Dear students, fellow faculty, brothers and sisters, President and Sister Meredith, I feel so grateful and humbled to be here. I know I stand on holy ground, in the presence of beloved children of God, who have been brought to this place for a reason. I believe you have some sense of the sacred mission of this university. Guided by masterful teachers, and in a uniquely powerful way, you engage in discovering and confirming the truth for yourselves, as witnessed by the Holy Ghost. This allows you to speak and teach with the power and authority of God. You are being prepared to do the work of God in blessing your eternal brothers and sisters, your own children, and the future families of this earth. How this world needs you.
I know you know that we live at a time of fracturing and alienation. Recently, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared an epidemic of loneliness, singling it out as the most common serious pathology of our day. He reported that one in two adults are living with measurable loneliness, and the rates are even higher among young adults. [1] A 2021 national survey by the Harvard School of Education found that 61 percent of young adults aged 18–25 reported feeling lonely “frequently” or “almost all the time.” [2]
Recently, Derek Thompson of the Atlantic noted that we are increasingly choosing isolation, “spending less time with other people than in any other period for which we have data.” [3] That includes seemingly odd changes like getting takeout to eat at home alone, inviting people over less, spending less time helping people outside of our own homes, and spending many more hours of our free time alone, in front of screens. In his words, “Day to day, hour to hour, we are choosing this way of life—its comforts, its ready entertainments. But convenience can be a curse.” [4]
We should not be surprised that this isolation has been accompanied by a significant increase in mental health challenges. The surgeon general describes loneliness as “hunger or thirst … a feeling that we experience when something we're lacking for survival is missing from our life. ... The subjective feeling that the connections that we need in our life are greater than the connections we actually have.” [5]
You see, we are not designed for isolation and pleasure-seeking autonomy. We are deeply relational beings, designed not for independence but for radical dependence and connection. In the exquisite language of the first great commandment, we are each a heart-soul-mind-strength complex designed for love, in its deepest form. [6] We are designed for family. We are family. The eternal family.
In answer to the deepest longings of the human soul, we have been given the truths laid out in the proclamation on the family. I stand before you today, 30 years after it was given, [7] to confirm its witness that the entire plan of salvation is the sacred work of connection, relationships, and divine oneness in family bonds. This nine-paragraph document is only 600 words in length, yet it holds within it the foundational truths that have confirmed themselves to me over and over again across 20 years of study, research, and teaching. Into our culture of fracturing, the Lord has poured out truth about our relational nature, that His work is to enable us to be bound together, that not one of us is left without roots or branches, free-floating or disconnected.
The proclamation is grounded in a truth assuring every one of us complete belonging in a family of perfect heavenly parents who are divine love. “All human beings, male and female, are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and as such, each has a divine nature and destiny.” [8] When we look in the mirror we see Them—our Mother and our Father—for we are in their image, carrying their divinity within us. Their bond of love is at the core of our beings. In the words of President Russell M. Nelson, “As [Their] begotten children, ... we are endowed with the potential to become like them, just as mortal children may become like their mortal parents.” [9]
I recently spoke to a professor of evolutionary biology from a very elite university who identifies as an atheist. She has spent her life studying the male and female body and the role of hormones in our unique development. She asked me what my experience is like teaching about gender at BYU. I looked at her and simply said, “We believe that we are the literal children of a divine mother and a father, born in their image.” As I said these words, her eyes filled with tears. She looked at me and said, “I do not know why I am crying. That is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.”
We are designed to become like Them, beings of love, in the deepest form of connection and intimacy. Heaven is not so much a place, but a quality of relationship—a place where, as described in Doctrine and Covenants 76, “[we] see as [we] are seen, and know as [we] are known, having received of His fullness and of His grace.” [10] I have treasured these words by Christian theologian and pastor, Timothy Keller: “To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.” [11] This is the love they are calling us into. The purpose of the proclamation is to guide us in knowing the divine patterns and truths that define eternity, eternal joy, and eternal love.
What are those divine patterns?
