I'm honored to be with you today, sincerely honored.

I'd actually considered, as I was looking at my career opportunities, the chance to do exactly what many of you are doing right now.

And I'm grateful for the opportunity to present today.

Today I want to talk, not about social science.

Yes, that’s my PhD, and yes I’m an active researcher.

I want to talk about doctrine.

I want to talk about the foundational doctrines that lead us in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to believe what we believe, to do what we do.

A little analogy, as you look at this, let me ask you this, how many people here like to hike? Okay.

Just like me.

So if I said I wanted you to hike with me from BYU to Huntington Beach, California, who is up for it?

(Chuckles) See, this is a much more adventurous group than my normal students.

(Chuckles) According to this, it is 222 hours, 680 miles.

Now I notice I still only got a smattering. If I offered to pay you $100 would you go?

I didn't get any more.

How about if I pay you $1,000, who will now come that wasn't going to come? Okay.

How about if I pay you $10,000, who is going to go now?

Hands up if you'd go now.

Okay.

How about if I paid you a cool million dollars, who is going?

So if your hands are down right now, you're lying.

(Laughter) But I want you to think with me, what changed?

Did the distance change?

Or the lions and tigers and bears change? What changed?

The reason, the reward, what you would get out of it.

My guess is in your work you try to help marriages succeed, families stay together in often very adverse situations.

What I hope to do today in my time is to share some doctrinal reasons why.

I want to share the million dollar answers if I could, why in the plan of our Father in Heaven, marriage is what it is.

Now, the goal here is to try and get a...

you could say a bird's eye view, but I'd say a "God's eye" view, and see marriages as God sees it.

Not simply as we do.

I've got a colleague who is going to come talk to you tomorrow.

He's going to share some of the social science background. I want to do a little bit more about what God sees.

I

want to talk about the doctrinal basis for which we believe.

Take a look at this statement from Brigham Young. I think it's a classic, crucially important one. He says this: "The whole subject of the marriage relation is not in my reach, nor in any other man's reach on this earth."

Now think about who is speaking.

It's a prophet.

If that's the case, we're in trouble, right?

"It is without beginning of days or end of years; it is a hard matter to reach."

But then he says, "We can tell some things with regard to it." Now look at what he says about marriage.

"It lays the foundations for worlds." I want you to notice the plurals.

"It lays the foundations for worlds, for angels, and for the

Gods," plural.

"For intelligent beings to be crowned with glory, immortality, and eternal

lives." That's a little bit broader foundation than we would generally think of as simply a wonderful, happy family life.

Now, we can't understand the nature of marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints without beginning to take a look at the nature of God.

And so that's going to be a large part of what I'm going to try and do in my vast

25, 35 minutes that I have with you today.

Joseph Smith said this, "If men do not comprehend the character of God they do not comprehend themselves." Now I want you to think with me for a minute.

I'm a convert, I joined the Church when I was younger, 18 or so.

If you would ask a modern Christian, not a Latter-day Saint Christian, but a modern Christian to define God, what answers would you get? Now, if we were in one of my BYU classes I would have you respond, but I think at this point I'm going to just kind of give you some thoughts, is that fair?

How many of you have ever heard the Westminster Confession? Okay? That is basically what brought us from the early creeds to what most of the protestant world sees as the theology.

And you'll recognize several of the statements in here.

"There is but one only living and true God," and here is some

attributes, "who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions," have you ever heard that

before? Right?

"Immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible." So if I were to summarize what I've just put up there, God is an incomprehensible being without beginning or end, without body parts or passions. Now, body we get.

Parts, He's not divisible.

What are passions, do you know, in this language?

It's feelings.

It's emotions.

It's passion.

Not sexuality, but strong feelings. So God is a being without body, parts, or feelings.

Now, if you were to look at this definition and ask yourself what does it

tell you about the nature of marriage?

Do you see that it doesn't give you a whole lot of foundation from which to build.

According to modern Christianity, think about this: What did God do with these attributes that we just talked about, pre-mortally, mortally, and post-mortally?

And if I could just be quick with this.

Pre-mortally we all agree, He created the world and us.

But by way of just the scriptures, the Hebrew scriptures, we don't have a lot more information about what God did prior to

His incarnation on this earth.

And so He created us, we're not sure what else, right?

