A Notable and Significant Increase in the Church’s Missionary Numbers

     Recently, I have heard a lot of pessimistic reports about religious faith in our country such as: “In this negative world, church attendance has plunged, intolerance of traditional religious values has skyrocketed, and Christians have been dragged into court for their faithfulness — many into the court of public opinion, if not an actual courtroom.”
    I have heard some of the same pessimism and negativism and worry in recent conversations with members of the Church of Jesus Christ, especially about the current activity and faithfulness of the youth of the Church.  But, a recent news article provided a differing and much more positive view.  (Deseret News article,  June 28, 2023, “The number of Latter-day Saint missionaries is rising rapidly”)
    I was thrilled and excited by Elder Quentin L. Cook’s press announcement that     “Despite fewer missionary-age Latter-day Saints, the Church has seen an increase in the number of full-time missionaries from 56,000 at the end of 2021 to 68,000 [this month]. And we really do feel like we’ll exceed 72,000 by the end of the year,” Elder Cook added.
    “And so, with fewer available, more are going out,” he continued. “If you look at the youth, their activity rate is higher than it has been. So they have responded in a wonderful way to the clarion call of a Prophet — both in his April 2022 general conference address and in his invitation as president of the Church for youth to gather Israel on both sides of the veil.”
    “...young people who are signing up to go on missions ... in higher numbers, and higher percentages, than previous generations, Elder Cook said.
    According to research by professor Justin Dyer at Brigham Young University, “the most recent generation [in this country], overall, places less importance on religion and attends religious services less frequently than previous generations. However, this does not hold for youth of some denominations, including Latter-day Saints, where attitudes among the recent generations... are on par with or actually more favorable to religion than some earlier generations.”
    This contradicts the popular notion of young people being less beholden to faith.  “In comparing the generations when they were high school seniors, millennial Latter-day Saint youth feel religion is more important than all other generations.”
    Professor Dyer concludes that this trend is “notable and significant.”
    As Elder Marcus B. Nash, a General Authority Seventy and the executive director of the church’s missionary department, concluded, “There’s just something going on, and I don’t know how to explain it other than the prophet spoke in April 2022, and this rising generation — that he teaches us was held in reserve — [is] responding.”
    I am excited and proud of the youths in our family who are part of this trend.