We are told that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God; that “marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan; [that] children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.” [12]
The creation of the earth happened through a series of differentiations—heaven and earth, light and dark, night and day, water and dry land. At creation’s pinnacle, we are given male and female, each designed for a distinct and special purpose so that together they might become eternally one. Only the metaphor of the rib can capture the depth of their equality and intimacy—not one ahead or behind, but side by side, guarding together the very essence of life: the heart and the lungs. The depth of their relationship is such that Adam describes Eve as “bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” [13] and “an help meet,” [14] in Hebrew, “ezer kenegdo,” a complementary source of strength and divine help through partnership. [15]
This oneness is the heartbeat of eternity. But it is also the heartbeat of society. As “the keystone institution,” described by Harvard anthropology professor Joseph Henrich, [16] a devoted marriage provides the stability and wholeness on which society depends. In the words of University of Virginia sociologist Bradford Wilcox, it is the irreplaceable institution that “stabilizes the romantic relationships of adults, bridges the gender divide between men and women, endowing their lives with a deeper sense of meaning, direction and solidarity [and] above all, provides the ideal context for the bearing and rearing of children.” [17]
Marriage has a profound influence on the well-being and happiness of adults, recently identified as the most significant distinguishing factor of happiness in the United States. But it also profoundly impacts children. [18] “No other institution reliably connects two parents, and their money, talent, and time,” [19] to create the secure and stable environment with nurturing caregivers that children depend on. That is why hundreds of studies comparing outcomes for children born outside marriage indicate increased risks in every developmental area—poverty, involvement in crime, failing in school, challenges to physical health, psychological distress, exposure to aggravated parenting, and abuse. We see similar outcomes for children born to cohabiting couples, related to the fact that they are much more likely to see their cohabiting parents break up, and instability in family relationships is very disruptive for children.
Making the choice to end a marital relationship that is abusive can be a courageous and beneficial decision, taking children out of a destructive environment. But marital division and divorce also mean increased risk—including an experience of inner division, and sometimes even exile for a child. [20] Children are, after all, the embodiment of their parents’ union. For a child, there is a longing for the original intactness of their being, the loving union of the mother and father from whom they come. [21]
My husband’s parents divorced when he was six. He still describes the moment when his mother asked, “Michael, who do you want to live with?” His six-year-old heart could not respond. He grew up without religious faith, but he had deep feelings for Christmas because, on that day, his parents would come back together to eat breakfast and open presents, and he would feel wholeness again.
I show you an image drawn by a 10-year-old I love in his journal after his parents told him they were divorcing. He is thriving, able now to grow up free of the challenges of an abusive environment, but his image captures a powerful truth. A loving, stable marriage provides the durable “haven of permanent and unconditional love in an otherwise often unloving and undependable world” that children depend upon. [22] When that relationship is ruptured by mistreatment, abuse, and divorce, children experience a betrayal of the primal trust they have reposed in their parents. We are designed for oneness, a oneness grounded in marriage. For this child and for all of us, that is our eternal destiny in Christ.
This leads us to another truth revealed in the proclamation. Both a man and a woman are needed to create life, and both are needed to facilitate the nurturing of that life. By divine design, men and women “contribute differently but equally” through a combination of complementary capacities and characteristics [23] to the sacred purposes of family life. Consider how both mothers and fathers experience a flood of oxytocin, the bonding hormone, in the process of caring for their new infant. But for mothers, oxytocin elicits bonding behaviors like cooing and cuddling. For fathers, the same hormone tends to elicit behaviors like tickling and tossing. These differences foreshadow more extensive complementary patterns exhibited across children’s development. [24]
Mothers are primed to establish a bond through which the emotional communication that is essential for development can occur. Her infant is also primed to bond with her, already knowing her smell, her voice, her face. This remarkable relationship appears to shape the foundations of identity, well-being, and emotional understanding. In a complementary way, a father’s relationship appears to shape relational capacity, achievement, understanding of boundaries, and emotion management.
