“Employment,” Topics and Questions (2023)
Overview
Employment
Employment is a necessary part of our lives on earth; it gives us the means to provide for our families. Parents are required by God to provide for their families. “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” says that “fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. … Fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation.”
Work is an important gospel principle. It fosters growth and develops us. God condemns idleness and encourages us to “do many things of [our] own free will.” The Lord not only wants us to provide for our families but to be “anxiously engaged in a good cause.” Good employment is important for us to better provide for our families and to serve faithfully in the Church.
From the very beginning, the Lord commanded Adam to till the earth and have dominion over the beasts of the field, to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow. Elder L. Tom Perry of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said: “I have always been interested in how often the scriptures have admonished us to cease to be idle and to be productive in all of our labors. … Teaching children the joy of honest labor is one of the greatest of all gifts you can bestow upon them.”
“Let us realize that the privilege to work is a gift, that the power to work is a blessing, that the love of work is success.”