Continuing from a previous post: Covenant Hearts’ — ‘Marriage and the Joy of Human Love’, Bruce C. Hafen wrote in his preface:
Just since the late 1960’s, American law and culture have dramatically and tragically changed how most people now think about marriage, families, sex, and children. Drawing on my background from teaching family law, but much more fully informed by my Church experience, I attempt to explain here some of the reasons why today’s culture no longer supports our traditional attitudes. As that support has dwindled, society does not always value what we do when we exert ourselves to nurture our own commitments. We may feel lonely or even strange, because we are going against the grain of a laid-back permissive society in countercultural way. But we cannot let the world’s values dictate our own—there is too much at stake for that.
Part of what’s at stake is that our marriage really can be most satisfying and sanctifying—and the most demanding—experience of our lives. It is more than coincidence that the most sanctifying experiences of our spiritual lives should also be the most demanding experiences. Family life, with marriage at its center, is the homeroom of the earth school our Father created to give His children a place to learn and to grow. Our homes are laboratories where we test and develop our religion.
That makes it all the more risky that today’s society no longer understands marriage the way God originally gave it to His children, a place to learn and to grow. Our homes are laboratories where we test and develop our religion.
That makes it all the more risky that today’s society no longer understands marriage the way God originally gave it to His children. Being married isn’t easy. It isn’t supposed to be easy. But when a confused culture confuses us about what marriage means, we may give up on ourselves and each other much too soon.
Consider five other brief points by way of preface. First, I include a number of stories as illustrations. The names in all of these cases have been changed to protect personal privacy, even though the stories are based on actual experiences. I appreciate and admire these people. I have learned a great deal from them.
Second, I hope to convey accurate assumptions regarding “ideal” marriages and families in the Church. Once a couple is married in the temple, they are not living a celestial life. Rather, they walk out of the temple much the way Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden—to enter a sometimes tough and lonely world. The temple wedding gives them the authority of eternal marriage, but they will spend the rest of their lives working to create a marriage of celestial quality, striving and growing against opposition. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell once said, “Authority in the priesthood is given through ordination, but power in the priesthood is received through righteous living.”6 That principle describes the sources of power in a true celestial marriage. ~Bruce C. Hafen, Covenant Hearts, (Deseret Book, Salt Lake City 2005) x-xi (continued)