Fathers tend to discipline less frequently than mothers, but when they do, they tend to hold to the consequence, while mothers tend to be more flexible. Mothers lay the foundation for emotional understanding while fathers build confidence in handling emotions and working with peers, even in the way they roughhouse with children. Mothers shape core capacity and identity, while fathers tend to foster independence, encouraging children to take more risks, from the secure place of a father’s protection and guidance. Mothers provide the foundation for children’s intellectual capacity, while fathers’ connection strongly predicts academic achievement. Mothers tend to be a strong source of emotional comfort and support while fathers offer daughters and sons a deep experience of what protective male love feels like, strengthening their daughters’ capacity for wise sexual decisions and their sons’ development of protective and nurturing masculinity.
This leads us to the profound gift described in the proclamation: “children are an heritage of the Lord.” [25] And yet, we live at a time when having children can be viewed as a transition of loss—loss of freedom, loss of identity, loss of public recognition, loss of pleasure. I recently sat beside a new mother. Her infant, just 6 weeks old, was still struggling to nurse and bottle feed. His utter dependence struck me. He gazed directly into his mother’s face, locking his eyes on hers. In spite of having no real capacities, it was clear that he recognized her. I could see in his eyes that she was his entire world. For a second, his mouth broke into a smile, and I watched her exhaustion give way to radiance.
Can we possibly measure what it means to the expansion of our own purpose, meaning, and identity, to bring another life into being, to be another’s entire world, to quite literally enter eternity, becoming part of the past and the future forever, to have the privilege of knowing and witnessing the divinity of another, and to make possible their eternal life?
There is a reason that Harvard sociologist Carle Zimmerman found a pattern as he analyzed the rise and fall of all the great empires: at the peak of every great civilization, they were oriented toward the bearing and nurturing of children. [26] Once they lost that orientation, their civilization lost its strength. Focusing on children invites better of adults—pressuring their development, focusing them on building a better future, inviting them to sacrifice for something higher than themselves, and imbuing their lives with meaning and purpose. In short, an orientation towards the nurturing and development of children saves us.
This helps us understand another core truth in the proclamation—that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between a man and a woman lawfully married as husband and wife. [27] Sexual feelings are not sinful—they are powerful, even spiritual—a sacred stewardship. The law of chastity was given by God to prepare us to use these feelings as intended—to bring joy and fulfillment within marriage, to create a union strong enough that a child’s heart can rely upon it. You can hear Elder Holland’s powerful words, “The sexual union of man and woman is—or certainly was ordained to be—a symbol of total union: union of their hearts, their hopes, their lives, their love, their family, their future, their everything.” [28]
Erotic energy is designed to be a force for goodness, even a spiritual power. When channeled within the bounds God has set, across our development this energy can propel us to become the kind of person someone would want to marry. Within a loving marriage that power becomes both grounding and transcendent, helping us understand why religious couples in devoted marriages tend to have the most fulfilling sexual experiences. [29]
But purposefully arousing lustful sexual feelings outside these bounds becomes fracturing to both men and women, compromising the foundation of future marriages. Being harmed sexually is the most disruptive form of interpersonal abuse. We witness the pain resulting from a disconnected, empty approach to sexual intimacy, [30] in which others become objects to use for personal sexual satisfaction. The breaking apart of sexual expression from marriage has been devastating for the development of men. Without this clear path to marriage, men are no longer shaped to develop, learn, work, save, and live because others will depend on them. [31] For women, sex outside committed relationships is expected, bringing with it risks for unwanted sexual contact, the pressure to sexualize themselves, decreased mental health, [32] out-of-wedlock childbearing, [33] and abortion. [34]
I bear witness that we can be fully healed from any and all misuses of this power through the atoning blood of the Lord, Jesus Christ. We have never been in a body before and this will take practice. As we accept the gift of our sexual capacity, steward our desires, seek healing, and let the Spirit teach us, we will be prepared to learn and experience the power for which it was intended.
I have given you a brief glimpse into five of the foundational truths found in the proclamation on the family that I have witnessed in my work as a social scientist. Decades of research and human experience have confirmed that there is nothing that has a more profound impact on children, men, women, economies, and societies than the family, the fundamental unit of society.
