her the mother of all living. She was a full partner with Adam, combining her unique characteristics with his, strengthening them together as one united whole. It will be the same for all exalted couples in the celestial kingdom where male and female couples will live forever, united as one.
To be continued…
Valiant K. Jones is the author of The Heart of Our Covenants: Temple Principles that Draw Us unto Christ. For more information, see www.valiantjones.com or www.cedarfort.com.
[i] Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Second Half of the Second Century of Brigham Young University,” ibid.
[ii] History of the Church, 4:556, footnote 7; emphasis added.
[iii] Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Lorenzo Snow (2012), 130.
[iv] Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph F. Smith (2011), 129.
[v] Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph F. Smith (2011), 129.
[vi] Think of several nets layered on top of one another, with connections in both vertical and horizontal directions.
[vii] “Africanized Honey Bees on the Move Lesson Plans | Information Sheet: 9 Parts of Flowers,” The University of Arizona, accessed July 11, 2022, https:// cales.arizona.edu/pubs/insects/ahb/inf9.html.
[viii] Milton R. Hunter, in Conference Report, Apr. 1949, 71.
[ix] Bruce R. McConkie, The Millennial Messiah: The Second Coming of the Son of Man (Deseret Book, 1982), 264.
[x] Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young (1997), 89.
[xi] John Taylor, The Gospel Kingdom: Selections from the Writings and Discourses of John Taylor, Third President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, ed. G. Homer Durham (Deseret Book, 2002), 229–230.
[xii] Joseph Fielding Smith, Answers to Gospel Questions, 4:61.
[xiii] Russell M. Nelson, “A Plea to My Sisters,” Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2015, 96.
[xiv] Bruce D. Porter, “Defending the Family in a Troubled World,” Ensign, June 2011, 13.
[xv] Henry B. Eyring , “Transcript: President Eyring Addresses the Vatican Summit on Marriage” (given Nov. 18, 2014), newsroom.ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
[xvi] David A. Bednar, “Marriage Is Essential to His Eternal Plan,” Ensign, June 2006, 83–85.
[xvii] See FAIR – Faithful Answers, “The Mother in Heaven and Her Children – Margaret Barker – 2015 Fair Mormon Conference,” YouTube, Sept. 3, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilF9NXEl6Xs&t=2860s; The Stick of Joseph, “Margaret Barker | Solomon’s Temple, Isaiah, and The Divine Feminine,” YouTube, Aug. 18, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=44ruz-_KjAM&t=3434s.
[xviii] D. Todd Christofferson, “Why Marriage, Why Family,” Ensign or Liahona, May 2015, 52.
[xix] Erastus Snow, in Journal of Discourses, 19:269–70.
[xx] Russell M. Nelson, “Salvation and Exaltation,” Ensign or Liahona, May 2008, 9–10.
Have We Lost the “Family Brand?
The Shrinking Section and the Shrinking Emphasis
I walked into the downtown, across-from-temple, Salt Lake Deseret Book flagship store this week (like many authors, Linda and I used to walk into bookstores all the time just to see how many copies they had of our parenting and family books and how they were displayed—we don’t do that much anymore, now that most books are sold on Amazon or DeseretBook.com or other places online.)
But this time when I walked into Deseret Book, I could not even find the family or parenting section, so I asked a young employee. He showed me, at the back and on the bottom of a generic “non-fiction” section, a single-shelf sub-section labeled “Marriage” and on the shelf just above it was another tiny label: “Family and Parenting.”
I asked the employee, who looked to be an earnest young father, why the once-large family sections had shrunk to a couple of shelves. His reply was interesting. He said something like “I don’t know, it seems like in this Church those should be our biggest sections, front and center!”
I supported his argument by telling him that most big box bookstores like Barnes and Noble do still have a prominent section on family/marriage/parenting. How can it be, we both wondered, that this incredibly family-focused Church of ours seems to be, at least in its publishing, downsizing on family even as the larger world feels an increasing need?
I have peddled that question around a bit, to Church and publishing leaders, and I get answers like “Parenting and Family books don’t sell like they used to,” and “Parents get their help from blogs and short social media posts and podcasts these days, not from books.”
As a writer of parenting and work/family balance books, and as a devoted member of the Church with by far the most familycentric theology in all of Christianity, you will understand why I have concerns as I watch the emphasis on both doctrinal and practical family topics wane.
