The Family: Under Attack

I have decided that the two best ways to learn how to practice the law of consecration are marriage and family experience. Is it any wonder that both are under attack so fiercely?

Today the most watched talk on BYU Broadcasting was the one given by Julie Beck at the BYU Women’s conference, May 1, 2009. Her talk was called “Nourishing and Protecting Home and Family.”

In her talk she emphasized the doctrine of the family as summarized so beautifully in the Proclamation on the Family. She also explained the theology of the family, or as it is more commonly referred to, the great plan of salvation or happiness. The three pillars of this theology are:

1) The Creation- of this beautiful earth for families.

2) The Fall- as a means for families to grow and increase.

3) The Atonement- as an event that will tie families together forever.

Elder Robert D. Hales explained, “In the beginning, Adam and Eve were married for time and all eternity by the Lord. The organization of the family existed in the heavens before the world was formed and was historically started with Adam and Eve on the earth, as recorded in Genesis. The family will exist eternally.”

Both Adam and Eve had leadership roles in their family as given to them in their assignments. They got their responsibilities by virtue of that celestial marriage and sealing.

Ezra Taft Benson taught that this was the order of the priesthood. He said, “This order is otherwise described in modern revelation as an order of family government. When a man and a women enter into a covenant with God, just as did Adam and Eve, to be sealed for eternity, to have posterity, and to do the will and work of God throughout mortality. This order of the priesthood has been on the earth since the beginning and it is the only means by which we can see the face of God and live.”

Sister Beck explained that marriage is an order of the priesthood, which prepares us for the blessing of Eternal life.

Elder David A. Bednar has taught us two important reasons why marriage is essential. “Reason one, is because the natures of male and female spirits complete and perfect each other, and therefore men and women are intended to progress together toward exaltation. And reason two, by divine design, both man and woman are needed to bring children into mortality and to provide the best setting for the rearing and nurturing of children.”

Elder Boyd K, Packer said, “The great plan of happiness, revealed to prophets, is a plan for a happy family. It is the love story between husband and wife, parents and children, that renews itself through the ages. Nothing is more important to the Church, and to civilization, than the family.”

Sister Beck very beautifully explained that families are about “us” and “we”, while the world preaches about “I” and “Me”. It is apparent to me that Satan wishes to dissuade us from living the Celestial law of consecration. “Anti-Christ teachings and principles are always Anti-family and that Anti-family teachings and policies are also Anti-Christ.” I believe that Satan wants us to be unwilling to submit and to be proud and unteachable. Families are the place that we learn how to be consecrated to the Lord, by practice daily, in lessons of unselfish behavior and charity to others. It is no wonder the family is under attack, the importance of the lessons learned in the family are Eternal.

Sister Beck then shared a statement from a talk given in 1980 by Spencer W. Kimball, called “Families Can Be Eternal”.

“There are those who would define the family in such a nontraditional way that they would define it out of existence.

We of all people, brothers and sisters, should not be taken in by the specious arguments that the family unit is somehow tied to a particular phase of development a mortal society is going through. 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.

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.”

This was such a testimony for me of how a prophet of God surely saw our day. As a watchman on the tower, he warned us of the attack that would come upon this Eternal unit. Our salvation and exaltation depends on how we view the doctrine of the family.

If you haven’t had a chance to listen to this amazing talk on the doctrine of the family, please take the time to do it.