Once I rode on a bus with a college classmate and long-time friend on the way to Butuan City, Philippines. He knew very well that I am a “Mormon”---member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We were classmates and were both working students. We usually discussed religion during our college days. He was still single while I am married and continuing my college education. We were both on official banking trip. He was already a bank officer while I was yet a struggling rank and file. He started a conversation by asking me whether my wife is also a member of the Church. I told him, “We were converted and joined the church together.” Then he confided to me that ever since he was married and their children are growing, he and his wife have continued misunderstandings and arguments as to which church their children should go. They were both very devoted to their respective religions.
As the father and husband he wanted his children raised in his religion, but his wife is also very insistent that her children should be with her at church on Sundays. He suggested that they would share church times on Sundays with their children, but his wife vehemently refused. Such differing beliefs have resulted in continued bickering in the family. He told me that their children have grown in ways that is so much different from the way he expected them to be as youth if only raised in the shelter of his religion. Then he surprisingly asked me about my family. I simply told him that, “We do have misunderstandings typical of a husband and wife, but we make it always a point to resolve the same as early as possible. We do not have any problem about raising and nurturing our children in the gospel for we are under the same religious shelter, and we always consider Sunday as a joyous day for the family.” I hinted, “Why not try to find a church where you could have a common belief for the whole family?” Yet I did not insist, it was not then the proper time for me to introduce the church to him.
We have not met since. He was reassigned to a branch far from his home having been promoted as Branch Manager. While I refused promotions which required that I should be away from my family and so remained rank and file personnel for years. Many years after I learned that after his bank employer was closed, he no longer returned home. I was informed that he lives with his new family and started a business in another metropolitan city. I was so surprised to know that they have eventually parted ways. I was told that he was supporting his family although he was already detached from his marriage.
I had since wondered why such a good and religious man and a man of intelligence and prominence could have decided to leave his original family. There is no divorce law in the Philippines, but why such a man of knowledge could afford to just forget his once cherished relationship with a woman of his choice? Differing religious beliefs is not a valid reason for separation. In fact their common belief in God should have been the motivating factor to strengthen their family bond. I know of so many couples whose marriages were sustained even when they have conflicting religious beliefs.
David O. McKay has this to say of incompatibility, “For a couple who have basked in the sunshine of each other’s love to stand by daily and see the clouds of misunderstanding and discord obscure the lovelight of their lives is tragedy indeed. In the darkness that follows, the love sparkle in each other’s eyes is obscured. To restore it, fruitless attempts are made to say the right word and to do the right thing; but the word and act are misinterpreted, and angry retort reopens the wound, and hearts once united become torn wider and wider asunder. When this heartbreaking state is reached, a separation is sought.” (Gospel Ideals [Improvement Era, 1953], p. 469, quoted James A. Cullimore, Marriage is Intended to be Forever, General Conference, April 1971).
Even men who hold the Priesthood of God succumbed to the sting of selfishness and pride resulting to continual bickering in the marriage relationship. The once very prospective eternal family unit is slowly divided by the venom of selfishness and pride which secretly sneak into the heart and mind and tear away the bonds of eternity that holds the family together. I knew of several Priesthood holders with great potentials but whose eternal covenants made in the Holy Temples are broken for selfish purposes. Immorality and infidelity then looms in response to the pleasure of a romantic whim and desire outside of marriage and usually become the common culprit for undue separations.
The family culture in the Philippines is so strong and solid that a divorce law could not be passed. Family ties remain unbending even under the storms of difficult circumstances generally common in most families. The law regarding marriage annulment seems to have only two valid and acceptable reasons---psychological incapacity and the spouse being considered dead after seven years of absence of communication or nonappearance. However, like my good friend and other known priesthood holders, men who are likely to be good fathers and husbands are swayed by continued selfish and prideful indulgence.
Gordon B. Hinckley warned, “Selfishness so often is the basis of money problems, which are a very serious and real factor affecting the stability of family life. Selfishness is at the root of adultery, the breaking of solemn and sacred covenants to satisfy selfish lust. Selfishness is the antithesis of love. It is a cankering expression of greed. It destroys self-discipline. It obliterates loyalty. It tears up sacred covenants. It afflicts both men and women.” (Gordon B. Hinckley in Conference Report, Apr. 1991, 96; or Ensign, May 1991, 73).