“Themes” in General Conference and our “Brand” in the World
But let’s not measure emphasis just by books—the mention of “family” has also declined in General Conference talks, and related words like “homemaking” or “parenting” have almost disappeared.
And Church advertising and public relations efforts no longer aim nearly so much at family images and messages. We may not particularly like the idea of the Church having a “brand,” but the idea of being known far and wide as a Church that focuses, both spiritually and practically, on family relationships and commitments is, at every level, a very good thing.
You may remember, as I do, some past General Conferences where it seemed as though every address was directly or indirectly about family, eternal family, family exaltation, marriage, parenting, or the sanctity and priority of home. And if you are 40 or over, you can remember when the Church pretty much owned the Family “brand” in most of the world—those were the days of Homefront advertising spots and seemingly constant PR and earned media efforts (and even the programing on BYU radio and TV) all prioritizing and focusing on family. Linda and I, for years, hosted a weekly BYUTV show called “Families are Forever”
In today’s world, we understand Church leaders’ reticence to focus too much on marriage and children when half of the adult membership of the Church is single. No one wants to appear to focus only on half of the Church, or to polarize those “without families” from those “with.”
But that suggests the very point we should be making: No one is without family—we are all part of, and play various roles in earthly families, be it son or daughter, cousin, uncle or aunt, or parent or spouse; and we are assured of the chance to play all of those roles either in mortal or spirit world circumstances.
And we are all—every one of us—eternal and equal members of the family of our Heavenly Parents.
One might wonder if decreasing marriage and births rates in the Church are the cause or the result of leaders talking less about those topics.
What was the Prime Focus of the Early Restoration?
Conceptually, what may most distinguish the Restored Gospel from all other Christianity is the revealed truth of literal Heavenly Parents and the two-way eternity we share with Them, within which we progress toward the goal of a familycentric exaltation via the plan of Christ (His Atonement, His Church, His Priesthood and His Covenants.)
President Oaks said it perfectly, “Our theology begins with Heavenly Parents and our greatest aspiration is to be like Them.”
And no goal is more natural than this, because we are already like Them in that we are Their children, we have Their spiritual genetics. Unlike the “fallen man” perspective of other Christian faiths, we see ourselves as the literal offspring of God, thus growing more like Him is not about reversing but about fulfilling our natures.
When asked what the Restoration was all about, many would rightly say that it was about Christ and His Church. And while that is certainly true, and without question the Restoration amplifies and expands our personal understanding of Christ and our relationship with and dependence on Him as the glorious and indispensable means of our salvation; perhaps an even larger share of latter-day revelation focuses on our Heavenly Parents’ plan of Happiness, and on the end of exaltation (not really the end since there is no end, but the end defined as the goal and destination of the plan) wherein we are like Them with both eternal life and eternal lives.
Perhaps the proportions of what was restored reflects directly on what was lost, and the chief casualty of the Apostasy was the knowledge of our relationship to our Parental God and our capacity to grow like Him. Without this, man views himself fallen and separated rather than endowed and connected; and we are left with a limited vision of a one-way eternity with binary destinations of heaven’s rest or hell’s torment.
This incomplete and disheartening view diminishes God’s “work and glory” (His goal to bring to pass our immortality and Eternal Lives) and cannot comprehend or enjoy the fullness of His plan.
Plans are meaningful only when they lead to a goal, and conversely, when goals are unclear, plans can lose their destination and their power. Of course, this can never happen to God’s goal or plan, nor can it happen in the macro of His Prophet-guided Church, but it can happen in the micro to our individual perceptions or understanding of how the two (God’s goal and plan) fit together.
The Restoration—both its purpose and its content—makes the greatest sense when we view it through the inclusive, eternal familycentric lens of God’s end (or glory or goal) for us, which is Exaltation; and His means (or enabling plan or path or guide) which is the Savior’s Atonement, Priesthood, Covenants, and Church.
So, in the simplest vernacular, the destination is Eternal Family, and the path is Eternal Jesus.
The goal is not more important than the plan, nor the plan than the goal. They are inseparably intertwined; they exist together and constitute what God called His Work and Glory.
Perceptions, Statistics, and Pendulums
The most accurate perception that we as members of His Church can have of ourselves is as children of our Heavenly Parents pursuing Their goal for us through the plan which They have provided for us; all made possible by Christ and His Atonement, Covenants, and Church.
