Impossible unity

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Priesthood Session of the October 1979 Conference.

In his talk "The Governing Ones," Elder William R. Bradford says:

The challenge of governing the family is to so love, teach, and motivate its members that their personal decisions will be to unite one with another in the common purpose of following God’s plan.

When I read this on one level, it seems pretty straightforward: we're supposed to "love, teach, and motivate" so that our children will want to follow God. But read more closely, it seems funnier (and truer): this is THE CHALLENGE of governing the family. It would be like if he said "The challenge of baking cookies is to create a cookie so delicious that every person will love it." Well…yes. That is the challenge, isn't it! And a pretty big challenge at that, with each person being so different and having different preferences and all.

So yes, as parents we really do want our family members to DECIDE for themselves to be unified and eager to follow God's plan. And I'm not saying it's not a good goal…just that it is indeed a very, very big challenge. And it involves a lot of uncertainty and a lot of trust that the things we can't do ourselves, God will bring to pass in His own way. I'm realizing that more and more. I want so much for our children to catch the vision. To see for themselves how much better it is to live in unity and love! And how much happier we would ALL be if we could constantly treat each other as God would want us to, and follow His commandments! But no matter how much I try to teach it, exemplify it, push toward it—I just can't force it. (Nor, I realize, would God want me to.) And sometimes our family (myself included) seems so far from catching that vision…it feels like we will never get there. I guess it's a good thing we have eternities to keep working on it.

It probably seems like I'm always going on and on about unity. I think it's like the unattainable girl that the nerdy boy in movies is always fantasizing about. I just imagine how great it would be to have the children looking out for each others' welfare instead of trying to torment each other. Or where they cared so much about their siblings that they were willing to give up their own wishes to make the others happy. Oh, occasionally I catch glimpses of things like that. But they are definitely not the norm! And I know they're young and it's okay. I've had a lot more years of practice than they have, and I'm still not able to live these principles as well as I want to! But that's part of what worries me. As I think about the future of our family, I know it's inevitable that some of us will choose paths that the others don't agree with! And some of those paths might even be objectively (in God's eyes) the wrong ones! And there's nothing I can do about it! And how can we be unified in "the common purpose of following God's plan" if that's the case?

I really don't know. But somehow we are still supposed to keep hoping and working for that ideal. In his talk during this same conference session, President Kimball said:

…our people in the kingdom will need to become even more different from the people of the world. We will be judged, as the Savior said on several occasions, by whether or not we love one another and treat one another accordingly and by whether or not we are of one heart and one mind. We cannot be the Lord’s if we are not one!

I guess, like a lot of things in the gospel, this unity is something that seems impossible, and IS impossible, by any rational standard. It's not something we can create. But it's an outgrowth of living the principles of the gospel—keeping our covenants, repenting, persisting—and the miracles God will unfold in our lives as we do so.


Other posts in this series:

• The Governing Ones by G
• The Brethren Say It Best by Jan Tolman