Familycentric

Editor’s Note:  We are pleased to present this once-a-week, all-summer-long series of familycentric essays from Richard Eyre. This is Essay 6 in the series.  As most Meridian readers know, the Eyres, for five decades, have focused their professional lives on strengthening families.  This focus has ranged from writing New York Times #1 bestselling books to speaking to parents in more than 60 countries around the globe.  But their true passion is for an Inclusive, Eternal Family Paradigm that can’t be fully shared or grasped without the insights of the Restored Gospel. And they feel that the reverse of that is also true:  The Restored Gospel can’t be fully grasped or shared until it is seen through an Inclusive, Eternal Family Lens.  The goal of this series of essays is to better understand and have more realistic expectations of both Church and Family. And “family” is broadly defined so that each article speaks to us all, whether we are single or married, parents or siblings, aunts and uncles or grandparents. To read the introductory essay, please click here,  essay 2 here,  essay 3 here,  essay 4 here,  and essay 5 here.  

Author’s Note: Today’s essay brings us to the midpoint of this series.  In next weekend’s article, we will summarize the first 6 essays, preview the final 6, and give an overview of how they sequence and add up to a familycentric lens through which to view the Gospel and the Church. As always, you are invited to send any feedback or comments to me privately at my pseudonym email [email protected] where I will read and respond.

Two of our most useful writing symbols are the versus (v. or vs.) and the ampersand (&). I’m intrigued with them because they represent two entirely different and often opposite paradigms. “Ampersand” means “and” and tends to pull things (or people) together.  “Versus” means in competition or contrast with—and tends to push things (or people) apart.

Ampersands are commonly seen in business names or partnerships of two or more people, like Johnson & Johnson or Marks & Spencer; or in business terms like P&L (profit and loss) or R&D (research and development).  I particularly like it when they are used in arts or leisure, like R&B for rhythm and blues or B&B for bed and breakfast. Wherever they are used, ampersands suggest mutual support, or companionship, or working together, and they often signify synergy, where the total is greater than the sum of its parts.  They usually imply some kind of win-win situation or combination. Ampersands have a certain graphic beauty, and can be written in a number of different ways:

Versus (Vs. or v.) are even more ubiquitous.  We see them in sports, like the Red Sox vs. the Yankees, or in legal cases, like Trump v. United States, or in comparisons, like single vs married lifestyles. Vs. suggests or encourages comparisons and often judgments, and sets everything up as win-lose. Versus is often written or logo-ized as two things pulling in opposite directions.  America may lead the world in versus—we seem more divided every year, and even in sports we don’t even allow ties except in hockey and soccer which came from elsewhere. Someone, it seems, has to win, and someone has to lose.

Now, as those who know me would attest, I like the v. in sports and in competition, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could confine the v. to games and minimize it or eliminate it altogether in politics and in human relationships?

But that would take a miracle, because it seems that, today, we live in a V. world of constant score-keeping and comparing and competing—a polarized world where we feel we have to take sides, and the complementarianism of the ampersand can seem distant and difficult even to imagine.  It’s hard to contemplate a debate where Trump says to Biden, “such a good point Joe, let’s build on our agreement on that,” or a big headline reading “Biden and Trump Respectfully Agree on Most Points.”

Today, even “equality” is more a V word than a & word, because we keep score and compete, or we theoretically try to manipulate things so that no one has more of anything than someone else, and this misplaced desire for a win-win sameness turns everything into a win-lose contest.

Personal Story

My undergraduate major was political science, and I had a wonderful summer internship in the Washington office of U.S. Senator Wallace Bennett.  The Senate was so different then.  It had moderates like Percy of Illinois and Brooke of Massachusetts and Mathias of Maryland.  It had brilliant orators like Everett Dirksen.  And it had people who knew how to compromise and work together. I loved watching vigorous debates on the floor of the Senate and then seeing these opponents of opposite parties laughing and communicating and asking about each other’s kids while they had lunch together in the Senate Dining Room.  There was a civility and a respect that made the & a better symbol for their relationships than a Vs.

A few years later, Neal A. Maxwell, who had also worked for Wallace Bennett and was then Church Commissioner of Education, was considering becoming a candidate for the seat that was being vacated as Bennett retired.  I was a political consultant by then and was over-the-moon excited about the kind of brilliance, insight, morality, and oration that Maxwell could bring to the Senate.  And if ever there was someone who would protect and honor the Ampersand in Congress, it was him.

