The message is so focused. We are told that husband and wives are responsible to love and serve each other, to raise their children in love, and to provide for their physical needs. The importance of those things is emphasized by the reminder that parents will be held accountable by God for how they fulfilled those responsibilities. We are then told again that the family is ordained of God and that children deserve to be raised in a family with both a mother and a father who have mutually and publicly committed to maintain the family by striving to fulfill those obligations.
We are informed that the gospel of Jesus Christ provides the best doctrinal foundation for maintaining a family and that faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities are each important parts of building a happy and balanced family life.
In a message that would have seemed beyond obvious in earlier generations we are told of the district but complementary roles that naturally belong to the distinct but complementary genders of the parents. Then to head off the all too human tendency toward absolutism the fact that individual adaptations away from that ideal is explicitly acknowledged.
It closes with a warning that those who blatantly live and promote family structures and individual actions that contradict these divinely appointed units and responsibilities will be held accountable by God and that societies which tear apart or undermine families will be inviting calamity. Then it invites people to strive to support and build up families through social and public policy so as to avoid such consequences.
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