Mortality, He leads, helps, saves.

I think very similar to what we in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would believe.

Post-mortally we know the scriptures say that He will judge.

We know that He will be worshiped.

But if you look at the Hebrew scriptures, you get very little of

the pre- or post-mortality.

And again, I would ask what does this teach us about the nature of marriage

or family?

Well, most Christians, including Latter-day Saint Christians agree that God is a perfect being.

It becomes clear that there is no agreed upon answer to some of the fundamental issues regarding the nature of God such as: 1. Did God have a beginning, and if so, where, when,

how, why? 2.

What is our relationship with God? 3.

Why does God create and care

for us? 4. To what extent are we capable of and meant to become as God is? Now you might look at that and say actually in modern creeds, God didn't have a beginning, He is just our God.

This one is an interesting one because if you look at the common

understanding and perception, God does everything God does out of love.

But do you see a problem with that, and a being that is without

body, parts or passions?

Before we begin to look down on anyone else's beliefs, trust me, we have our own mysteries that we have to deal with, so be kind.

But understand these kind of issues would be absolutely foundational for you and I learning to understand why God cares about us, and why God cares about

familial relationships, marriage, parenthood, children.

So, think about this: How would a Latter-day Saint define God?

So think again who is God, right?

Joseph Smith said this, "In the first place I wish to go back to

the beginning - to the morn of creation.

There is the starting point for us to look to, in order to understand and be fully acquainted with the mind, purposes and decreases of the Great

Elohim, who sits in yonder heavens as he did at the creation of the world." Now look at this, "It is necessary for us to have an understanding of God himself in the beginning.

If we start right, it is easy to go right all the time; but if we start wrong we may go wrong and it will be a hard matter to get right." And so I know it may seem a little strange when we're talking about what is the sure foundation of marriage, to start with our understanding of the nature of God, but they’re inseparable.

We cannot understand what marriage is and why marriage is without understanding

the nature of our Father and Mother in Heaven.

So let's go. There Joseph Smith, a few more statements.

"I'm going to tell you how God came to be God." I know that's kind of blasphemous

in our modern days.

"We have imagined that God was God from all eternity.

These are incomprehensible ideas to some,

but they are the simple and first principles of the gospel, to know for a surety the character of God."

And then he says this: "God himself was once as we are now,

and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!

That is the great secret.

If the vail was rent to-day, and the Great God who holds this world in its

orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make himself visible; I say, if you were to see Him to-day, you would see him like a man in form - like yourselves, in all the person,

image, and very form as a man...

Having a knowledge of God," speaking of us, "having a knowledge of God, we begin to know how to approach him, and how to ask so as to receive an answer.

When we understand the character of God and know how to come to him, he begins to unfold the heavens to us."

Perhaps we need to spend more time, perhaps I need to spend more time

allowing God to unfold the heavens for me, so that I can see with His

eyes, and understand His will.

So think about this. According to Latter-day Saints, what are the characteristics and attributes of God?

Have you ever seen this couplet before?

Lorenzo Snow made this famous.

"As man is now, God was once, as God is now, man may become." Now, a fun little fact about the genesis of this.

This came to him by revelation,

but he wouldn't teach it.

He acknowledges it scared him because he couldn't point to any of the prior prophets who had taught it.

And so he did what all wise prophets, seers, and revelators do, he held back.

And then as he began to find some of the writings of Joseph Smith that he hadn't studied before, and he said, "Oh, my goodness, Joseph Smith has been teaching this since Nauvoo." It opened up a floodgate.

And for almost the rest of Lorenzo Snow's life, this became one of his primary messages to the Church.

"As man is now, God once was." We don't know details here, and thank goodness it's not necessary to have any details.

But just a cursory concept, if God was once as we are, we would think therefore He was mortal, that He went through an experience as you and I are going through.

That He was and is married, that He's a saved and perfected being.

And that as He is now, we are meant to become.

Does all of the sudden the meaning of marriage in the gospel become a little bit more clear as we start to look at the very nature of the God we worship?

Instead of a being without body, parts, or passions, a being who

according to most of the major theologies in Christianity, does what He does because and for His own glory.

We worship a being who was once as we are, and is trying to help us become

as He is.

So, back to the original questions.

