The Hard Doctrine of the Family
My mother once observed she really didn’t understand the Doctrine of the Family. Please understand, I am the eldest of eight. And my mother is no doctrinal lightweight. It was real life and experience and problems that showed her the Primary-level version of the doctrine, that we sometimes teach, needs more depth.
So why do certain people come to certain families? People of unlike skills and even unlike spiritual sensitivities. Is this arbitrary, or are people placed there on purpose?
There are families where a single theme dominate, like families of lawyers or doctors. There are even families of mathematicians, like the Bernoulli’s. There are some advantages to specialization. But I see more families with a spread of talents and abilities, temporal and spiritual.
I once read a book where a Baptist minister talked about how he remembered his pre-earth life. He said we chose our trials and experiences and there was the temptation to take too many trials. I have heard many other Near Death Experiences relate similar things.
I thought to myself, considering all the problems in life that I have absolutely suffered through, struggled with to the nth degree, and have been crushed by… is this the kind of thing I would have done to myself? Yes, I thought. This is exactly the sort of thing I would have done to future me. Poor future me. He really has it coming.
Let’s really consider this. Suppose you and others are coming to earth to learn. And to hopefully, found your own family unit and begin your kingdom in the eternities. What kind of a family unit do you make? There is the specialist route, where you have a family of lawyers, or other trade. Or there is the generalist route, where you have blue-collar siblings, white-collar siblings, house-wives, and even a girl boss or two. You have a bit of everything.
What about spiritually? Do you only have spiritual kings and queens? That would give powerful spiritual advantages, at least in the short term. What if you have celestial and terrestrial family members? Maybe even some telestial ones? That could potentially benefit the weaker members, and give experience to the strong members. It is the generalist strategy.
Family members who fight and struggle to get along – is this purely bad, or is this family members gaining important and useful experience for the eternities? I expect there are a lot of marriages, that are mixed in terms of spiritual strength. I expect we even sought this out on purpose, anxious for the blessings we would receive. How much of this is personal failings and how much is important useful experiences?
These are hard questions, that I don’t think we can begin to answer satisfactorily in this life.
But when a family struggles, or is less than ideal, or far, far, far less than ideal… did we chose this on purpose?
What is the true doctrine of the family?
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Eric
February 16, 2026
I don’t have answers to the big question here, just a few observations about my own family experience.
First I’m reminded of a sister of mine who, when she was upset, would often yell something like, “I didn’t ask to be born into this family!” She started doing this as a kid, but as she advanced into her teenage years our mom would counter that claim by saying, “In your patriarchal blessing it says that you did.” One time when I brought that up to my sister she claimed that Mom was simply misinterpreting what her blessing said. I haven’t read my sister’s patriarchal blessing, so cannot comment on whose interpretation is more correct.
Before my children were born we gave them “working title” names, and our third had the working title of Ender because she was the third. (The titles were always given soon after conception, before we could know if it was a boy or girl.)
Personality-wise, our two older children have distinct traits that make them very different from each other, and our third has personality traits that seem to sit in between the traits of her older siblings–not unlike how things worked for the main character of “Ender’s Game,” whose personality was the synthesis of his two older and different siblings. It’s funny how life imitated art for us that way.
G.
February 16, 2026
I have sometimes had the feeling that I was greedy with my points buy in the pre existence and had to accept a number of negatives to fit within the cap
Curly
February 16, 2026
Families certainly are the crucible we pass through to go on to whatever path we earned while here.
I note you talk about people in terms of categories of vocation, I’m not positive a celestial view would break things down along those lines as strongly, rather more in line with abilities and willingness to follow Gods guidance in our lives.
My family of origin has been such a source of tremendous grief in my life, and when everyone speaks of forever families I often wonder who I will actually have or belong with in the end. People who destroy relationships here I don’t think are likely to continue the privilege beyond this life.
Nonetheless broken families have existed since the days of Adam, and will be part of this telestial world. I only pray I can provide better for those under my stewardship, and work towards that.
Zen
February 17, 2026
Broken families and families and even marriages of uneven spiritual strength are more common than families where everyone is celestial. God must have provision and a plan for these. It is comforting to say Families can be Together Forever, but not all will, as presently constituted. Or at least there is more to the story.
Isaiah 56 gives comfort to those without families. I can only imagine that this applies equally to those who have broken or rebellious families.