Family is not only the basic unit of society, but eternity, Elder M. Russell Ballard said in an Education Week devotional address, Tuesday Aug. 19, 2003.
“But it is sadly true that the family continues to be assaulted relentlessly throughout the world,” he said.
Elder Ballard described the attack against traditional and church family roles as the most effective means Satan uses to interrupt God’s work.
“When Satan wants to disrupt the work of the Lord, he doesn’t poison the world’s peanut butter supply, thus bringing the Church’s missionary system to its collective knees,” he said. “He makes Family Home Evening and family prayer inconvenient.”
The address, titled “The Sacred Responsibility of Parenthood,” served as the opening session for BYU’s campus education week, and as an introduction to the week’s theme, “Family: Central to the Creator’s Plan.”
Elder Ballard based much of his speech on the church document “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” from which the phrasing for the education week theme was drawn.
“We could see the people of the world wanting to define ‘the family’ in ways contrary to God’s eternal plan,” he said, describing the origin of the 1995 proclamation. “In the midst of all that was stirring on this subject in the world, the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles could see the importance of declaring to the world the true role of the family in God’s eternal plan.”
Elder Ballard gave five suggestions based on sections of the proclamation to help families function properly.
“What we do and what we teach in our homes and in our families matters,” he said.