I did everything I could, including drafting a campaign plan, to encourage him to run.  But he called me one night and said he had decided not to run and mentioned what I remember as something like “The Brethren think God may have something else in mind for me.”

Those were the days of Democrats & Republicans getting together to pass legislation, a far cry from the vitriolic Democrats vs. Republicans that we have today.  In that ampersand world, compromise and civility and creative combining were virtues.

Ampersands and Versus in Relationships  

Perhaps the most interesting and important place to think about and contrast the & with the V is in personal relationships. Do we compete or cooperate?  Do we spar or synergize? Do we win-lose or win-win?

The most important human relationship, most would concede, is that of marriage, and my, how fraught with v. is that subject! Who earns the most?  Who does the dishes? Who has the most independence?  And when we disagree, it often feels like we are arguing to win rather than to find resolution.

In thinking of the “micro” of our marriages, we should aspire to the “macro” of our Heavenly Parents, where of course there is no v. but always an &.

What does the Gospel tell us?

On a divine level, it would be unthinkable to use a V. in talking about the Godhead. Christ v Heavenly Father or v Holy Ghost would be an anathema. Instead, the ampersand is always appropriate and always implied.  Christ makes it clear in the seventeenth chapter of John that “I and my Father are one.”  And He asks that we become similarly one.  In that Godhead Relationship, the ampersand is so strong and so complete that “If ye have seen me, ye have seen the Father.”

And of course, if it is true in the Godhead, it is true between our Heavenly Parents. They are two distinctive individuals just as the Godhead is three distinct individuals.  But they are also One in a similar way, and perhaps an even more intimate way, to the oneness of the Godhead. Heavenly Father & Heavenly Mother is the only way we can think of it.  Heavenly Father v. Heavenly Mother makes no sense.

Yet, in so many current mortal discussions and debates, we hear a kind of comparing and competing and separating that seems to align more with the v. Think about how the separation of the v. is implied in the following questions:

“Why don’t we pray to Heavenly Mother?”
“Why do we know more about Heavenly Father than Heavenly Mother?”
“Why does scripture not talk about them equally?”
“Don’t we need something akin to affirmative action where we talk more about Heavenly Mother until She catches up to Him?”
“Why don’t we talk about Her separately?”

Perhaps the simplest reason we do not talk more about Her separately, is that She is not separate. They are One in the way they advise us to become one.

So, whether we are thinking of the micro relationship between earthly spouses or the macro relationship between our Heavenly Parents, we need to find and recognize and advocate the & rather than the v. Because only in doing so can we begin to accurately see the oneness in either.

The first story in the Bible and in our Temples must be prominent partly to make this point.  Adam was unable to fulfill God’s plan and function within it without Eve; and together they recognized, even when it meant leaving the Garden, that they were and had to always be two parts of the one whole that could populate the earth and establish the pattern that would bring us home and achieve salvation and exaltation.

“Neither is the man without the woman nor the woman without the man in the Lord.”  In the question of the macro, only the ampersand works—pulling together, binding, and wrapping in love, superseding the versus that would separate and divide.

The Third Entity is the Perfectible Entity

True oneness in the spiritual sense is more than a combination of two persons—it is joyfully giving up independence in exchange for interdependence as Adam and Eve did—to join, to cleave, to combine in a way that creates a new entity—one that, through synergy, supersedes each of the two individual entities.  The magic of this kind of oneness is that it does not do away with the two individuals, but creates an additional third entity with vastly greater power and potential.

Clearly, this is the way the Godhead works, and the distinctiveness of our doctrine, as opposed to the Trinity, is that They are separate, yet one in purpose and completely enhancing and complementing in their combination.  Our Heavenly Parents must be an even more personal representation of that same truth.

In our efforts to emulate them, we, through the commitments of Temple marriage and the New and Everlasting Covenant, seek to find and form this same kind of third entity.  And the Restored Gospel teaches us that it is this third interdependent entity (not either of the individual entities) that is perfectible—and that can live with God in His Celestial Glory.

Still, something in most of us resists that notion.  We imagine it as the giving up or our individuality and our independence.  And we live in a world and in a nation where independence is the thing that is valued.  We don’t have a “Declaration of Interdependence.”