What did or does not God do with these characteristics or attributes,

pre-mortally, mortally, or post-mortally? Pre-mortally,

we know that He begat us spiritually. But of course He didn't begat us.

We're going to bring Heavenly Mother into this soon.

But we were begotten spiritually.

We were raised in a pre-mortal realm.

God presented a plan for our progression.

How did we react?

Right, we did, with passion.

And the scriptures say something about shouting for joy, right?

Mortally, similar to the rest of Christianity, just with a little bit of a different perspective on why God does what He does.

Post-mortally we believe that God, yes, He will judge and exalt, yes, He will be worshiped.

But we don't believe that God goes on vacation thereafter.

But we believe that we will continue to have a relationship with Him, and He will continue to have a relationship with us.

And He will continue to do His work and His glory.

Moses 1:39, "to bring to pass immortality and eternal life of his children." So think about this: How does this understanding of God influence our

understanding of marriage and family?

We start from a very different foundation than the rest of the world.

Let me ask you an unorthodox question: What does God do for a living?

He is a full-time stay at home father!

(Chuckles) True or false?

Totally true. Isn't it interesting that the very definition of deity, the very definition of godhood is a hiss and a byword in today's world: A stay at home parent.

God does everything God does to exalt His children.

So, Moses 1:39, "Behold, this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass

the immortality and eternal life of his children."

Why do we do what we do?

What is the role of the Church?

What is the role of those who minister,

who serve?

Why do we do what we do?

Is it not to assist Heavenly Father in His work and His efforts?

So President Oaks put it this way: "The work of God is to bring to pass

the eternal life of His children, and all that this entails in the birth, nurturing, teaching, and sealing of our Heavenly Father's children.

Everything else is lower in priority."

So think about it.

We know that God's not just sitting home and changing diapers.

He's doing that which is necessary for our exaltation.

If you ask most of the Christian world what does God do and why does He do it?

You'd say, okay, He creates the world, only the world because that's all that exists in there.

And He creates us.

But let me ask you a question: Why did God create the world?

Right, Moses 1:39.

It's not because He's into architecture, it's not because He's

trying for self-fulfillment.

He creates the world to exalt His children.

Why does God govern the universe?

Is He into His own management skills?

Does He find his satisfaction and passion in life in His executive ability?

No, He does what He does because of you and me.

"Behold, this is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."

If I take my coat off, will it offend you?

Please tell me no.

(Chuckles) So I'm doing great.

But I'm currently going through a couple cancer treatments and it makes me sometimes shaky, and I just started to shake and I thought, you don't want to see me fall, that would be bad.

So here we go.

A full-time father.

"Our theology begins," this is President Oaks again, "with heavenly parents.

Our highest aspiration is to be like them."

Now I come back and I ask the original question that we started out: What is

the sure foundation of the eternal family according to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

Do you see, brothers and sisters, we can't answer that without

understanding that who God is, what God does, and His relationship with us.

That God is seeking

to exalt His children.

That's why He does what He does.

Now, that's not a solo job.

President Harold B. Lee:

“That great hymn, ‘O My Father’ puts it correctly when Eliza R. Snow wrote, 'In the heav'ns are parents single?

No, the thought makes reason stare!

Truth is reason; truth eternal tells me I've a mother there.' Born of a Heavenly Mother, sired by a Heavenly Father, we knew Him, we were in

His," or we could say "in their, house."

To understand the nature of deity in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, requires an understanding of marriage, just like the understanding of

marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints requires our

understanding of deity.

They're inseparably connected.

Elder Erastus Snow, one of the early apostles put it bluntly but well.

"'What,' says one, 'do you mean that we should understand that Deity consists of man and woman?'

Most certainly I do.

If I believe anything that God has ever said about himself...

I must believe that deity consists of man and woman...

There can be no God except he is composed of the man and woman united, and there is not in all the eternities that exist, or ever will be a God in any other way." And so to understand the nature of God, we have to understand the nature of

God's relationships.

Part of that is with us, but we have to understand that God does not do what God does alone.

So, in the essay on ChurchofJesusChrist.org, "Our

Mother in Heaven," this is what it says: "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that all human beings, male and female, are beloved spirit children of heavenly parents." That shouldn't be shocking being as that's the very phrase from The Family Proclamation.

"A Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother.

