Father’s Day#
Notes for a talk on Father’s Day, 2022, in the Webster Groves ward, St. Louis Missouri South Stake.#
Good morning, brothers and sisters. I was asked to address the topic covered by Elder Todd Christofferson in the October, 2006, General Conference.1 He opens by quoting the Book of Mormon prophet Lehi, who addressed his two oldest sons saying, “Arise from the dust, my sons, and be men” (2 Ne. 1:21). Elder Christofferson continues, “By age, Laman and Lemuel were men, but in terms of character and spiritual maturity they were still as children.” He listed specific behaviors that justified that conclusion. Rather than piling on Laman and Lemuel, let me ask you to consider which of these characteristics may also apply to you: “They murmured and complained if asked to do anything hard. They didn’t accept anyone’s authority to correct them. They didn’t value spiritual things. They easily resorted to violence, and they were good at playing the victim.”
Elder Christofferson went on to describe a number of virtues that characterize “true manhood.” As I considered how best to present his message today, I realized that it would be easier for me to describe what these virtues would look like in real life. So I’m going to describe events from my dad’s life that taught me about what a man should be.
Elder Christofferson started by saying that “in large measure, true manhood is defined in our relationship to women.” When I went off to college, I lived for a while with a family in which the kids routinely criticized or disobeyed their mother. I basically kept waiting for their father to bring the roof down on them. I … didn’t know you could do that! I don’t remember any specific moment from my childhood when my father corrected me or my brother for some specific behavior toward my mother, but I know he created an expectation that she was to be honored and respected. I don’t remember his ever talking negatively about her behind her back.
Treating women right includes marriage. As the Proclamation on the Family states, “children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony.”2 Through somewhat humorous circumstances, on my dad’s first date with the woman who would later be my mom, he spent most of the date talking with her mother, his future mother-in-law. He was impressed by the depth of her faith, and came home thinking that he wanted to marry the kind of woman who would have grown up in that home. Dad was looking for a wife who would teach and inspire and model gospel living for their future children. Certainly that example affected my search for a wife. This subject reminds me of when I heard Pres. Benson’s sermon in April, 1988, “To the single adult men of the Church,” in which he encouraged them to make marriage a priority.3 He ended by quoting this same verse from 2nd Nephi, “Arise from the dust, my sons, and be men.”
The family proclamation continues to say that children deserve “a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.” I remember one night my dad had a public affairs committee meeting at the church building and I was kicking my heels in the foyer on the other side of the building. It turned out that no one had showed up for the meeting other than Dad and a woman on the committee. He found me and asked me to come sit outside the door while they met. I doubt he was really tempted, but it was important to him to have every safeguard in place to make sure that he would not be in—or even be thought to have been in—a potentially compromising situation.
The family proclamation says that “fathers are to provide over their families in love and righteousness.” My dad often called me “Bruder,” or “brother.” This apparently small choice taught me that he considered his children to be not perpetually less than him, but rather that we were the same kind of being, that we were adults in training, that he loved and respected us.
Men are responsible “to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families.” “Necessities.” That doesn’t mean we have to be rich. My dad is an airport planner. It’s a boom or bust business: either you have a multimillion dollar contract or you don’t. So when it’s “you don’t,” people are laid off. When I was on my mission, my dad was laid off. For a while, he took a job at a local convenience store. My mom’s reaction was, “John, that’s ridiculous. You’re a professional with a master’s degree; you don’t need to take a minimum wage job.” But he wanted to provide the necessities for his family, and he knew we’re commanded to work, not to make a particular salary.4
Pres. Hinckley taught men to “work for an education. Get all the training that you can.” My dad entered his airport planning career before it was commonplace to require a civil engineering degree for that field. Somewhere after age 40, he decided that he needed to go back to school to get an engineering degree. I remember someone told him, “but John, you’ll be 50 when you finish.” He just said, “I’m going to be 50 anyway,” and went on with his plans. He was always excited about learning something new. My dad taught me that education isn’t something you check off, it’s a way of life.
