Fatherhood—Our Eternal Destiny

May we each enjoy the fulness of Father’s blessings in this life and the fulfillment of His work and His glory by becoming fathers to our families for eternity.

Okay, this is a talk to men, by men in a supposed man-only audience.  So I guess the topic of fatherhood makes sense.  The mansplaining aspect is relevant in context, and it is about men talking about men becoming god-men in a place for men to discuss that.  Fair enough.

I do want to point out the ludicrous idea that Gordon B. Hinkley “Didn’t know if we teach it” about becoming Gods in Time magazine.  FAIR likes to say this was really about King Follett, but let’s be serious, even then Hinkley’s words are misdirecting.  Do we teach anything about “God the Father was once a man like we are?” (the question asked by Time Magazine)

Hinkley’s Response: I don’t know that we teach it. I don’t know that we emphasize it. I haven’t heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse. I don’t know. I don’t know all the circumstances under which that statement was made. I understand the philosophical background behind it. But I don’t know a lot about it and I don’t know that others know a lot about it.

And yet, here we have a talk in 2015 that is a fairly public discourse, published on the internet and all, that is very clear what the doctrine is.  Prepare to become Gods, eternal fathers to eternal families. I guess it’s good that Hinkley died before such an open discussion of the topic was published or else he would have had to weasel even harder to get out of such a direct question.

One afternoon he took me to purchase some new shoes. On the second floor of the department store, he invited me to look out the window with him.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“Buildings, sky, people” was my response.

“How many?”

“A lot!”

He then pulled this coin from his pocket. As he handed it to me, he asked, “What is this?”

I immediately knew: “A silver dollar!”

Drawing on his knowledge of chemistry, he said, “If you melt that silver dollar and mix it with the right ingredients, you would have silver nitrate. If we coated this window with silver nitrate, what would you see?”

I had no idea, so he escorted me to a full-length mirror and asked, “Now what do you see?”

I like the silver nitrate story.  I think the LDS church has a lot to learn from this.  With its tons of cash, and very little humanitarian aide, with its billion-dollar malls, and 2% of Florida.  With its asking the poor to give 10% even if they can’t pay bills, I think this story is relevant and solid.

“No,” he replied, “what you see is silver reflecting you. If you focus on the silver, all you will see is yourself,

It’s a good lesson.

“Dad, that was the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life, and I will never, ever do it again.” His eyes closed—then opened—and he said, “Unless my son wants me to.”

This is a sweet story and lesson.  Without the spin of “Going on a mission” because it was easier than the hardest thing the younger son had ever done, which is a little questionable, it is a good story of fatherly love, and what family means.  It didn’t have to be a “Son” who asked, I hope, if a daughter wanted to, she could too; but this is  a man meeting, for men, so that’s not the focus point.

In your home, they can learn to preside over their family in love and righteousness.

Meh, presiding men, women are subservient.  even in a man meeting for men, this is monogenistic as an idea.

fulfill your duty and obligation to serve a full-time mission, and then, without waiting too long, get married in the temple to a daughter of God and have a family.

Think if we took out the controlling words.  What if this simply said “Fulfill a meaningful service to your fellow humans, and one day getting married to a person you love” rather than duty and obligation to the corporation and “Without waiting too long”.  Why the rush to marriage?  Why not the counsel to find the right person?  Why the words “Daughter of God”, could the boy marry a dog or non-daughter of God?  Is this just a slight on homosexuals who want to marry a son of God?  Why must there be only one course and that course emphasized in even the little language?  Is being a good human simply not good enough?

Doesn’t this sound like the work and role of a father ?

I hate this cult technique.  No, the work of a father involves diapers, getting up at 2 a.m. and rocking a toddler to sleep and then getting up for a presentation in front of an executive the next day  (The work of a mother might include that too).  It includes planning vacations your child sleeps through, or going to restaurants the kid doesn’t eat the food at.  It involves hugs and reading the same story for years over and over.

The list of things the church dictates is not fatherhood, and fatherhood is not the church.  To equate the two is a cultish technique to push in the mind that only members of the church are good fathers, and good fathers are like men in the church.  Good fathers can ignore every item on the list of church duties and still be good fathers.

Overall, this is my favorite talk.  I liked the lesson of the silver dollar.  I liked the lesson of the father walking with his sons and that the son would do it for his son.  I like the passing of a legacy of good fatherly roles and understanding from generation to generation.  But the negative bits still get to me.  I meme from when I was a teenager comes to mind: