Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
As parents we can hold life together . . . with love
and
faith, passed on to the next generation, one child at a time.
At the close of His first day teaching among the Nephite faithful, the resurrected
Jesus turned His attention to a special audience which often stands just below
the level of our gaze, sometimes nearly out of sight.
The sacred record says: “He commanded that their little children
should be brought [forward]. . . .
“And . . . when they had knelt upon the ground, . . . he himself
also knelt . . . ; and behold he prayed unto the Father, and the things which
he prayed cannot be written, . . . so great and marvelous [were the] things . . . [He did] speak unto the Father. . . .
“. . . When Jesus had made an end of praying . . . , he arose; . . . and . . . wept, . . . and he took their little children, one by one,
and blessed them, and [again] prayed unto the Father for them.
“And when he had done this he wept again; . . . [saying] unto
the multitude, . . . Behold your little ones.”
We cannot know exactly what the Savior was feeling
in such a poignant moment, but we do know that He was “troubled” and that He “groaned
within himself” over the destructive influences always swirling around the
innocent.1 We know He felt a great need to pray for and bless the
children.
In such times as we are in, whether the threats be global
or local or in individual lives, I too pray for the children. Some days it
seems that a sea of temptation and transgression inundates them, simply washes
over them before they can successfully withstand it, before they should have
to face it. And often at least some of the forces at work seem beyond our
personal control.
Well, some of them may be beyond our control, but I testify
with faith in the living God that they are not beyond His. He lives, and priesthood
power is at work on both sides of the veil. We are not alone, and we do not
tremble as if abandoned. In doing our part, we can live the gospel and defend
its principles. We can declare to others the sure Way, the saving Truth, the
joyful Life.2 We can personally repent in any way we need to repent,
and when we have done all, we can pray. In all these ways we can bless one
another and especially those who need our protection the most—the children.
As parents we can hold life together the way it is always held together—with
love and faith, passed on to the next generation, one child at a time.
In offering such a prayer for the young, may
I address a rather specific aspect of their safety? In this I speak carefully
and lovingly to
any of the adults of the Church, parents or otherwise, who may be given to
cynicism or skepticism, who in matters of whole-souled devotion always
seem
to hang back a little, who at the Church’s doctrinal campsite always like
to pitch their tents out on the periphery of religious faith. To all such—whom
we do love and wish were more comfortable camping nearer to us—I say, please
be aware that the full price to be paid for such a stance does not always
come due in your lifetime. No, sadly, some elements of this can be a kind
of profligate national debt, with payments coming out of your children’s and
grandchildren’s pockets in far more expensive ways than you ever intended
it to be.
In this Church there is an enormous amount of
room—and scriptural
commandment—for studying and learning, for comparing and considering, for
discussion and awaiting further revelation. We all learn “line upon line,
precept upon precept,”3 with the goal being authentic religious
faith informing genuine Christlike living. In this there is no place for
coercion
or manipulation, no place for intimidation or hypocrisy. But no child in
this Church should be left with uncertainty about his or her parents’ devotion
to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Restoration of His Church, and the reality of
living prophets and apostles who, now as in earlier days, lead that Church
according to “the will of the Lord, . . . the mind of the Lord, . . . the
word of the Lord, . . . and the power of God unto salvation.”4
In such basic matters of faith, prophets do not apologize for requesting unity,
indeed conformity, in the eloquent sense that the Prophet Joseph Smith used
that latter word.5 In any case, as Elder Neal Maxwell once said
to me in a hallway conversation, “There didn’t seem to be any problem with
conformity the day the Red Sea opened.”
Parents simply cannot flirt with skepticism or
cynicism, then be surprised when their children expand that flirtation
into full-blown romance.
If in matters of faith and belief children are at risk of being swept downstream
by this intellectual current or that cultural rapid, we as their parents
must
be more certain than ever to hold to anchored, unmistakable moorings clearly
recognizable to those of our own household. It won’t help anyone if we go
over the edge with them, explaining through the roar of the falls all the
way down that we really did know the Church was true and that the keys of
the priesthood really were lodged there but we just didn’t want to stifle
anyone’s freedom to think otherwise. No, we can hardly expect the children
to get to shore safely if the parents don’t seem to know where to anchor their
own boat. Isaiah once used a variation on such imagery when he said of unbelievers,
“[Their] tacklings are loosed; they could not . . . strengthen
their mast, they could not spread the sail.”6
I think some parents may not understand that even when they
feel secure in their own minds regarding matters of personal testimony, they
can nevertheless make that faith too difficult for their children to detect.
We can be reasonably active, meeting-going Latter-day Saints, but if we do
not live lives of gospel integrity and convey to our children powerful heartfelt
convictions regarding the truthfulness of the Restoration and the divine guidance
of the Church from the First Vision to this very hour, then those children
may, to our regret but not surprise, turn out not to be visibly active,
meeting-going Latter-day Saints or sometimes anything close to it.
Not long ago Sister Holland and I met a fine
young man who came in contact with us after he had been roaming around
through the occult
and sorting through a variety of Eastern religions, all in an attempt to
find religious faith. His father, he admitted, believed in nothing whatsoever.
But his grandfather, he said, was actually a member of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. “But he didn’t do much with it,” the young man
said. “He was always pretty cynical about the Church.” From a grandfather
who is cynical to a son who is agnostic to a grandson who is now looking
desperately
for what God had already once given his family! What a classic example of
the warning Elder Richard L. Evans once gave.
Said he: “Sometimes some parents mistakenly feel that they
can relax a little as to conduct and conformity or take perhaps a so called
liberal view of basic and fundamental things—thinking that a little laxness
or indulgence won’t matter—or they may fail to teach or to attend Church,
or may voice critical views. Some parents . . . seem to feel that they can
ease up a little on the fundamentals without affecting their family or their
family’s future. But,” he observed, “if a parent goes a little off
course, the children are likely to exceed the parent’s example.”7
To lead a child (or anyone else!), even inadvertently,
away from faithfulness, away from loyalty and bedrock belief simply because
we
want to be clever or independent is license no parent nor any other person
has ever been given. In matters of religion a skeptical mind is not a higher
manifestation of virtue than is a believing heart, and analytical deconstruction
in the field of, say, literary fiction can be just plain old-fashioned
destruction
when transferred to families yearning for faith at home. And such a deviation
from the true course can be deceptively slow and subtle in its impact.
As
one observer said, “[If you raise the temperature of my] bath water . . . only 1 degree every 10 minutes, how [will
I] know when to scream?”8
When erecting their sacred tabernacle in the wilderness of
Sinai, the ancient children of Israel were commanded to make firm their supporting
cords and strengthen the stakes which held them.9 The reason?
Storms arise in life—regularly. So fix it, fasten it, then fix and fasten it again.
Even then we know that some children will make choices that break their parents’ hearts.
Moms and dads can do everything right and yet have children who stray. Moral
agency still obtains. But even in such painful hours it will be comforting
for you to know that your children knew of your abiding faith in Christ,
in
His true Church, in the keys of the priesthood and in those who hold them.
It will be comforting then for you to know that if your children choose to
leave the straight and narrow way, they leave it very conscious that their
parents were firmly in it. Furthermore, they will be much more likely to
return
to that path when they come to themselves10 and recall the loving
example and gentle teachings you offered them there.
Live the gospel as conspicuously as you can. Keep the covenants
your children know you have made. Give priesthood blessings. And bear your
testimony!11 Don’t just assume your children will somehow get the
drift of your beliefs on their own. The prophet Nephi said near the end of
his life that they had written their record of Christ and preserved their
convictions regarding His gospel in order “to persuade our children . . . that
our children may know . . . [and believe]
the right way.”12
Nephi-like, might we ask ourselves what our children know?
From us? Personally? Do our children know that we love the scriptures? Do
they see us reading them and marking them and clinging to them in daily life?
Have our children ever unexpectedly opened a closed door and found us on our
knees in prayer? Have they heard us not only pray with them but also
pray for them out of nothing more than sheer parental love? Do our
children know we believe in fasting as something more than an obligatory
first-Sunday-of-the-month
hardship? Do they know that we have fasted for them and for their future
on days about which they knew nothing? Do they know we love being in the
temple,
not least because it provides a bond to them that neither death nor the legions
of hell can break? Do they know we love and sustain local and general leaders,
imperfect as they are, for their willingness to accept callings they did
not
seek in order to preserve a standard of righteousness they did not create?
Do those children know that we love God with all our heart and that we long
to see the face—and fall at the feet—of His Only Begotten Son?
I pray that they know this.
Brothers and sisters, our children take their
flight into the future with our thrust and with our aim. And even as we
anxiously watch
that arrow in flight and know all the evils that can deflect its course after
it has left our hand, nevertheless we take courage in remembering that
the
most important mortal factor in determining that arrow’s destination will
be the stability, strength, and unwavering certainty of the holder of the
bow.13
Carl Sandburg once said, “A baby is God’s opinion
that life should go on.”14 For that baby’s future as well as your own, be
strong. Be believing. Keep loving and keep testifying. Keep praying. Those
prayers will be heard and answered in the most unexpected hour. God will send
aid to no one more readily than He will send it to a child—and to the
parent of a child.
“And [Jesus] said unto them: Behold your
little ones.
“And . . . they cast their eyes towards heaven, and they saw
the heavens open, and they saw angels descending . . . as
it were in the midst of fire; and they came down and encircled those little
ones about, and they
were encircled about with fire; and the angels did minister unto them.”15
May it always be so, I earnestly pray—for the children—in
the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
NOTES
1. 3
Nephi 17:11, 14–16, 18, 21–23.
2. See John 14:6.
3. 2 Nephi 28:30.
4. D&C 68:4.
5. See D&C
128:13.
6. Isaiah 33:23.
7. In Conference Report, Oct. 1964, 135–36; emphasis added.
8. Marshall McLuhan, quoted in John Leo, “The Proper Place for
Commercials,” U.S. News and World Report, 30 Oct. 1989, 71.
9. See Isaiah
54:2; 3 Nephi 22:2.
10. See Luke 15:17.
11. See Joseph Smith, comp., Lectures on Faith (1985),
37 for a defining statement on the parental power of human testimony.
12. 2
Nephi 25:23, 26, 28; emphasis added.
13. I am indebted to Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet for the
suggestion of this metaphor.
14. In The Columbia World of Quotations (1996), no. 48047.
15. 3
Nephi 17:23–24. 
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