A Post of Responsibility

In the last general conference Elder Christofferson gave his witness for marriage and the family.  He emphasized that marriage is founded on more than just the love of two individuals.  Quoting a Christian martyr, a victim of the Nazis, he said, "In marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind.  Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal—it is a status, an office.  Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man.”  I love that statement that marriage is a “post of responsibility” and not just an institution in which we are to seek personal enjoyment. 

In much of the debate today about marriage, it seems that the focus is on benefits and rights and individual fulfillment.  For us as members of the Church, the foundation of marriage is faith in God and devotion to Him, not a physical relationship or even an emotional bond.  It is a covenant of responsibility between us and God that we will both care for spouse and children and seek to bring forth and fulfill God’s purposes.  Elder Christofferson summarized two of the most important purposes of marriage and family this way: “Nothing relative to our time on earth can be more important than physical birth and spiritual rebirth, the two prerequisites of eternal life.”  This is the “post of responsibility” in marriage: to give God’s children life through physical birth and to teach them the way back through their own spiritual rebirth.  Adam and Eve were the first example to us in both of these things.  We read that after they were cast out of the garden “they began to multiply and to replenish the earth.”  They learned for themselves of the plan of redemption and the commandments of the Lord, “and they made all things known unto their sons and their daughters” (Moses 5:2, 12).  They knew that the responsibility for teaching their children rested upon them.  They did not look around for a village to rear their children for them, but they knew that it was part of God’s plan for parents to fulfill their duty as gospel teachers to their children.  As the Lord said in our dispensation, “Inasmuch as parents have children in Zion… that teach them not to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands, when eight years old, the sin be upon the heads of the parents” (D&C 68:25).  As Elder Christofferson finished his talk I was touched by the words that he spoke concerning the faithful disciples who, to no fault of their own, do not currently have the full blessings of family.  Speaking of this group he said, “And when you who bear the heaviest burdens of mortality stand up in defense of God’s plan to exalt his children, we are all ready to march.”  Yes, we are ready to march, especially as those who don’t have the opportunity for marriage or children stand up to defend marriage and give a sustaining voice to the divine institution of family.  We must never stop seeking to support the modern title of liberty in this day to preserve “our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children” (Alma 46:12).