Sacrament Meeting talk

 Sacrament Meeting talk, February 26, 2023
    I was raised in a tiny farming-logging community in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state.  My family was split on the subject of religion.  My father had been born in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, and his parents had migrated to the Northwest when his was a tiny boy.  His father’s family, the Lewises, were not very religious.  His mother came from a Primative Baptist tradition, a religion common in the South, which had a strong Calvinist leaning.  My mother was from an Latter-day Saint family that had migrated from Utah some years before to satisfy her grandfather’s entrepreneurial ambitions to build a large logging, lumbering business.  My parents had married during the early days of the great depression and we lived on a small farm on which my father eeked out a living with odd jobs and a little dairy operation.
    The nearest branch of the LDS church was in Hood River, Oregon, at least an hour and half or so drive over bad mountain roads and we did not have the cars or money to make the trip.  Plus my mother didn’t drive.  We attended the only church nearby, a small non-denominational Sunday school, loosely connected to the Presbyterians, having a Bible emphasis.
    When I was about 7 years old, something happened that had very significant effect on my life.  My mother had a subscription to one of the Church magazines and saw a note that Deseret Book was republishing a little book for children about the Book of Mormon that William A. Morton had written many years before and that her mother had read to her when she was little.  It was called “Mother Stories From the Book of Mormon.”  She felt that she needed help in exposing my little sister and I to the beliefs of her family’s church.  She wrote to her father who had retired and relocated to Utah.  She asked if he would buy a copy and send it to her, which he did.  
    I remember a day when I was sitting beside my mother, leaning against her arm, as she read to my little sister and me these Book of Mormon stories.  At one point she paused and said the Lord has promised that He will testify through the Holy Ghost that the Book of Mormon and the gospel are true.  She asked if we had ever felt such promptings of the Holy Ghost.  I started to say, “No, I don’t think I have ever felt any of these things” when the most unusual feeling came over me.
    A warmness and excitement came into my heart and breast that I had never felt before and I felt a sort of thrill go up and down my spine.  I came to recognize there feelings as being like those described by the two disciples of the Lord in Luke 24:32, “did not our hearts within us burn?”  
    Seven years old.  I had a witness of the Spirit and my own conviction that the Book of Mormon was true.  
    I looked forward to when I would have my eighth birthday and could be baptized, but it didn’t happen.  My father maintained that my sister and I could join the Church when we were grown and could decide for ourselves.  My 9th birthday passed.  In my nightly prayers, I asked to be able to be baptized, but still nothing happened.  
    Years went by.  When I reached early high school age, a school teacher who I greatly admired and who was a committed churchman, asked me if I would like to be baptized in the Presbyterian Church.  I thanked him, but said “No.  I intend, when I can, to be baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
    The Church grew closer to us.  Hood River became a ward and they were blessed to be able to build a Utah-type ward house.  A Sunday school and then a branch was established in White Salmon, a hour drive away, which we attended once or twice a year.  The branch president assigned himself as our home teacher.  He started to make monthly visits.  At age 15 when I started to have summer jobs with local farmers, I paid him my tithing.
    The day after I graduated from high school, President Burles showed up at our house.  He had an invitation for us.  He said that the branch had reserved the Hood River baptismal font for a branch baptismal service next Saturday at 5 pm.  Would my sister and I like to come and be baptized?  My mother somehow got approval from my dad, and we made the drive and were baptized.  I was 17.  It was so wonderful.  I recall that for a week or so it seemed like I was walking in the air without my feet touching the ground.
    I was a pretty good student and had been looking at attending college.  I had a scholarship offer from Washington State.  As soon as I had been baptized, the Spirit began to whisper strongly that I needed to go to school where I could learn more about being a member of the Church.  So I dropped plans to attend Reed College, Lewis and Clark, or Washington State, and came to BYU.  There I learned much more about our religion and especially I increased my appreciation and understanding of the Book of Mormon.
    Next, I began to have a strong sense of gratitude and that I needed to return something back to my Heavenly Father.  I determined to serve a mission.  As a young, new, Naive and inexperienced missionary serving in Minnesota and Manitoba, Canada, I had a couple of experiences that suggested that among ordinary members of our Church at that time there were some problems in our usage of the Book of Mormon and other modern scripture.  I recall my experienced companion teaching a Plan of Salvation lesson, and he apologized to the investigator for using modern scripture to teach about our premortal existence, as if our modern scriptures were inferior to or inappropriate to teach our doctrines to non-members.  
    Shortly after that, a second new missionary experience occurred as we met a Protestant man who asked sort of loaded question about what our Church believed about salvation by grace.  My experienced companion responded that we believed that we will all be resurrected through the grace of Christ but we have to earn our salvation.  I quietly thought, “But what about forgiveness?”  Through this and other experiences I concluded that there was a time in the Church when ordinary members often had a shallow understanding of the work of Christ and of his atonement.  Sometimes this understanding seemed to based more on staking out a position different than beliefs of other churches as opposed to the real, true doctrines contained in our Latter-day scriptures.  For example, professor Robert Millet tells a story when as a teenager growing up in the Bible-belt South, he asked his father who was at the time a Latter-day Saint Branch President whether we believed in the grace of Christ.  His dad said “No.”  Brother Millet then ask asked “Why not?”  And the answer was “Because they do.”
    Just after that time, there was a wonderful prophetic correction that in my opinion has made a very significant correction in and through the use and study of the Book of Mormon in the Church.  In the 1986 General Conference, the then prophet of the Lord, Ezra Taft Benson, recalled verses from a 1832  revelation in section 84: “And your minds in times past have been darkened because of unbelief, and because you have treated lightly the things you have received—Which vanity and unbelief have brought the whole church under condemnation.  And this condemnation resteth upon the children of Zion, even all.  And they shall remain under this condemnation until they repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon...” (D&C 84: 54-57)
    President Benson stated his long standing belief that the Church was still under some condemnation for taking the Book of Mormon too lightly.  He announced that the Lord had revealed to him the need to reemphasize the Book of Mormon.  This was the time that the Church began to emphasize the four year cycle of the study of all the Latter-Day Saint scriptures in our Church meetings, seminary and institutes.  President Benson also gave the challenge, which our President Nelson has repeated, “Nothing opens the heavens quite like ... daily feasting on the words of Christ in the Book of Mormon...”