Yet we know that it is the interdependence, freely accepted through our covenants, that can give us the potential to be enough like our Heavenly Parents that we can return to live with them.  Those who will live with Them will be like Them in this regard, as Oneness couples.  And we somehow know, deep within our spirits, that interdependence and covenants enhance rather than eliminate our individual independence.

So again, in the micro of our own marriages, we must embrace and pursue the ampersand and avoid and reject the versus.

And to reiterate, it is the goal of that ampersand, that oneness marriage, that everlasting covenant that we can adopt now, regardless of our marital status or present situation—and we can take heart and hope in our belief in future opportunities that may present themselves here, or in the Spirit World, or in the Millenium.

And indeed, the fact that half of the adult members of the Church today are single is not a reason not to talk about this goal, but a reason to talk about it more. We can’t do otherwise if we want to focus on exaltation.

“That’s Easy for You to Say…”

When we talk about this Oneness concept to Church audiences, we often get a certain kind of push-back.  Someone will say something like “Well, that’s easy for you to say Richard, because you have this wonderful marriage to Linda, and you work together on so many things and have a unity that most marriages don’t.”

When I hear something like that, I have two reactions:  First that they have not seen how strong-willed we both are and how often we disagree and have to work things out.  And second that while we are a long way from the goal of oneness, that is our goal, and we have been working on it for more than 50 years.  It may not be a goal that any of us fully achieve on this earth, it may be an eternal goal, but having and working on that goal may be the best thing we can do in moving toward what our Heavenly Parents want us to be.

And while we cannot compare out unions to that of our Heavenly Parents, we can (and are encouraged to) “aspire to be like Them,” and we do this by seeking and working on that Oneness goal and by making and striving to keep the New and Everlasting Covenant of Marriage.

Complementarianism, and Metaphors that Don’t Quite Work

“Complementarianism is a theological view in some denominations of Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism, and Islam, that men and women have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage, family life, and religious leadership.”—Wikipedia

Unfortunately, the word complementarianism, which works so well with the Gospel concept of Oneness, has become identified with ultra-conservative denominations seeking to limit and curtail the role of women, but let’s disregard that and use the term literally—”different but complementary”—similar to the sentiment in the Church’s Proclamation on Family.

As we try to explain our definition of complementarianism, the metaphors and oversimplified statements don’t quite do it, though they may point us in the right direction.  Here are a few:

A car is a better, more efficient vehicle if it has an engine and a transmission than if it has two engines or two transmissions.

A family, working together within the familial Priesthood is theoretically better off than a family with two priesthoods, one held by the husband and another by the wife.

Men need to take as much or more initiative as women in adopting the goal and bringing about Oneness partnerships.

A woman can’t bear a child without a man, and a man can’t bear the priesthood or obtain and keep its covenants, without a woman. 

One individual depending on God is powerful, but a oneness couple, in the new and everlasting covenant and relying on God is infinitely more powerful!

The concept is just too big to be grasped by a comparison or a sentence.  But what I do know personally is that Linda and I love to be called “The Eyres” and I know that we are better at speaking or writing or teaching or just at being when we are together than when we are separate. We could have adopted my surname or hers, or combined and hyphenated them.  The important thing is that we both adopt and embrace the same name, and strive to make it, gradually, over eternity, into a Celestial oneness.

I love that “Eyre” can mean either of us, but that it really means both of us. Perhaps, in some vastly greater way, the same is true of God.  There is pleasure and purpose in the Ampersand, and a lot of misery and mistrust in the Versus. 

The Future

I feel like we, as a people and as a Church, are moving in the direction of a greater understanding and better implementation of the Ampersand, of partnerships, of the goal of Oneness.  Instead of calling a couple who leads a mission “The Mission President and His Companion” we appropriately now call them “Mission Leaders.”

And it is more and more common to see General Authorities and Area Authorities standing at the pulpit with their wives—speaking and teaching together as partnerships. Our beloved Prophet, President Nelson, and President Oaks are so often standing beside or preceded by their educated and articulate wives.

And the Ampersand works!  We feel warmed and involved when we hear from male and female leaders together—a microcosm of the personal warmth we feel when we think of our Heavenly Parents.

But we have a way to go don’t we, because in all levels of gender conversation, we seem to talk endlessly about making them equal (v.) but not about making them One (&).