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| “Every great love story deserves and needs the temple.” |
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| Ryan and Rachel |
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| Ben and Megan |
I am grateful to be able to talk to you about eternal families.
Here is a short entry from my journal for June 24, 2009, while Sister Lewis and I were on our senior mission in North Carolina:
“Last Wednesday when we went last to the Raleigh temple, the officiator chose a fairly young, nice-looking black couple to be the witness couple. I (Elder Lewis) sat on the aisle on the second row back, and had a good view of them, especially the sister. I noticed that she kept looking over at her husband with such loving and appreciative glances. It was like she was trying to communicate a very heartfelt thanks to him for making it possible for her to be there in the temple with him as her companion.
“Afterward, as I entered the dressing room, I found him there folding his temple clothes. I commented about my observation of them,that it appeared that they had something special in their relationship. He smiled and got little misty-eyed. Then I put an arm around him and used a phrase that has come to me recently that has seemed to encapsulate something important about love in families. I said, ‘Every great love story deserves and needs the temple.’”
He became more teary showing that this statement captured a truth about his life.
“Every great love story deserves and needs the temple.”
There was a young couple who loved each other dearly, They had been raised in Protestant churches who taught that there was no “marrying or giving in marriage in heaven.” When they were married the minister pronounced them “married, until death do you part.” Their love for each other was so deep and satisfying that they decided that it ought to continue when they died and went to heaven. They said to each other, “If there is no marriage in eternity, someone needs to invent it, just for us.” Then imagine their joy, when a little later two young men knocked on their door and taught them about a Church that had the power to seal marriages in the temple for eternity.
“Every great love story deserves and needs the temple.”
In the early days of the church, Parley Pratt wrote:
“It was from [Joseph Smith] that I learned that the wife of my bosom might be secured to me for time and all eternity. … It was from him that I learned that we might cultivate these affections, and grow and increase in the same to all eternity; while the result of our endless union would be an offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, or the sands of the sea shore. … I had loved before, but I knew not why. But now I loved—with a pureness—an intensity of elevated, exalted feeling” (Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, ed. Parley P. Pratt Jr. [1938], 297–98).
“Every great love story deserves and needs the temple.”
But the blessings of the temple go beyond the marriage relationship--
Those of you who attended recently the temple open-house at either Cedar City or Meridian ID may remember an introductory video explaining what the temple was all about. I thought the highlight of that video was a brief statement by Elder Jeffrey Holland. He made a very strong statement about families being sealed together in the temple for eternity. With a great deal of feeling and emotion he stated that for him, heaven wouldn’t be heaven without his wife and family.
“Every great family deserves and needs the temple.”
Truman Madsen talked about heaven in this way:
“Divine families encircled by [our Father’s] light and fire are the very essence of life and eternal life; without them this earth–indeed this cosmos–will have missed the essence of its creation.”
Terryl and Fiona Givens write: “The heaven toward which we aspire, consists of loving relationships that are eternal... What God envisions for us, what His Son prayed most earnestly for..., was for us [including our families] to achieve the harmony he shares with His Father. In essence we are invited to participate in the heavenly family of God himself.”
Quoting Parley P. Pratt again: “Our natural affections... at the very main-springs of life and happiness– they are the cement of all virtuous and heavenly society... From this union of affection, spring all the other relationships, social joys and affections, diffused through every branch of human existence. Man was designed for a social being.”
And the heaven that we seek for is an extension the best of our earthly relationships. We may achieve salvation as individuals, but exaltation and its greatest joys comes through human relationships and families.
“Every person needs the temple, to cement for eternity their most valued and cherished relationships.”
I now want to focus on two things that may help us achieve these eternal relationships.
First, is to set a goal to establish what might be called “multi-generational families of faith.” As an example, there was a family named Smith that lived near us when we lived in Taylorsville, before we moved here to Spanish Fork. There were three brothers, named Hyrum Smith, Joseph Smith, and Samuel Smith. They were descendants of Hyrum Smith, the brother of the prophet, and his son Joseph F. Smith, the Fifth President of the Church. Their houses were side by side along 2200 West about 5000 South. They each had large families. My older children went to school with their younger children. They were just ordinary people except for one thing– according to our stake leaders the Smith family knew an important secret. That is, for a number of generations, all the children in all these families had grown up to be active and faithful in the Church. The Smith family seemed to be experts at passing the Gospel along to future generations. They had been wonderfully blessed to establish and maintain a multi-generational family of faith.
There came a time of great stress in our family. My first wife JoAnn had been diagnosed with terminal stomach and esophageal cancer. During that time, the director of the department in state government where I worked, and a good friend, gave me a copy of the Neal Maxwell biography by written by Elder Bruce Hafen, saying that this book had been uplifting to him and might be a source of strength to me also. JoAnn passed away, I retired, moved here to Spanish Fork, and then I was blessed to find Wendy and we were married. Looking for ways to strengthen our family, we found inspiration in some of the teachings of Elder Maxwell.