    I believe that especially since that 1986 challenge from our prophet, the church as a whole has made significant progress in its utilization and study of the Book of Mormon.  The Book of Mormon also has become much more central in our missionary teaching efforts.  Ordinary members also have gained a much greater appreciation for Christ and a fuller understanding of his atonement and how to access its blessings.
    I am grateful that, first, the Book of Mormon provide a strong spiritual witness to me, and to us all, that Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God and that our Church is the restored Church of Jesus Christ, and second, that the Book of Mormon is the greatest scriptural witness that Jesus Christ is our Savior.  It is extremely Christ-centered.  Or as a pair of Catholic scholars concluded after they studied the Book of Mormon, “It has a very high Christology.”  Our mission president in Raleigh North Carolina challenged his missionaries to read from a clean copy of the Book of Mormon and mark every reference to the Savior.  Our missionaries found that they needed to mark almost every page in the entire book.
    The Book of Mormon is the best of all sources in this world for learning the doctrines of Christ’s atonement.  We have been taught that the 1st principles of the gospel are faith and repentance.  Read Alma 32 to really know about faith and how to grow it. “But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life.”
    What about repentance?  When I was called as bishop, one of the first things I noticed was that there was a cabinet in the Bishops office with several copies of a book by Pres Kimball, which prior Bishops had purchased to give to persons who had come to their office to confess serious sins and seek forgiveness.  I found a preference for using the Book of Mormon to teach this process.  The repentant Alma the younger in Alma 36, in the midst of his extreme feelings of guilt, recalled his father’s teachings about Christ’s atonement and prayed, “O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me...”  And at that very moment, he reported “when I thought this, I could remember my pains [of guilt] no more... And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain...”
    Lehi described the very purpose of our lives: “men are that they have joy”
    Even the sacred and exalting doctrines of the temple are found in the teachings of Jacob and King Benjamin and Christ himself when he taught them at the temple in Bountiful, recorded in 3rd Nephi.
    The several blessings for us of the atonement of Christ are described in great detail:
    The Resurrection in Alma 40: “The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame.”
    Redemption from sin 3 Nephi 27: “[The Savior says] whoso repenteth and is baptized in my name shall be filled; and if he endureth to the end, behold, him will I hold guiltless before my Father at that day when I shall stand to judge the world.”
    Strengthening blessings, Alma 7: “[Christ] will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.”
    Perfecting blessings: “Come unto Christ, that ye may be perfected in him” “what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am”...and  “that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we may be like him...”
    I testify that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and is truly foundational for our faith in Christ and his restored gospel.  In the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen

Easter Message

 Easter Message by Robert Lewis,
April 17 Taylorsville Gardens Ward Sacrament Meeting talk.