And yet, brothers and sisters, you, like I, have experienced pain in family life. Mortality can be a profound experience in brokenness from the family ideals we desire.
It is in the midst of this seeming opposition that the divine plan for our growth and redemption is powerfully revealed. Our Eternal Father covenanted to send His Beloved Son to be our Savior and Redeemer. He is the Master Healer, the Repairer of the Breach, the Restorer. This was actually the purpose of mortality—that we might experience the gift of His redemption. In the words of my colleague, Byran Korth, “The family is the setting. Christ and His doctrine are the way.”
Our glorious Mother Eve faced a choice—the safety and the security of the garden, or the goodness and wisdom that come at the price, and only at the price, of painful, lived experience. Her and Adam’s great desire was to become like Them, our Father and Mother, and to give us the privilege to do so. It is actually from within the opposition, the contradictions, the unresolved, that we can experience the purpose of it all—the rebirth and refinement, of becoming “a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord.” [35] Just as with planets that appear their largest and brightest when they are in “opposition,” it is through our painful, lived experiences that the Lord can reflect His greatest light and love. [36]
As a single woman, I yearned for marriage and children for many years. I could not seem to make that reality happen. My unfulfilled yearnings played a sacred role in inclining my heart toward my Redeemer to seek peace and direction He alone could provide. Daily prayer and scripture study, especially the words of our modern prophets, became a lifeline of hope and direction. I felt compelled to turn to the words of my patriarchal blessing—and other priesthood blessings—to find love and direction that were personal to me from my Eternal Father. And I found it.
As I look back, I know I experienced the power of a covenant relationship.
This is the power God promises us. He breaks through our world of fracturing and isolation and tells us, “And lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end.” [37] “I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour. ... Thou wast precious in my sight ... and I have loved thee. ... Fear not: for I am with thee.” [38]
In turning to Him who has already turned to us by making and keeping covenants, we experience the power that transforms us. I experienced the promise of President Nelson, that through covenant, “We create a relationship with God that allows Him to bless and change us. ... If we allow Him to prevail [over all other things], that covenant will lead us closer and closer to Him.” [39] He will be “the most powerful influence in [our] lives.” [40]
He continues, “The moral and spiritual power that our people need right now and for the days ahead is the power of God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. We gain access to Their power by making and keeping covenants with Them.” [41]
My brothers and sisters, this is the answer to the fracturing, isolation, and emptiness of our day. And it is the work that our Father, through His prophet, has called all of us into—healing and binding the family on both sides of the veil through a covenant relationship with Him.
My husband’s ancestors were pioneers who gave their all to the gospel of Jesus Christ and, through their generosity, enabled the salvation of others. Yet my husband was raised without faith. Our Father watched over that family. When my husband was prepared, two humble missionaries knocked on his apartment door and invited Him to receive the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He did.
Like my husband, whenever we receive the healing and cleansing blood of Jesus Christ through ordinances and covenants, we open the way for intergenerational healing and redemption: “Behold, I will reveal unto you the Priesthood, by the hand of Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers.” [42]
In the midst of our culture of fracturing and isolation, He invites us to turn our hearts to the promises He made to our fathers and mothers that He will redeem, restore, and make us one, that not one will be left without root nor branch, isolated or disconnected; [43] that all may have the chance to become beings of love in divine eternal relationships forever. The Book of Mormon was given to us for that gathering. In the words of my colleague Cathy Croxton, the Book of Mormon is all about family redemption, and the role Christ plays in it. Christ's redemptive power is so that families can be healed from all that wounds them,
ours is the day of healing and binding the family! This is what we were born for—to experience His healing redemption and enable that covenant redemption for others, that we all may be made “perfect in one.” [44] May we seek and experience this promise together with Him, in our families, and in our eternal family, I pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Notes
[1] V. H. Murthy, Together: The Healing Power of Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World (HarperCollins, 2020); Youri Benadjaoud, “US Surgeon General Warns about the Dangers of Loneliness,” ABC News, June 12, 2024.
