Chauncey C. Riddle
Campus Education Week Lectures
12 June 1968
Note: This is the version that Chauncey Riddle handed out in his BYU class.
The basis of establishing Zion is the perfecting of the souls of individuals. As individuals accept the gospel and live it, they become sanctified, which is to say, they are forgiven of their sins, or they are made holy, pure, and spotless. The two basic characteristics of such a person, I would take it, are:
(1) the fact that a person who comes to this state finds that prayer is his greatest asset and resource in his life. He lives by prayer, because through prayer, he gains the strength and help he needs to govern and direct his life according to the will of the Lord;
(2) this person is blessed by the abundance of the spirit of the Lord that is manifest in the gifts of the spirit.
Now there are many spirits and there are people who pray and get the wrong spirit. But as a person takes the time and the opportunity to make sure that he is following the right spirit this will not be a problem.
One of the important ways that we can know that we are not on the track, or have the wrong spirit, is that there is such a thing on the earth as priesthood. When we square in our views, our revelations, with the priesthood authority over us, then we have a right to believe that we are on the right track. Experience will bear this out.
But when a person finds himself going contrary to those who preside over him because of supposed revelation and he insists on believing it is from the Lord, he will go on to his sorrow to discover it is not so, because this is one of the plain, appointed checks the Lord has given that people need not be misled by the wiles of the adversary.
Once a person has understood the basis of the gospel, and has decided to embark on a life of service to the Lord Jesus Christ, a life of righteousness—that is to say, if a person has entered into a strait gate—then they must go along that narrow way and endure to the end. I believe the next big challenge they must face in their lives is to learn to live in the order of the priesthood. Now this is an almost overwhelming challenge. I say almost overwhelming because when we contemplate the greatness of this challenge, it begins to be overwhelming as we understand the importance and magnitude of the task.
We might approach the notion of learning to live in the priesthood order through the doctrine of stewardship.
Stewardship is being given a responsibility by someone where we do not have ownership or right to absolute dominion in our own right, but where we receive it as a charge from someone else who does. It is the nature of our existence that we are stewards. For instance, we do not own the bodies we inhabit. They are not ours. We did not create them; they were created by God and given to us as a stewardship, as a charge. We have been loaned them for the purpose of executing the will of the owner. Nevertheless, it is given unto us to have agency to defy the owner if we will. But, if that is the case, we must reap the consequences of that defiance.
We are given our minds as stewardships. The mind we have is a mind somewhat like the mind of God, except that it is very small, infantile, compared to the adult. Nevertheless, we have intelligence given to us that we can think and act and create and move and accomplish; and also destroy, hurt do evil things according to our own will. But we are given specific instructions by our Maker as to how to use this mind—what to take into it, what to believe, on what basis we should make our decisions.
The talents we might have, whatever they might be, the money we have, the property we might have—everything which the world counts as being in our discretionary power is really not ours. It is only a stewardship from the Lord.
Many people of this world, of course, do not believe in this stewardship, nor accept it. When a person is baptized as a member of this Church, however, this is one thing that they accomplish. They accept the Lord as the owner and governor of all things, and acknowledge themselves as stewards. They take upon themselves the name of Christ, not willing to be known simply as themselves. The important name they bear henceforth is not their own name but the name of their Master, Jesus Christ. They promise that henceforth they will not do their own will, but do His will to keep all of the commandments which He gives unto them. They promise from henceforth that they will not neglect this stewardship, but will remember the Master always, that they might receive His instruction constantly, and be faithful and wise stewards in executing their charge.
Doctrine and Covenants, Section 104, elaborates on this idea. Beginning with verse 11, the Lord says:
It is wisdom in me; therefore, a commandment I give unto you, that ye shall organize yourselves and appoint every man his stewardship; That every man may give an account unto me of the stewardship which is appointed unto him, (DC 104:11–12.)