    When Bro. Stone asked me to prepare this talk, he pointed me toward an address by Pres. Nelson two years ago in April conference, “Hear Him,” in which he presented a proclamation by the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles entitled  “The Restoration of the Fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: A Bicentennial Proclamation to the World.”  This proclamation was issued at the time which marked the 200 year anniversary of the visit of the Father and the Son to Joseph Smith, calling Joseph as the prophet of the Restoration, the beginning the work of this dispensation in which all gospel keys and powers would be restored in order to gather scattered Israel in preparation for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  
    Also as a part of this restoration process, this month is also the 192nd anniversary on April 6th of the re-establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ on this earth.
    So April is a great month of celebrations.
    Of even more significance and giving us even more reason for celebration, this is the very week of the Hebrew holiday of Passover, which was also the time at which our Savior, Jesus Christ, suffered, was crucified, died, and rose from the dead, working out the centerpiece of the whole gospel plan, the atonement, enabling what Alma called, the “great plan of happiness” (Alma 42:10) to be fully effective and fully available to all of us.
    Happiness.  Joy.
    In lives which are often filled with misery, anxiety, loss and grief, pain, weakness, failure, betrayal, guilt, conflict, the power and blessing and joy of the atonement of Christ shines through.  In fact, Father Lehi in the Book of Mormon concludes that the purpose of our whole earthly existence, the primary objective of the whole gospel plan and its atonement, is joy:  “Men are that they might have joy” he said. (2 Nephi 2:25)
    Happiness.  Joy.  
    Let’s look further at joy in our existence through the lens of the marvelous atonement of our Savior, Jesus Christ, which were are celebrating this very Easter day.  Several Church authorities and authors have suggested that there are at least four major blessings that derive from the atonement of Jesus Christ.  These are the resurrection, forgivenesss, strengthening, perfecting.  Let us consider the happiness and joys that come through each of these blessings:
    First, the joys of the blessing of Resurrection: All human kind will suffer physical death, but Christ broke the bands of death, the restrictions and limitations of death, to provide the blessing of the resurrection.  I am grateful for the present joys of a physical body and the prospect of having this body and physical capability eternally through the blessing of the universal resurrection provided by our Savior.  For me there was joy in running, of playing in a good basketball game, in putting on a backpack and hiking in the High Uintas with my scouts when I was scoutmaster, for the joy of seeing the God of Nature’s beautiful creations, flowers, birds and animals, mountains, streams, lakes, sunsets.  
    There is joy in hearing great music.  Many years ago, as a young, newly baptized Latter-day Saint from a distant place, I had the joy of singing in a choir for General Conference.   I also was especially joyful when as a young member of a BYU choir performing Handel’s Messiah, I was taught about the atonement, while singing the frivolous and lightminded “all we like sheep have gone astray-uh-aye-aye” immediately followed by the somber, dissonant  and agonizing “and the Lord has laid on him the iniquities of us all.”
    I am grateful for the joys of human relationships, of marriage, of family, of children, of grandchildren, of hugs, thank yous, of seeing others’ growth and progress and I am grateful for Christ’s  “loosening of the bands of death” (Alma 7:12) with the prospect of all these bodily joys continuing forever and ever and in a heavenly environment, through the resurrection and other blessings of the atonement.
    Second, the joys of the blessing of Forgiveness:  I am grateful for the joy of having the Spirit return after I have sorrowed and made a decision to repent.  I am grateful for peace of conscience, for the joy of having guilt pardoned and washed away.  I am grateful for the wonderful joy of having resolved a problem with another person and restored a damaged relationship that I have harmed by my own mistake.  I am grateful for the joy of a heart changing.  I am grateful for the joy I feel when I am clean before the Lord.  I feel joy when I have carried out some duty to the best of my ability.  I feel joy when I have passed some test successfully, such as reporting to the bishop about my tithing status each year, or renewing my temple recommend, or taking the sacrament with a clean feeling and with gratitude that I can somehow be counted as a disciple of Jesus Christ, along with all of you.  
    I am grateful for the joy of anticipating an eventual reunion with my Heavenly Parents, through the redeeming and forgiving power of the atonement of Christ.
    Third, I am grateful for the Strengthening joys of the atonement, the promised succoring for my pains and infirmities and sickness promised by Alma in the Book of Mormon.  Alma says, speaking of Christ, 11 And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.
12 ... he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.  (Alma 7:11-12).
   Succor meaning relief or support in times of distress or affliction.  
    My afflictions and infirmaties may arise from my own weaknesses and mistakes, or from others’ actions, or simply be from the nature of this fallen world, the co-mingling of evil and good in the experiences of this world, but I am grateful that through the atonement of Christ and the gifts of his Holy Spirit, that there are means provided, even joys, in enduring and overcoming the hard things of this life.
    I recall an experience I had as a young father.   With my first wife, JoAnn, we were expecting a baby.  He was born, a beautiful little boy, whom we named Michael.  We brought him home, but he did not seem to be thriving.  JoAnn determined to take him back to our Dr.  I went to work at my office in downtown Salt Lake.  Midmorning, I received a call from JoAnn, saying “meet me at Primary Children’s Hospital.  Michael has serious heart problems.”
    At the hospital we learned that the problems with Michael’s heart were congenital and his very life was threatened.  The doctors wanted to operate the very next morning to bring at least partial relief.  JoAnn wanted to stay with him through the night, and felt the need to return home before that to get cleaned up and prepare for the night.  She suggested that I go home to be with the our older kids and then return to the hospital early evening while she went home to make preparations to stay the night.
    So I went home midafternoon.  My mind was in such turmoil and my heart was heavy with worry.  The older kids were OK so I decided a walk around the block might be helpful.  When I was about half way around the block, I had a strange experience.  Something in my heart had changed.  My mind was still registered the shock and worry and agony, but in my heart I was at peace.  “God knows and is in charge and things will work according to plan.”  
    I thought, “How can this be?  My mind is still in turmoil, but my heart is at peace.”  I experienced such a strong sense of spiritual support and strengthening and succor which continued, and allowed me to function and be a strength to my family in the challenging days and years that followed.
    Finally, I am grateful for the joys associated with the Perfecting power of the atonement, the joys of progressively mastering the divine nature, potentially of becoming like our Savior:
“Beloved now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)  Also, “...that when he (Christ) shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may be purified, even as he is pure.” (Moroni 7:48)
    I am grateful for the joy of learning to appreciate Christ’s virtues and perfections as a example.
    I am grateful for the joy of being chastened and stretched by the Spirit so I can improve.
    I am grateful for the joy of feeling the call of the temple and to feel God’s love in the temple, the joy of learning to worship God in the temple.
    I am joyful through the temple to deepen my understanding of the higher laws of the gospel, the Savior’s perfecting and sanctifying laws, those that define and reflect divine nature that I need to emulate and acquire.
    I am grateful through the temple to enjoy a greater sense of His hope for me, to feel He knows me personally, to somehow feel the Savior’s embrace, and the evidences of His sacrifice for me.
    I feel an incomprehensible joy in contemplating eternal companionship and relations with those persons I have learned on earth to love the most.
“And that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.” (D&C 130:2)
    With all my heart I testify of the truthfulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ restored in our day and the power of his atonement to bless us as we follow him.  In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