Ezra Taft Benson described pride as a “universal sin”. He said, “Most of us think of pride as self-centeredness, conceit, boastfulness, arrogance, or haughtiness. All of these are elements of the sin, but the heart, or core, is still missing.
“The central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen. Enmity means “hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.” It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign over us.
“Selfishness is one of the more common faces of pride. “How everything affects me” is the center of all that matters—self-conceit, self-pity, worldly self-fulfillment, self-gratification, and self-seeking.” (Ezra Taft Benson, Beware of Pride, General Conference April 1989).
In their masculinity and egotistical superiority men usually point the blame on the wife for whatever reason. The women, who braved the challenges of being at home all the time to nurture, rear and foster, and protect the children from the storms of life, are subjected to cruelty and demeaning descriptions of womanhood. By continued acts of selfishness children became subjects of abuse and unkindness and eventually left abandoned and deprived of a meaningful life. Such was the concern of David O. McKay as he declared: “I cannot imagine a man’s being cruel to a woman. I cannot imagine her so conducting herself as to merit such treatment. Perhaps there are women in the world who exasperate their husbands, but no man is justified in resorting to physical force or in exploding his feelings in profanity. There are men, undoubtedly, in the world who are thus beastly, but no man who holds the priesthood of God should so debase himself.” (Gospel Ideals, p. 476.) quoted James A. Cullimore, Marriage is intended to be forever, General Conference, April 1971).
The Lord’s pattern of family life as recorded in the scriptures and those declared by Apostles and Prophets both of old and modern times remain to be sure guides in men’s quest for family happiness. Such instructions are distinctly simple and evidently clear. When the Lord was asked by the Pharisees whether it is “lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause,” He reminded them that “he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,” for which reason the man is joined to his wife and they became “one flesh”. The Lord then made it clear to the tempting Pharisees, “Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” When they reasoned that Moses allowed them “to give a writing of divorcement” He told them that it was “because of the hardness of your hearts” (which implies pride and selfishness or the “what’s in it for me attitude”) “…but in the beginning it was not so.” (See Matthew 19: 3-8).
The Apostle Paul in a letter to the Ephesian Saints admonished them to have their relationship similar to that of Christ and the Church, for wives to submit to their own husbands and for husbands to love their wives, “even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it.” That men should “love their wives even as their own bodies…For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church.” He further counselled men to “so love his wife even as himself” and for “the wife to see that she reverence her husband.” (See Ephesians 5:22-33).
To the children Paul counselled them to be obedient to their parents and to honour their father and mother. And to the fathers he gave this stern and emphatic warning, “…Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” (See Ephesians 6:1-4).
Richard G. Scott, a modern apostle of the lord reminded every married couple about the eternal plan of God for family happiness: “Our Heavenly Father endowed His sons and daughters with unique traits especially fitted for their individual responsibilities as they fulfill His plan. To follow His plan requires that you do those things He expects of you as a son or daughter, husband or wife. Those roles are different but entirely compatible. In the Lord’s plan, it takes two—a man and a woman—to form a whole. Indeed, a husband and wife are not two identical halves, but a wondrous, divinely determined combination of complementary capacities and characteristics.
“Marriage allows these different characteristics to come together in oneness—in unity—to bless a husband and wife, their children and grandchildren. For the greatest happiness and productivity in life, both husband and wife are needed. Their efforts interlock and are complementary. Each has individual traits that best fit the role the Lord has defined for happiness as a man or woman. When used as the Lord intends, those capacities allow a married couple to think, act, and rejoice as one—to face challenges together and overcome them as one, to grow in love and understanding, and through temple ordinances to be bound together as one whole, eternally. That is the plan.” (Richard G. Scott, The Joy of Living the Great Plan of Happiness, General Conference, October 1996).
When best understood and properly followed by parents and children, this pattern of family life in God’s eternal plan of happiness can be an unfailing armour and shield against the evils of selfishness and pride which are the best known predators and degenerate destroyers of marriage and family life.