In his service as an apostle, Elder Maxwell became impressed that the future growth of the Church, especially world-wide, was in creating what he called “multi-generational families of faith.” For example, research conducted by the Church showed that future Church activity by family members was strongly associated with parents being marrying originally in the temple. For example, with temple married parents, for families living in the international areas, their children are 9 times as likely to serve missions. The figure was about 4 times for families in US and Canada. Elder Maxwell concluded that “the key to having a multi-generational church is to have LDS [temple] marriages at the beginning."
In a training session with other general authorities, Elder Maxwell stated this challenge for the Church and its members: “Raise up the foundations of many generations. We seek successive generations of grandparents, parents, and children who are ‘grounded, rooted, settled’, and sealed in the holy temple.”
We loved Elder Maxwell’s statement and adapted it to be what we called our "Lewis Family Creed.” We each carry the Creed on a small wallet sized card. We have a banner with our Family Creed that we hang up between two trees at out annual family camp. We have given all of our families a gift of a decorative wall plaque or framed wedding picture containing the Family Creed. We repeat it from memory when we get together:
“We seek successive generations of grandparents, parents, and children who are grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and sealed in His Holy Temple.”
In our weakness, we have tried to instill in our family this goal–
“We seek successive generations of grandparents, parents, and children who are grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and sealed in His Holy Temple.”
I believe that the Lord needs multi-generational families of faith for His work to progress. He needs for all of us to seek successive generations of grandparents, parents, and children who are grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and sealed in His Holy Temple. For the blessing and happiness of our descendants, I believe we all need to seek successive generations of grandparents, parents, and children who are grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and sealed in His Holy Temple.
The other item that I want to focus on becomes important for the reason that there are no perfect families. Parents pass along their values, habits, and attitudes to their children. These can be positive but also negative. Sometimes bad choices are learned and repeated in later generations. Children raised in dysfunctional families often create their own dysfunctional families. Toxic attitudes and practices tend to be passed from generation to generation. We know from the study of alcoholism that there is an alcoholic personality, with particular susceptibility to this problem. About 15% of persons who try alcohol become alcoholics. Often these persons marry enablers, who help them hide their difficulties. Children born to these couples often repeat their parents’ problems. Likewise, victims of childhood sexual abuse often become themselves perpetrators as adults. Adults with anger-management problems or who are physically abusive often have one or more parents who are unable to control their tempers. On perhaps a lesser scale, we have a family connection, in which their ancestors joined the Church in Europe and made all sorts of sacrifices to gather with the saints in Utah, but in five generations since never sent out a missionary. As to temple marriage in this same family, its seems that sometime in the lifespan of couples in this family, most managed to meet minimal requirements for a temple recommend and get sealed, then lapsed back into semi- or less-activity.
Elder Hafen points out that each of us stands as a link in a great family chain, ancestors on one side and descendants on the other. In this chain we naturally pass along to the next generation both the strengths and weaknesses of our childhood homes.
However, in some families, persons come along who interrupt the transmission of toxic practices to the next generation. They heal long-standing wounds that divide family members, or establish new patterns that are more functional, that help the next generation carry out their lives in a more productive and satisfying manner, perhaps more consistent with the purposes that God has for them. This labor of upgrading and enhancing families was described beautifully by the prophet Isaiah:
"If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in obscurity... And the Lord shall... satisfy thy soul in drought, and... thou shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places; thou shalt raise of the foundation of many generations and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach. The restorer of paths to dwell in." (Isaiah 58:10-12)
This kind of person in a family has been called a “transitional figure” or a “transformational figure. ” Another name might be a “family pioneer,” because they bring new and important positive Godly values to a family. In a sense such a person becomes a Savior on Mt. Zion to future generations of family members.
I feel greatly indebted to my own father who stopped what had been a pattern in prior generations of his family of child-discipline that included whippings with a belt. It was replaced by verbal explanations of why particular behaviors was best and enough love to motivate me to want to do those things.
My first wife JoAnn was a pioneer, the first child in several generations in a large Mormon family to graduate from college, to marry initially in the temple, and send children on missions. She was a pioneer.
When Wendy joined our family, she has helped me pioneer new and important dimensions, her great love of the temple, her attention to personal relationships. Early in the time of our marriage, she advised me, “Your daughters need you to tell them that you love them.” I am grateful for this insight and feel that trying to become more expressive of feelings of love in our family has enriched our relationships.
It would be wonderful if each one of us would see ourselves as family pioneers, transformational figures, repairers of the breach, restorers of paths to dwell in, in our families, to help future generations come closer to the ideal of multi-generational families of faith, to fully help the Church to achieve its purposes, and to make our great family love stories eternal in the heavens.
In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
(Robert Lewis Sacrament Meeting talk, Wolf Hollow 2nd ward, Dec 10, 2017)
