So I'm getting ready to teach seminary in a week and am a bit anxious as to how it will all work out. In preparation, I attended a training session a couple weeks ago. The featured instructor based his lesson on a talk recently given by Julie Beck, Relief Society General President. So this post has no original thoughts from my head. :) They come from Sister Beck.
A key objective for seminary teachers is to include the Family in our daily lessons. They want The Family: A Proclamation to the World somewhere visible and referenced as often as possible. Church leadership is asking seminary teachers to help students prepare for eternal responsibilities. I believe it is in part because of what Paul taught the Ephesians: For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Families are under attack from all directions. And the rising generation needs to clearly understand the importance of families (we all do).
There is a Theology of the Family in our Church...and it is based on the Creation, Fall, and Atonement. I had no idea. And yet this is the Plan of Salvation. I've been taught these basic pillars of the Gospel all my life...and until I heard Sister Beck share this insight, I had never connected the Creation, Fall, and Atonement to the family.
The creation of the Earth was intentional to form a family.
Through the leadership of Eve, the Fall provided opportunities for growth...both in numbers and in experience.
The Atonement allows the family to be sealed and provides eternal opportunities for growth.
The Plan of our Heavenly Father was created for the family. When we speak of qualifying for the blessings of eternal life, we are speaking of qualifying for the blessings of families. This was Christ's doctrine...and this is part of what was restored in these latter days.
Doctrine and Covenants 2 is a portion of Joseph Smith's interactions with the angel Moroni. And it is technically the earliest revelation recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants. It's message? Turning the hearts of the children to their fathers and the promises made of old. And that got me thinking about the Book of Mormon--what's the first message of the Book of Mormon? Even the very first verse...
I'm excited for what I am hopeful I will learn this year.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
A Prophetic Voice on the Family
Society, without basic family life is without foundation and will disintegrate into nothingness.
Therefore, whenever anything so basic as the eternal family is imperiled, we have a solemn obligation to speak out...
Furthermore, many of the social restraints which in the past have helped to reinforce and to shore up the family are dissolving and disappearing. The time will come when only those who believe deeply and actively in the family will be able to preserve their families in the midst of the gathering evil around us.
Whether from inadvertence, ignorance, or other causes, the efforts governments often make (ostensibly to help the family) sometimes only hurt the family more. There are those who would define the family in such a nontraditional way that they would define it out of existence. The more governments try in vain to take the place of the family, the less effective governments will be in performing the traditional and basic roles for which the governments are formed in the first place.
Delinquent adults still tend to produce delinquent children, and that awful reality will not change simply by our lowering standards as to what constitutes delinquency...
We are free to resist those moves which downplay the significance of the family and which play up the significance of selfish individualism. We know the family to be eternal. We know that when things go wrong in the family, things go wrong in every other institution in society.
Where there are challenges, you fail only if you fail to keep trying!
Families can be forever! Do not let the lures of the moment draw you away from them! Divinity, eternity, and family--they go together...
Spencer W. Kimball, October 1980
Therefore, whenever anything so basic as the eternal family is imperiled, we have a solemn obligation to speak out...
Furthermore, many of the social restraints which in the past have helped to reinforce and to shore up the family are dissolving and disappearing. The time will come when only those who believe deeply and actively in the family will be able to preserve their families in the midst of the gathering evil around us.
Whether from inadvertence, ignorance, or other causes, the efforts governments often make (ostensibly to help the family) sometimes only hurt the family more. There are those who would define the family in such a nontraditional way that they would define it out of existence. The more governments try in vain to take the place of the family, the less effective governments will be in performing the traditional and basic roles for which the governments are formed in the first place.
Delinquent adults still tend to produce delinquent children, and that awful reality will not change simply by our lowering standards as to what constitutes delinquency...
We are free to resist those moves which downplay the significance of the family and which play up the significance of selfish individualism. We know the family to be eternal. We know that when things go wrong in the family, things go wrong in every other institution in society.
Where there are challenges, you fail only if you fail to keep trying!
Families can be forever! Do not let the lures of the moment draw you away from them! Divinity, eternity, and family--they go together...
Spencer W. Kimball, October 1980
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