God as our Divine Father

    One of the great doctrines of the Restorations brought back to us through the prophet Joseph Smith is that in His relationship to us, God is paternal.  He is not primarily a sovereign, a king, a ruler, a master.  Our relationship to Him in familial.  We are His children, spirit sons and daughters.  (See Doctrine & Covenants 76:24, Moses 3:3-5, 6:51, Abraham 3:22, The Family: A Proclamation to the World).   His motivations toward us are primarily that of a Divine Parent.  I think of the motivation and love I experience as a father, a grand-father, and now as a great-grandfather.  I have hopes for my descendants, that each will achieve his or her highest potential and make their best personal contributions to life around them, as they develop their talents and values, as they give service, as they meet challenges, as they themselves establish family relationships and contribute to the lives of others.  I sense this is the best in myself, even with my imperfections, and that the highest calling a man may receive is that of Father.  Of course, our Heavenly Father is perfect in his fatherly hopes and desires for us.
    Many years ago, in preparing a paper for a BYU religion class, I noticed evidence for the above in the teachings of Christ in the four synoptic gospels of the New Testament, by the language he used when he referred to God our Heavenly Father. There were times when there was a marked difference in the names or titles he used in referring to God.  It appeared that often when he was addressing persons who were antagonistic to him, scribes, Pharisees, etc., he typically referred to deity as “God.”  But when he was with his apostles or other persons who were responsive to him, he tended to call God “Father.”
    This difference seems to me to suggest that Christ was teaching a higher concept of life and religion to his followers, concerning the nature of God and our relation to him and having an emphasis on love and family and the source of our greatest joys both in time and in eternity.
    In comparing this distinction in the four synoptic gospels, the difference is most pronounced in the book of Matthew.  Matthew was one of Christ’s original apostles and was with the Savior throughout his ministry.  This difference is less pronounced in Mark and Luke, both of whom we understand had less personal contact with Christ while living, and who wrote their summaries from a somewhat third-hand position.  In the book of John, the use of the parental name for God, “Father,” is dominant.  We understand that John was writing from the vantage point of a very close and caring relationship with the Savior and seems to recognize and define the fatherly role of God as primary.  Here is what I found in the four gospel writings:

The Book of Matthew
Term    Followers    Not Sure    Antagonists    Total
“Father”    18             0                0                    18
“God”         4             1                9                    14

The Book of Mark
Term    Followers    Not Sure    Antagonists    Total
“Father”      2             0                0                       2
“God”       15             2              15                     32

The Book of Luke
Term    Followers    Not Sure    Antagonists    Total
“Father”      4             0                0                       4
“God”       21           13              19                     53

The Book of John
Term    Followers    Not Sure    Antagonists    Total
“Father”    20          10              14                      44
“God”         1            2                4                        7

Totals for all Synoptic Gospels
Term    Followers    Not Sure    Antagonists    Total
“Father”    44          10              14                      68
“God”       41          18              47                    106

    Note: References by Christ to his personal father,  i.e., “my Father,” are not included.