[2] Richard Weissbourd et al., “Loneliness in America: How the Pandemic Has Deepened an Epidemic of Loneliness and What We Can Do About It,” Harvard School of Education: Making Caring Common Project (February 2021)
[3] Derek Thompson, “The Anti-Social Century,” The Atlantic, January 8, 2025.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Benadjaoud, “The Dangers of Loneliness,” ABC News.
[6] Andy Crouch, The Life We Are Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World, 2022, pg. 33.
[7] Gordon B. Hinckley, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Ensign, November 1995, 102.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Russell M. Nelson, “Perfection Pending,” Ensign, November 1995.
[10] Doctrine and Covenants 76:94.
[11] Timothy Keller and Kathy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (New York: Riverhead Books, 2011), 101.
[12] Hinckley, “The Family: A Proclamation,” 1995.
[13] Genesis 2:23.
[14] Genesis 2:18.
[15] See Angela Ashurst-McGee, “‘Help Meet’: Women’s Power to Serve,” Ensign, September 2020.
[16] Brad Wilcox, “Marriage: America’s Keystone Institution,” Institute for Family Studies, January 10, 2025.
[17] Bradford Wilcox, Get Married: Why Americans Should Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families and Save Civilization, (HapperCollins, 2024), xix.
[18] Sam Peltzman, “The Socio-Political Demography of Happiness," 2023, Social Science Research Network.
[19] W. Bradford Wilcox, “The New Progressive Argument for Kids: Marriage Per Se Doesn’t Matter,” Institute for Family Studies, September 15, 2014.
[20] Elizabeth Marquardt, Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce, (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006).
[21] Antonio Lopez, Torn Asunder: Children, the Myth of the Good Divorce, and the Recovery of Origins, (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2017), 105-130.
[22] Leon Kass, “The End of Courtship,” The Public Interest, (Winter 1997), no. 126, p. 39–63.
[23] David A. Bednar, “Marriage is Essential to His Eternal Plan,” Ensign, June 2006.
[24] Jenet J. Erickson, “It takes two: What we learn from social science about the divine pattern of gender complementarity.” BYU Studies Quarterly, 62(1): 4-28.
[25] Psalms 127:3.
[26] Carle C. Zimmerman, Family and Civilization, (New York 1947).
[27] Hinckley, “The Family: A Proclamation,” 1995.
[28] Jeffrey R. Holland, “Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments,” BYU Speeches, January 12, 1988.
[29] Institute for Family Studies & Wheatley Institute, “2019 World Family Map: The Ties that Bind: Is Faith a Global Source for Good or Ill in the Family,” 2019.
[30] Christine Emba, “A Manifesto Against Sex Positivity,” The Washington Post, March 21, 2022.
[31] W. Bradford Wilcox and Robert I. Lerman, “For Richer, for Poorer: How Family Structures Economic Success in America” (American Enterprise Institute, 2014).
[32] Rose Wesche, Shannon E. Claxton, Emily A. Waterman, “Emotional Outcomes of Casual Sexual Relationships and Experiences: A Systematic Review,” Journal of Sex Research 58, no. 8 (2021): 1069–84.
[33] Michas, “Percentage of Births.”
[34] Jeff Diamant et al., “What the Data Says about Abortion in the U.S.,” Pew Research Center, January 11, 2023.
[35] Jeffrey R. Holland, “A Saint through the Atonement of Christ the Lord,” BYU Speeches, January 18, 2022. See also, Mosiah 3:19.
[36] Eric Dahlin, “It Must Needs Be,” BYU Studies Quarterly, 2023, 5.
[37] Matthew 28:20
[38] Isaiah 43: 1-5
[39] Russell M. Nelson, “The Everlasting Covenant,” Liahona, October 2022.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Russell M. Nelson, “The Power of Keeping Covenants” General Conference Leadership Meeting, April 2024.
[42] Doctrine & Covenants 2: 1-2
[43] See Jacob 4:17–18; Jacob 5.
[44] See Gerrit W. Gong, “Becoming Perfect in Christ,” Ensign, July 2014.