And the best perception that others could have of us is the same.
In this context, the two things we should teach and talk about most are Eternal Family and Eternal Jesus
And we do! Those are, from General Conference to Ward meetings to Church Publications, the two most emphasized elements of our faith. But sometimes we might ponder and evaluate the balance between the two, because if the focus, or our perception of it, swings too far toward one at the expense of the other, the power of both can be undermined.
There have been General Conferences—perhaps peaking about a decade ago—where it seemed that every address was about family, either the priority of family life, the doctrines of eternal marriage or eternal parenting, the emulation of Heavenly Parents, or the practical skills needed to make families stronger; and where it seemed that Christ or His Atonement or our worship of Him was mentioned only in passing.
This latest Conference, as part of a wonderful recent trend, was the reverse. It seemed that every talk focused directly or primarily on Jesus and on worshiping Him and following Him; and references to Heavenly Parents or family, let alone full messages on their preeminent importance or on how to do more or be better within them, were scarce.
This graph from BYU Studies Quarterly (vol.62 Issue 4 Article 8 2023) illustrates the point: The beautiful and current sharp rise in mentions of Jesus Christ in General Conference began about a decade ago and is accompanied by a decline in the mention of family.
This graph reveals a striking rise in mentions of Jesus Christ in recent General Conference talks—and a simultaneous decline in focus on family, parenting, and covenants. As Richard Eyre asks, can we regain the balance between the plan and the goal, between Eternal Jesus and Eternal Family?
My faith in the Prophets who guide this Church leads me to believe that the balance of emphasis on Eternal Family and Eternal Jesus will continually reconcile and restore, but my concern is whether we as individual Church members will grasp the importance of that balance and seek it in our own personal lives.
Because when the focus on eternal family fades, there are ramifications culturally and societally as well as spiritually. Even when Christ is the main emphasis, if it is interpreted as an individual rather than a family focus, the danger is that we begin to view the individual as the basic unit of culture and society as well as of religion and faith, which produces very different outcomes than when family is perceived as the basic unit. Paradigms where the individual is the basic unit drift toward selfishness and isolation while conceptions of family as the basic unit encourage stewardship, sacrifice, and connectivity.
Over-focus on the individual may even give people the false notion that they can achieve exaltation on their own, ignoring President Nelson warning that “salvation is an individual matter, but exaltation is a family matter”. (And of course the correct kind of family focus leaves no one out, since we are all part of earthly families and of God’s family; and will all have opportunity for marriage and children of our own either here or in the Spirit World to come.)
Yet conversely, if the core-message pendulum were to swing too far back to Eternal Family, at the expense of Eternal Christ, (while we might re-gain the image and “brand” of family that we enjoyed for decades but have now largely lost) we could be perceived, (or begin to perceive ourselves) as examples of family priority and commitment, but not necessarily with that family focus connected to our complete dependence on Christ in all things, both personal and family.
Not Either, but Both…and the Big Picture
The beautiful and simple reality, of course, is that family, no matter how committed, is not eternal without Christ, and that worship and followership of Jesus, no matter how earnest, is not eternal in His presence without family. Just as Jesus is inseparably connected to His (and our) Heavenly Parents, so They, and we, are inseparable from Their Son and our Savior Jesus Christ. The means are within the end, and the end is within the means. The goal requires the plan, and the plan requires the goal.
If we try to expand our paradigm to what we can imagine as God’s level, we can think even beyond the balance of these two priorities for and among the 17 million souls within the Church; and try to understand that the whole world needs, perhaps as never before, an example and a catalyst to pull it toward full belief and commitment to both Eternal Christ and Eternal Family. We are the only institution on earth with the awareness, the perspective, the wherewithal and the prophesized destiny to be that example and catalyst.
And to zoom that lens out even further and respond directly to President Nelson’s ever-more- frequent references and urges to prepare for the Second Coming, we can surmise that the two things that will “hasten the day” are the sufficient presence (both in the church and in the world) of belief in and commitment to both Eternal Christ and Eternal Family.
Feedback and Conclusion
As most Meridian Readers know, I have a group of “collaborators”—good friends who I ask to review and give me feedback on almost everything I write. On this article, their input was so good that I want to quote directly from some of them—simply because they say it better than I could, and because I feel that their comments complete and conclude what I want to say.