This, of course, is a very necessary and important part of having been given a stewardship; namely, that we may be called at any moment to account for the stewardship. If we have been doing faithfully and well according to the instructions given by the Master, there will be no regrets. If we have been slothful, if we have procrastinated obedience to the commandments, or if we have been doing our own will instead, then there is considerable reason to fear the presence of the Master.
The scriptures commend to us that if we keep the commandments of the gospel, our confidence shall wax strong in the presence of the Lord, which is simply another way of saying we will be delighted to see Him come at any time to receive accounting of our stewardship. But if we are not ready to give an account of our stewardship, if we cannot say, “Lord, I have faithfully fulfilled Thy will in all things,” it simply means we have not yet fully applied the gospel in our lives.
One of the tests, then, as to whether the gospel is our way of life is if we are ready to account to our Master at any time. Each day is sufficient to its own problems and if we live each day as the Lord would have us do, there would never be a moment of any day when we would not be ready to make that accounting.
For it is expedient that I, the Lord, should make every man accountable, as a steward over earthly blessings, which I have made and prepared for my creatures. I, the Lord, stretched out the heavens, and built the earth, my very handiwork; and all things therein are mine. And it is my purpose to provide for my saints, for all things are mine.
I, the Lord, stretched out the heavens, and built the earth, my very handiwork; and all things therein are mine.
And it is my purpose to provide for my saints, for all things are mine, [All things, in heaven and in earth.]
But it must needs be done in mine own way; and behold this is the way that I, the Lord, have decreed to provide for my saints, that the poor shall be exalted, in that the rich are made low. [Not by force, but by the doctrine of stewardship,]
For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves.
We keep hearing about the fact that there is a terrible famine imminent, that the world is about to be overpopulated, or perhaps is now. But these statements are all made by people who know not God. If we understand the nature and the work of God, He has plenty to spare for each of His children. The only reason there ever has been famine on the earth or difficulty or trouble for the children of God is the fact that they have rejected their Maker. They have not been willing to account to Him who is the owner and master of all things. They have not been willing to be stewards. Had they been willing there would have been abundance for all.
Therefore, if any man shall take of the abundance which I have made, and impart not his portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment, (DC 104:13–18, Italics added.)
Now this particular section relates specifically to the law of consecration practiced in the Church in the early days, but the general principle of stewardship is also there. Let’s read on a little bit in the last part of this section, beginning with verse 54:
And again, a commandment I give unto you concerning your stewardship which I have appointed unto you, Behold all these properties are mine, or else your faith is vain [if there is anything we think we own that does not belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, that simply means that we do not have faith in Him, that He is not our Master, we have not really made the covenant with Him], and ye are found hypocrites, and the covenants which ye have made unto me are broken; And if the properties are mine, then ye are stewards; otherwise ye are not stewards, But, verily I say unto you, I have appointed unto you to be stewards over mine house, even stewards indeed, (DC 104:54–57, Italics added,)
There are some wonderful things about a stewardship. One of the greatest blessings of being a steward for Christ is that we are responsible only for our stewardship. We are not responsible for things that lie outside the boundaries. For instance, supposing we think of our stewardship as a plot of ground. We are not responsible for what goes on anywhere in the world except within the limits of that plot which the Lord has designated as our stewardship. If we are faithful in that stewardship, the Lord might give us a supervisory stewardship not only over our plot but over some of our neighbor’s and their plots, too. And then it will be our great opportunity to be in the chain that blesses these stewards; that is to say, to help them be good stewards in their own area, but we never have to worry about anything except exactly that which the Lord has designated as the boundary of our responsibility. It is not necessary for us to go off dashing throughout the world solving all the world’s problems. We can’t do it anyway. But we can solve the problems of our own stewardship.
