Proclamation Principles

Proclamation Principles

    Marriage is hard, it takes work and patience, but when we put the work in it can be a source of beauty and stability. The Proclamation teaches us principles that can help us to make marriages work. Latter-day Saint's understanding on marriage is not that we are just joined as flesh here and now, but that when we kneel across the alter from each other we are creating and eternal connection, a never ending chain that holds generations together. This linking of generations and eternal focus can help us when we are experiencing challenging time in our marriage (Hawkins et al., 2012, p. 285). 
    Even though other religions don't have the exact same doctrinal principals that we have many of them share our same thoughts on marriage's role in linking generations. Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer while imprisoned by the Nazi's in World War II wrote a note to his niece that said: "Marriage is more than your love for each other....In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to his glory, and calls into his king-dom. In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and man-kind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal-it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man....So love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God (Bonhoeffer, 1959, p.36)." 
    This eternal perspective on marriage has gotten me through hard seasons in my marriage. When we aren't communicating well or are to busy to connect it's easy to take a worldly perspective on marriage, but when I remember that it's eternal, that it links generations, and that it comes from God, it's a helpful reminder that I need to take action and create a different environment. 
    Have you ever looked at marriage from an eternal perspective? How has it helped you? 



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