About the balance needed between our focus on Christ and on the Eternal Family, one good friend said:
It seems to me that rarely do we achieve a proper balance of most anything initially. We swing like a pendulum from one side to the other in an ever-moving back and forth. Perhaps we are off center to one side right now, ripe and ready for movement back to the middle on the balance of airtime between Family and Christ. Thanks to your observation, I will be watching with tutored interest to see if that balance shifts back the other direction.
Another very close friend clarified,
…searches on the word family don’t necessarily reflect what’s been spoken about in general conference. How often are the stories that are told about the speaker’s children or spouse? that constitutes talking about families. Also, Come Follow Me represents a huge emphasis on the family.
And then added,
I like this phrase a lot—”So, in the simplest vernacular, the end is Eternal Family, and the means is Eternal Jesus.”
And a third long-time friend tried to correct my perspective very gently:
My first reaction is that many members of our Church have taken on the worldly view of family – fewer kids and focusing on our self-fulfillment. They aren’t really interested in books on parenting and families, but then again for those that are, there are tons of podcasts that take the place of books…Women think they now live in an enlightened time when they can be more than mothers.I think that as the Church leaders have seen so many people struggle to stay in the Church, these leaders have received divine revelation that the only way to save marriages and families is to have every individual focus on Christ and get a personal relationship with Him. Not only will people get stronger testimonies, but they will be better parents. And… the only way their children will grow up and stay in the Church is to have a personal, strong, testimony of their own with their own personal spiritual experiences. Then when everyone is centered on Christ, their goal of being an eternal family will come to be.
And one of my own sons had a similar view,
I feel like the prioritization of Christ over all things makes all things stronger including (and maybe especially) families. In the prioritization of Christ – because He is the means – we overcome, we connect, we forgive, we lift and we love more…I think that is part of the majestic power of the atonement and the focus on Christ – that it has the very real power to improve, redeem and overcome everything including (and again maybe especially) family challenges…I certainly don’t want to undermine the hugely important (and intense) need that we have for practical family improvement ideas and effort. I just think those are magnified by, and often can be created by, a focus on Christ… Maybe what I am trying to say is that I completely agree that the means is Christ and the end is exhalation and eternal family, and that exhalation is a family matter. And I wonder if a focus on The Means is the way to both get there and strengthen families here.
I pushed back a little on what my son said—and maybe subconsciously on what that third friend had commented—and wrote back saying:
I do agree that if someone is fully in tune with the Spirit of Christ they will be drawn toward relationships and commitments. Yet it is possible to be completely devoted to Christ as an individual and not necessarily moved toward family or the idea of family exaltation. Think of Catholic nuns or priests who essentially “marry” Christ and make that their single and crowning relationship and commitment at the expense of ever having families.
Usually in life, it is our GOAL that moves us toward finding a PLAN. (We want to get to a certain “end”, which causes us to look for the “means” to get there.)
In the Gospel, if we are taught to strive for the goal of exaltation, it is almost certain that that pursuit will inevitably bring us to the plan or means of Christ. The reverse may not always be true in life. Someone with a plan will not automatically know the goal it is leading toward. Thus no matter how committed someone is to Christ, it may not inevitably reveal to him the goal of exaltation.
Of course the best of all worlds is the balanced and connected and synergistic relation of the end and the means–each not complete without the other—thus perhaps the best conference would be one where exaltation and connected, covenanted family was equally prominent with Christ and His atonement and example and Church.
But I had to “think-again” when one of our daughters responded:
I for one, am overjoyed that they are focusing more on Jesus. As someone who has yearned for more Jesus in the temple, more Jesus in Easter sacrament programs, more Jesus in every lesson in the church, this is salve to my soul. To me, like my brother said, everything good comes when we focus on Jesus, even strong families. We are able to fix family relationships because of Jesus. We are able to understand that we are ALL in God’s actual family because of Jesus.
So, for what it is worth, after all was said and done, and as I, still thinking, sent this article off to Meridian, I was at this conclusion:
Neither the “goal” of Eternal Family as exemplified by our Heavenly Parents; nor the “plan” of Eternal Jesus implemented by His life, sacrifice and Church—should ever compete with or rob from the other. If one is emphasized at the expense of the other, we may miss the big picture and the joy of the full, heavenly perspective.