Elder Christofferson asserted that “Integrity is fundamental to being men. Integrity means being truthful, but it also means accepting responsibility and honoring commitments and covenants.” Let me share a story about honoring covenants. My mom died at age 61, and my dad remarried a few years later. In the reception line after the wedding, the stake president asked if they would come to his office early the next morning for an interview. Warning, I do not recommend that approach to bishops or stake presidents! Dad said, “Um, president, this is our wedding night.” He answered (approximately), “Congratulations. Can you be there?” My dad and my stepmom showed up for the appointment. The important point is why they did so. They made that sacrifice because they had covenanted to support God’s church and kingdom on earth wholeheartedly.
Another example came up when my dad and stepmom decided to go on a mission. My stepmom is named Argina, after the country Argentina, where her father had served as a mission president and she as a missionary. Point is, she is fluent in Spanish (with a little voseo thrown in). My dad had served in the Spanish-American mission. So they were eager to use Spanish in their missionary service. Now it’s actually OK for senior missionary couples to express their interests regarding potential missionary service. Argina wanted to say on their missionary application that they wanted to serve in a Spanish-speaking area. Dad said, “the Lord knows what He’s doing. We serve wherever we’re called.” When their call arrived, it was to serve in Michigan. The call letter said nothing about Spanish. To be honest, they were a little bummed. But the next Monday, the mission president called them and said, “we are so excited that you’re going to be serving here. We have a Spanish-speaking branch that is struggling, and we need you there.”
Now, “good men sometimes make mistakes,” and “A man of integrity will hoestly face and correct his mistakes.” My dad is not perfect, but he has forthrightly faced his own sins and errors and worked hard to improve them. Once when I had misbehaved and he was about to spank me, I flinched, and he was taken aback. He said he never wanted his son to be afraid of him. He never again spanked us.
Elder Christofferson noted that the Savior, our ultimate exemplar as men, rejected temptation, in part by loving and knowing scripture. Scripture was precious to my parents. We read around the table nearly every day. One year we read the Doctrinal New Testament Commentary at the breakfast table. One summer when I was at band camp, far from any available sacrament meeting, my dad drove two hours to help me have our own Sunday worship service with him in the front seat of his car. He brought his notes from a “solemn assembly” he and other local leaders had attended with a regional Church authority, and reviewed and discussed them with me.
The Savior also “gave His life to redeem mankind,” and Elder Christofferson said, “surely we can accept responsibility for those He entrusts to our care.” Not that I noticed the implications as a child, but my dad accepted the responsibility of fatherhood. He never left us. He didn’t cede all the parenting responsibilities to my mom. He still prays for us and is willing to share his wisdom for our own parenting challenges.
Finally, Elder Christofferson noted that self-abnegation is not the whole story of manhood. “The true man leads a rewarding life. He gives much, but he receives more, and he lives content in the approval of his Heavenly Father.” This reminded me of the beautiful discourse of Pres. J. Reuben Clark, Jr., on the centennial of the first pioneer wagon train to arrive in the Salt Lake Valley.5 He spoke in praise of the pioneers who were not in the leadership, who were not the famous names we know. He called these unsung pioneers “those great souls, majestic in the simplicity of their faith and in their living testimony of the truth of the restored gospel, to those souls in name unknown, unremembered, unhonored in the pages of history, but lovingly revered round the hearthstones of their children and their children’s children who pass down from generation to generation the story of their faith and their mighty works, and the righteousness of their lives and living.” My dad isn’t famous. The world years from now may not know his name. But my children, and my grandchildren, and their children, will remember and praise him for the life he lived—a wonderful example of a real man.
May all of us who are or will be fathers continually seek the Lord’s help to live up to Lehi’s challenge to “be men.”
- 1
D. Todd Christofferson, “Let us be men.” (Several quotes below are from this same source.) https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2006/10/let-us-be-men?lang=eng
- 2
“The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Liahona, Oct. 2004, 49.
- 3
- 4
Kevin J. Black, “‘Rescuing all that is finest’: The Church welfare system,” at “Doctrinal principles 3. Work.” In Gospel Thoughts, 2021–2025. Available at https://kbmd.github.io/sermons/20120430_rescuing_all_finest.html.
- 5
J. Reuben Clark, Jr., “To them of the last wagon” [1947]. Available at https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1997/07/to-them-of-the-last-wagon?lang=eng