A Theology of Family Love

    I am summarizing some ideas about the Latter-day Saint theology of family love.  Our human and more especially our family connections encompass a significant part of the eternal products of our mortal experience.
    “What we are most certain of, is that “Our natural affections... are the cement of all virtuous and heavenly society”[from Orson Pratt].  Ultimately we understand God’s nature, and human salvation, to be the simple amplification of that which is most elemental, and most worthwhile, about our life here on earth.  The divine nature of man, and the divine nature of God, are shown to be the same– they are rooted in the will to love, at the price of pain, but in the certainty of joy.  Heaven holds out the promise of a belonging that is destined to extend and surpass any that we have ever known in this wounded world.
    “So we learn, and we love.  What we have learned, and how we have loved, endure.  These are the two constants in our continuing existence.” (Terryl and Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life, Salt Lake City: Ensign Peak, 2012, 105-106)
    The family is the critical laboratory for learning and establishing loving interpersonal  relationships.  The Givens suggest how Restoration scriptures document this concept in a way that resonates deeply in my soul, especially as I contemplate my own family and its individual members:
    “Jesus named love of God first in the hierarchy of heavenly commands, with love of others second (Matt 22:38-39).  Yet, when Enoch [in Moses 7] asks a weeping God the Father... the cause of His tears, His answer has three astonishing dimensions.  The first appears when God prefaces His response by reciting the two great commandments in reverse order.  “Unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandments, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father.”  The second [dimension] is that though God’s children have clearly broken both commands, God’s grief is over their violation of the second.  He is not weeping because they have failed to worship, honor or obey Him: “Behold, they are without affection, and hate their own blood.”  Third, His tears flow, indeed , “the whole heavens shall weep over them... seeing these shall suffer.”  Three times the account affirms, and Enoch marvels, that God’s weeping is over human “misery.”
    “These verses are the clearest prism through which to see our Divine Parents’ true nature  and greatest concern.  It is not for themselves, for Their glory, or for Their priority in our hearts that they labor.  Their greatest longing made manifest in those verses accords with the deepest desire we know as parents... that our children live in love and harmony with one another.  That we would be jealous of our children’s love for each other is simply perverse.  Love in a community of perfect sociability is not competitive– it is mutually reinforcing.  How could we have missed this lesson?  To serve each other is to serve [God]...  To succor the thirsty or feed the hungry is to succor Christ, to feed Christ.  We may make distinctions, but God does not.  We cannot contribute to the heavenly community, the Zion of perfect sociability, if our relationships with each other are fractured...” (Fiona and Terryl Givens, All Things New, Rethinking Sin, Salvation, and Everything in Between, Faith Matters Publishing, 2020, 143-144)
    “In Enoch’s vision, heaven shocks by its familiarity.  God it would appear, is first and foremost a relational Being, and the heaven toward which we aspire consists of loving relationships that are eternal... When God created man and women, he brought them together.  That a man should cling to his wife and she to him, on the way to becoming “one flesh,” was a pattern and order He established...  It was... a sacramental union established in paradise, and anticipated no end.  Marriage is a heavenly order, modeled on a divine template– a relationship that may be sealed on earth, in order to be “bound in heaven.”  “Divine families encircled by the fire and light are the very essence of life and eternal life; without them this earth– indeed this cosmos– will have missed the measure of its creation.” [Truman Madsen quote]
    “We pass through birth and death as individuals.  But the years in between are filled with the unceasing search for community, for companionship, for intimacy...  Affection, friendship, romance, and charity [storge, philia, eros, and agape, Greek words encompassing our English word love]... dominate our social existence, revealing our lives to be an ongoing, comprehensive effort to find and secure relationships and connections on every conceivable level.
    “Relationships are the core of our existence because they are the core of God’s, and we are in His image.  God’s nature and life are the simple extension of that which is most elemental, and more worthwhile, about our life here on earth...”  (Terryl Givens, The God Who Weeps, 106-109)
    And the highest, most significant ordinances of the restored Church, temple sealings,  bind together loving families, husbands and wives, parents and children, across the generations, for the eternities.
    Speaking more broadly, elements of family connection help define our entire religious commitment.  In our church, why do we call each other Brother or Sister?  Because we by baptism have each become new creatures or Covenant Children of Jesus Christ.  As King Benjamin states,
    “And now, because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters.” (Mosiah 5:7)
    Therefore, we have entered by adoption into the family of Christ.  He is our covenant or spiritual father, and we have acquired a multitude of spiritual brothers and sisters.  Our relationships with these covenantal siblings should model and follow after the best of our nuclear or biological family connections.
    Our scriptures also suggest an even broader church, and, by implication, family connection.  Beyond our institutional church, there may exist a larger holy invisible church of God, in the wilderness.   “Holy men [and women] that ye know not of"(D&C 49:8), persons that might fit under a broadly defined “Church of the Lamb of God” (1 Nephi 14:10), who are kept from the fulness of God’s truth, only because “they know not where to find it”  (D&C 123:12).
    President Dallin Oaks has suggested that this broader church encompasses those who believe in God and seek to serve Him according to their best understanding. (“Witnesses of God”, devotional address, Brigham Young University–Idaho on February 25, 2014.)  And President Russell M. Nelson has urged us to “expand our circle of love to embrace the whole human family.” (Russell M. Nelson, “Blessed Are the Peacemakers,” Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2002)