Train Up a Child

There’s an interesting contrast between King Benjamin’s teachings in Mosiah 4 and the description of the Lamanites in Mosiah 10.  Zeniff tells us this concerning the Lamanites: “They have taught their children that they should hate the Nephites, and that they should murder them, and that they should rob and plunder them, and do all they could to destroy them; therefore they have an eternal hatred towards the children of Nephi.”  On the other hand, this is what King Benjamin taught the Nephites: “Ye will not suffer your children… that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another, and serve the devil….  But ye will teach them to walk in ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another” (Mosiah 4:14-15).  What a difference between the two societies!  Our job as parents is to teach our children the gospel of Christ: love, not hate, kindness, not contention, truth, not lies.  As the Lord simply put it in our dispensation: “they shall also teach their children to pray, and to walk uprightly before the Lord” (D&C 68:28).  Because of how the Lamanites taught their children, hatred persisted for hundreds of years between them and the Nephites.  What a marvelous responsibility it is for us to "train up a child in the way he should go (Proverbs 22:6).