This understanding is rooted in scriptural and prophetic teachings about the nature of God, our relationship to Deity, and the godly potential of men and women.

The doctrine of a Heavenly Mother is a cherished and distinctive belief among Latter-day Saints." I know there's a lot of mythology out in the Church about what we can and cannot say about Heavenly Mother.

We should never speculate.

Well, we should never publicly speculate. You're free to think all you want to think.

But if the prophets haven't taught it, and taught it consistently I'd be very cautious about saying "this is what we believe." Does that make sense?

Can we be wise?

And yet you hear the mythology that we're not allowed to talk about Heavenly Mother.

I don't know if you would know about the BYU Studies article in which a professor and his graduate student gathered statements by the Brethren

and Sister-en about Heavenly Mother.

They gathered over 600 of them.

Somehow the prophets didn't get the message they're not allowed to talk about Her.

Now you'll notice we don't talk a lot, we don't go a lot beyond, as I'll show you today, beyond what we know about Heavenly Father.

But our theology demands that we understand the reality, that we not only come from a Father in Heaven, but a Mother in Heaven. I love this statement.

"Sisters, I testify that when you stand in front of your heavenly parents in those royal courts on high and you look into the Her eyes

and behold Her countenance,

any question you ever had about the role of women in the kingdom will evaporate into the rich celestial air.” Do you know how hard it is to find pictures of evaporation?

"Because at that moment you will see standing directly in front of you, your divine nature and destiny.”

So, what do we learn about ourselves, marriage, and family from knowing about our Heavenly Parents?

I love this. (Chuckles) This is Tad R. Callister said, "It is this doctrine of identity that defines our potential destiny of godhood.

If one does not correctly understand his divine identity, then he will never correctly understand his divine destiny.

They are, in truth, inseparable partners." You'll notice quickly that we have a pronoun challenge.

As we talk about our Heavenly Parents, we don't really have a way of doing pronouns well there.

But understand the doctrine that our identity is completely and utterly connected to understanding our potential to become as our Father and Mother in Heaven.

Elder Callister went on, “We were born in the image of God, our Father,”

“He begat us like unto Himself.

There is the nature of Deity in the composition of our spiritual organization.

In our spiritual birth our Father transmitted to us the capabilities, powers, faculties which He possessed, as much so as the child on its mother's bosom possesses, although in an undeveloped state, the faculties, powers, and susceptibilities of its parents." You and I can't understand who it is we're working with if we don't understand

the very nature of the being we worship.

When you and I are working with folks that are dealing with challenges or happy as little clams. By the way, everybody's dealing with challenges.

There's no such thing as footloose and fancy free, not in this world.

How important is it that you and I remember the identity of those who we're working with?

And then as we're trying to help them, whether it's overcoming an individual issue, or with their familial relationships, to understand

their destiny,

to understand their eternal nature.

President Nelson put it this way:

"Our spiritual DNA is His DNA.

If our hearts are open to Him - if we believe in the divinity of the Father

and His Son - we can rise from the ashes of our lives and become the men and women we were sent to earth to become."

Spiritual genetics.

Let me ask you something, do you sometimes wake up not feeling so much like a God in embryo?

I do.

And yet, that's who we are.

That's our very nature.

So President Oaks put it this way, "The purpose of mortal life and the mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is to prepare the sons and daughters of God for their eternal destiny - to become like our heavenly parents."

Now we all have different tasks and different opportunities in life, different callings and different employment opportunities in life.

As we begin to understand and gain a relationship with our Father in Heaven, with our Savior, as we begin to understand the reality of our Heavenly Parents,

it changes everything.

It puts into perspective everything we're going through.

It doesn't take away the challenges.

I work really, really, really hard to be in good shape.

And I'm getting out of breath talking to you, this is ridiculous.

But when I can see that in light of the purpose of my existence,

yeah, we deal with it.

And it doesn't become who I am.

Your challenges don’t become who you are because we can see the very foundation of our existence.

The purpose of our life is to become as our Heavenly Parents.

I'm not going to take time...

I can't because I don't have it.

But just a few...