Satan, of course, is active in this situation, trying to get people to neglect the matters of their own stewardships and to try to go about solving the problems of other people’s stewardships. By that means he can thoroughly mess up the world. Sometimes we have difficulty getting revelation for our own stewardship, but almost always we think we see clearly what our neighbor should do about his stewardship. But it is important to pause. If we don’t see clearly what we ought to do about our own problem, that will be because we lack the spirit of the Lord, right? And if we lack the spirit of the Lord for our own stewardship, would the Lord ever give us revelation for our neighbor’s stewardship? Obviously not. So if we think we see clearly how to solve our neighbor’s problems and we can’t solve our own, who is telling us how to solve our neighbor’s problems? It obviously is Satan. And he delights to do this. So he goes around fouling up the lines of stewardship changing the markers so that people don’t know where they belong. And so they get out of bounds.
There is a very classic example of this that has influenced people’s thinking and is one of the most misinterpreted circumstances in scripture; this relates to the story of Cain. Cain killed Abel and then the Lord came to Cain and said, “Where is Abel, thy brother?” Cain retorted. “How should I know? Am I my brother’s keeper?” Ordinarily the correct answer to Cain’s question is what? No. The plain answer is that Cain was never given to be Abel’s keeper. A brother is never a keeper. But nevertheless, by taking Abel’s life, Cain had stepped out of his stewardship and had usurped the stewardship of God Himself. He arrogated to himself to be Abel’s keeper. So it is quite appropriate the Lord should come and ask Cain, where Abel was, because Cain had taken it upon himself to become Abel’s keeper, but wrongfully. Cain tried to get out of it by pleading innocence and ignorance of the situation by going back to the standard law that he was not Abel’s keeper. Then the Lord, of course, reminded him that He knew all things by saying, “Thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.” And then Cain started to make lame excuses as to why he had usurped this stewardship.
But you see, it is an interesting thing that Satan has been able to take this little story and ever since then most Christians, most people who read the Bible, have thought they ought to be their brother’s keeper when it was never given it to be that way. Possibly by this little technique more damage has been done in the world than by any other device, because people take this story and say, “Well, I need to be my brother’s keeper,” so they go out of their stewardship and over to their brother’s yard and start fixing up his problems—not by the revelation of God, but by the revelation of Satan.
Every tyrant since the world began has simply been his brother’s keeper. He has been solving problems for his brother that his brother couldn’t solve for himself. If you look in the history books, almost every ruler who has taken great power to himself has done it under the guise of blessing his brothers, whom (he thought) knew not how to take care of themselves. He who had some special gift or insight and was going to bless them and take care of them because they were not wise enough. And 1968 is no different from the time of Stalin or the time of Caesar, or going back to the first tyrant, who was Cain.
You see, it is the same story ever since the beginning of stepping out of the stewardship and trying to solve problems and fix things. If humanity could learn this one lesson, it would go a great way toward solving the problems of humanity. If every man would learn to worry about his own problems and not try to mess up someone else’s life and stewardship, it would greatly free humanity. But apparently we haven’t learned that yet. And so throughout the world we have a continuing series of attempts on the part of people who think they know best how to enlighten the minds of others and to “save” them.
What is a “keeper”? If you lived in a zoo and you had a keeper, what would you have? Somebody who fed you, who closed the gates on you and opened the gates when he wanted to. He would be your master. A keeper is a master. He is the one who calls the shots, who gives the orders, who says what goes on. It was never given in this world that any man should be his brother’s master. Now it is given to some to be masters. But brothers are supposed to treat brothers as brothers and not as masters. A proper relationship of brother to brother is to live together and bear one another’s burdens, which is what Alma says: When my brother suffers, I should go suffer with him. When he rejoices, I should rejoice with him. (Mosiah 18:8–9.)
But I am not to tell him what to do. I am not to instruct him or to chastise him or tell him where to get off. There will be people who will be sent to do that. And they will be masters or keepers. But they will have a specifically appointed stewardship to do that given by the Lord Himself. But it was never appointed that any brother should go around pointing out his brother’s faults to him.