Richard Eyre, a frequent Meridian contributor, is a New York Times #1 Bestselling Author with more than 50 books in print. His new online course HOW TO LIVE the Second Half of Life is described at https://valuesparenting.com/how-to-live/
Your Hardest Family Question: How do we deal with a difficult sibling?
Question
I have a sister who went through her second divorce over a year ago and has now moved in with my parents. Because she lived out of state with this last marriage, we only saw her at family functions. Since her divorce, she has become negative, mean, and judgmental. Unless she was faking before, she doesn’t seem like her old self. If someone tries to help her, she berates them and tells them to stay out of her business. At the same time, she complains to our mom that no one supports her. She is so hard to be around. She has a bad temper and you don’t want her wrath or to cross her. I can’t know what pain she has been going through, but to bring wrath upon those who want to help doesn’t make sense. All of us siblings are confused what to do. Should we continue to take chances with her wrath or step away?
Answer
The fact that you’re writing about how to cope with your sister’s difficult behavior tells me that you care about her and having a relationship with her. Otherwise, you would cut her off and not look back. Let’s talk about how you can build a relationship with her.
I think it’s fair to say that you don’t really know your sister. She’s lived away from you for years and you aren’t sure if this current version of her is her true self or if she’s just in a horrible place following her second divorce. Regardless of the answer, it would be wise to get to know who she is and how you might best fit into her life.
She most likely feels like she’s living in a fishbowl now that she’s living with your parents following her divorce. Her embarrassing information is on display for everyone, so it’s likely she’s feeling defensive. Even if she was a difficult person before her divorce, this recent loss will most certainly amplify her personal weaknesses.
Don’t treat her like a project that needs fixing. In other words, don’t only talk with her about her current situation. See if there are ways you can spend time with her just to visit. Granted, she may want to talk about her current stressors, which is fine, but let her know you’re available for more than just prying into her personal struggles.
If she’s not open to spending time with you, find out what she’s open to. You may be limited to little things like writing a note every so often or sending a text occasionally. However, if your heart is right and you really want to build a relationship with your sister, your efforts won’t be wasted, even if she is responding poorly. True love and compassion is a choice, not just a feeling. You are making the choice to love her, even if she’s difficult. And, if she’s really that hard to get along with, then it will most certainly be a choice on your part, as the feelings of love won’t spring naturally from your heart when she’s being aggressive.
You’ve probably heard the saying, “hurt people hurt people.” Perhaps this can give you a little compassion for your sister as you can approach her with a desire to have a relationship with her. President Spencer W. Kimball taught the following about how we should respond to those who struggle:
Jesus saw sin as wrong but also was able to see sin as springing from deep and unmet needs on the part of the sinner. This permitted him to condemn the sin without condemning the individual. We need to be able to look deeply enough into the lives of others to see the basic causes for their failures and shortcomings.[i]
I have no idea if she’ll respond to you or your siblings. She may stay closed off and distant. If that’s the case, find how you can fit into her life and let her know you’re interested in her as an individual and that she’s important to you. She may not believe it, but if you believe it, I trust she’ll eventually warm up to your persistent efforts to connect to her.
Geoff will answer a new family and relationship question every Friday. You can email your question to him at [email protected]
About the Author
Geoff Steurer is a licensed marriage and family therapist in St. George, UT. He is the owner of Alliant Counseling and Education (www.alliantcounseling.com) and the founding director of LifeStar of St. George, an outpatient treatment program for couples and individuals impacted by pornography and sexual addiction (www.lifestarstgeorge.com). He is the co-author of “Love You, Hate the Porn: Healing a Relationship Damaged by Virtual Infidelity”, available at Deseret Book, and the audio series “Strengthening Recovery Through Strengthening Marriage”, available at www.marriage-recovery.com. He also writes a weekly relationship column for the St. George News (www.stgnews.com). He holds a bachelors degree from BYU in communications studies and a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy from Auburn University. He served a full-time mission to the Dominican Republic and currently serves on the high council of the St. George, Utah young single adult second stake. He is married to Jody Young Steurer and they are the parents of four children.
You can connect with him at:
Website: www.lovingmarriage.com
Twitter: @geoffsteurer
Facebook: www.facebook.com/GeoffSteurerMFT
[i] https://www.lds.org/ensign/print/1979/08/jesus-the-perfect-leader?lang=eng&clang=eng
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