I want you to see that the prophets have been teaching this for ages, well, since Joseph Smith, bare minimum, and you can basically say since

Adam and Eve. I'll just go to another one here. Here is the First Presidency: "Man is the child of God, formed in the divine image and endowed with divine attributes, and even as the infant son of an earthly father and mother is capable in due time of becoming a man, so that undeveloped offspring of celestial parentage is capable, by experience

through ages and aeons," I like the choice of words here, "of evolving

into a God." Boy, it's a different way of looking at life than we often do in our daily basis.

Well think about it.

It's the center of our theology.

"In the celestial glory there are three heavens or degrees; and in order to obtain the highest, a man must enter into this order of the priesthood." Now, the yellow part is really neato, but it wasn't there when Joseph's scribe wrote this down.

It was added at Brigham Young's insistence about 30 years later, 38 years later.

"In order to obtain the highest, a man must enter into this order of the priesthood, and if he does not, he cannot obtain it.

He may enter into the other, but that is the end of his kingdom; he cannot have an increase."

The problem was by the time the Doctrine and Covenants was being republished in the 1870s, the understanding of this order of the priesthood had been lost.

So Brigham had Orson, who was doing the work, put this phrase in there.

This order of the priesthood is a reference

to the new and everlasting covenant in a marriage. In other words, in order to become what we're intended to become, we must enter into eternal marriage.

but we’re not totally alone.

I wouldn’t claim that any of us, any other religions actually see it exactly the way we do, but we’re not alone.

This book, “Partakers of the Divine Nature: the History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions,” that is not Latter-day Saint.

There's a well-established tradition in Christianity, and it's becoming more and more amplified in the academic research now showing that we're not

totally alone in this concept that we can become like God.

Again, not claiming that anyone believes exactly the same way we do, but ancient witnesses use very similar language and concepts.

Irenaeus, love him, a rebel.

Jesus Christ "did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be what He is." Clement of Alexandria: "The Word of God became man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God." Basil, a great ancient bishop also celebrated this prospect, not just "being

made like to God," but "highest of all, the being made God." Of

course that's not very popular to speak of today.

The Christian world has come to see the concept of us becoming like God is, kind of a threat to pull down God.

Hence, "The doctrine of creation ex nihilo implies that the most fundamental ontological divine is between God and the created order... The soul has nothing in common with God; there is no kinship between it

and the divine." Well, if that's the case, you learn nothing about marriage and family by studying about God.

But you're

members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Your theology is the polar opposite of that.

"Do not all Christian churches advocate Christlike behavior?

Is that not what the Sermon on the Mount is all about?

If it is blasphemous to think we can become as God, then at what point is it

not blasphemous to become like God-90 percent, 50 percent, 1 percent?

Is it more Christian to seek partial godhood than total godhood?

Are we invited to walk the path of godhood - to "be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" - with no possibility of ever reaching that destination?" No, we will never be God's equal.

Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother will always be our Heavenly Father and our Heavenly Mother.

We will always be their children.

But our destiny is not to become harp-strumming angels sitting on fluffy, white clouds.

Do

you remember I started this discussion with a silly analogy of walking to Huntington Beach, California?

And I got like about 20 of you, which by the way, is very bold, that said you'd walk with me without any motivation.

By the time I got to up a million dollars, baby, you were all hiking

ready, right? Why?

You could see a reason for the hope that is in you.

As we're working with our brothers and sisters who have some comprehension

of the Plan of Salvation,

as we're working with service people or in hospitals or in police or any other setting that we're working as chaplains or counselors,

if we can help lift the sights of those that we love and minister to, help them see who they are,

help them see their divine nature and destiny.

I think we'll find working through the day-to-day things, which by the way, still has to be done.

You still have to help people learn how to deal with money and sexuality and communication, and all that good stuff.

But when we have a vision of our ultimate purpose

and destiny, and our nature,

it gives us the passion and the power to put in the work necessary to overcome

the challenges, familial or personally that we have.

My testimony to you is that God, our Father in Heaven, and our Mother in Heaven live.

We don't know lots about either. But

we know they live, that we're their children, and that we are destined to become as they are.

As we take care of the rubber hits the road stuff, which we must do, may we remember the glorious Plan of Salvation that God has revealed through His prophets

regularly and consistently.

Just take a little bit of a look at President Nelson's addresses over the last 20, 30 years, you'll see exactly what we talked about today.

As we help others catch that vision, I think we'll find our self much

better enabled to lift and bless our brothers and sisters. And I leave that in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.