If your brother has a problem, do you go talk to him about it and try to tell him what to do? That is exactly the temptation I am talking about! If the Lord won’t give you revelation for your stewardship, will He for someone else’s stewardship? Now suppose yougo to a friend of yours and say, “I have a problem. Will you help me with this?” What are you doing in that circumstance? You are letting that person be your keeper, temporarily.You are yielding to them a stewardship to counsel you, and in that circumstance, if they are wise they might be able to help you a great deal. If someone asks you for help, then, indeed, it might be perfectly appropriate for you to help. But suppose they don’t ask? Would you, then—nevertheless—give your counsel? If you did, you see, you would be overstepping the bounds of your stewardship.
Who are keepers? Fathers and mothers are keepers. Bishops, stake presidents, general authorities—they are keepers. They have specifically appointed responsibilities and authority over the people over whom they preside. But they cannot get outside that stewardship and do any good! If a stake president goes from one stake into another stake and tries to preside, he does nothing but create havoc!
This is how the Lord orders his kingdom. This is one of the reasons I am talking about this subject. We need to learn the order of priesthood. And until we learn the order of priesthood and learn to live in it—both up and down the line—to honor those who are above us, to respect the stewardship we have below us and faithfully execute our duties, we cannot be Zion. It is not enough for us to be a good person by ourselves. We have to learn to live together in an harmonious arrangement, but the only way that the arrangements can be harmonious is if it is a God-ordered arrangement. This is the purpose of priesthood and stewardship; that everybody will know what his lines of authority are and what his area of responsibility is. Then we don’t get all messed up by doing things that are not appropriate. The Lord’s kingdom is a kingdom of order, and this is the order that we are talking about.
I suppose that much unhappiness and misery has come out of the problem of stewardship between husband and wife with people who are trying to live the gospel as with any other one things. And so I would like to make some suggestions on this which I hope will be helpful in living this relationship.
Basically, there are three stewardship relationships that we have to any human being in the world. For any human being we are either their father or their mother, we are their brother or their sister, or we are their son or their daughter. These are the basic interpersonal relationships that exist between people. Can you think of any relationship that does not fit one of those three?
Now the question: which one of these relationships is the husband-wife relationship? Is it a brother-sister relationship? The answer is no. It never was and never will be intended to be a brother-sister relationship. What relationship is it? It is a father-daughter relationship. All that I am saying is that it is a father-daughter relationship in that the husband presides over the wife and the wife does not preside over the husband. The husband’s stewardship includes the wife, but the wife’s stewardship does not include the husband. Therefore it is a father-daughter relationship in the priesthood.
Because this stewardship relationship is not understood, a great deal of difficulty arises when people try to relate to each other. If people would listen when they take their temple covenants, they would perhaps understand more. But many do not listen and therefore they do not understand how this relationship works.
Any time we have a father or mother relationship with someone, that is, if we preside over them in the authority of the priest hood, our priesthood responsibility is to be instruments in the hands of the Lord to administer His blessings to them. This means to help them to develop as strong, righteous individuals. Whatever it takes to help them develop and grow as strong, righteous individuals—that is the responsibility of one who presides in the priesthood. It is not to dominate, it is not to govern in the usual sense!’ but it is to be a resource of information, of strength, of power, of courage. Whatever is needed that the person cannot furnish himself, he should be able to go to the person over him and get because that person has gone to the Lord and has received. If he cannot get it from that person than he will have to go higher.
God is not slack. God is good, and therefore we all know that we will get what we need if we go higher. But, you see, the people in between will lose their blessings if they don’t give us what we need. And therefore, each of us works at our salvation in part by learning to be a good steward and to be an administrator of good things.
When the Lord comes in the second coming and He finds His steward giving meat in due season, He has found a wise and faithful steward. What does that mean? It simply means this steward is measuring out the blessings of the Lord and giving those in his stewardship what they need when they need it as they need it. That’s the due season—so they can grow, so that they can be nourished spiritually, physically, socially—whatever it takes.
Now the power of God is sufficient for all the needs of human beings, and if we would live under the order of God we would need nothing but the government of God for the perfection of our souls. It would suffice for every need that we have.
The role of the husband, then, is to be a reservoir of God’s goodness, a source of everything that she would need that she cannot herself supply to fulfill her stewardship.
What is her stewardship? Her stewardship is to be a reservoir of God’s goodness, a source, a help, to bless her children. It is the role of the wife to bring children into this world, to bear the souls of men, and to teach them and nurture them. And whatever she needs that she cannot supply herself she should go to her husband to get it. If her children are sick and she cannot heal them with herbs or whatever knowledge and power she has, she should go to her husband and ask of him that his priesthood might be invoked to heal these children. If she needs knowledge as to how to handle them in difficult psychological circumstances, she has the right to go to him and seek counsel as to what she ought to do.
He can fulfill his role only if he is a man of God, only if he is on good enough terms with the Lord so that he, in turn, can go to the Lord and say, “Lord, please tell me what to tell my wife.” Or if he can go to the Lord and say, “Lord, I need power to give this blessing.” If he is a righteous man, the Lord is not slack. He will give the power and the blessing will be delivered, and the mother will be satisfied that her stewardship, then, is in good order. Likewise, the children have a right to go to their mother and to their father to receive the blessings they need. It seems that before we can perfect ourselves in these relationships we must become so strong in the power of the Lord in righteousness that we will never need anything from anybody beneath us in our stewardship. If we have need of something, we always go up the line to get the need fulfilled.
Now let me be specific. When a man becomes what he ought to be as a man of God, he will never need the support of his wife. This doesn’t mean he wouldn’t enjoy it if he had it. But if she chooses not to support him, not to comfort him, not to sustain him, he needs to be able to get along without it. He has to be that strong. It can be a great blessing to him to have that comfort, but he must not need it. The Lord is in that relationship to us. The Lord cannot afford to need you and me. If He did, then we would be boss. We would be lord, if He needed us. Now He is grateful when we are obedient, and when we do the work we are supposed to do we build His kingdom. But He does not need us. If we choose to go on our way and defy Him, He can get along quite nicely without us. He may not have as much glory; He may not be as happy. But He will never have to come begging to us something. He is not in that position.
Similarly, we need to be in that position in the priesthood authority—to delight in receiving support from the meek but never needing it. Again, have you seen others who so desperately needed their children that they will give their children whatever their children want and thereby destroy their children? But if the mother does not need those children, if the mother is secure enough in her relationship with her husband, and on up the line with the Lord, that she doesn’t need the children, then she is in the position to do the very best job with the children that is possible. If the children defy her, she doesn’t have to get on her knees and plead with them to do something. Then she deals from a position of strength. She can deal with them and bless them and discipline them in a way she never could if she had to have their help or their support.
A servant of God is this way in relation to food, for instance. If I need food, then I am not a servant of Christ. If I can get along without food, if I am willing to starve to death, if necessary, then I can be a servant of Christ, but not until then. Because if I need food and I have to have it, then whoever controls my food controls me. And I am not a servant of Christ. I am a servant of whoever controls my food.
Food is a small thing. If I am a servant of Christ, I could care less if I should die tomorrow. What a great blessing and relief that would be. There is nothing in this world that I can afford to need as a servant of Christ except to obey my Lord. And He will see to it that I always have power to do that. There is no one in this universe that can stop me from doing that except Him, and He won’t. Therefore, I need not fear. I will be able to fill my mission and do what I need to do. And if it is my calling to die tomorrow because nobody would give me food anymore, that’s fine. I must not mind.
The same with any other need. We cannot afford to need anything that comes from beneath us in our stewardship. Now, that is pretty strong medicine, I know. But I hope you will, as I said, be sympathetic: in taking it, and you will try to understand what I am saying, because I honestly believe what I am saying is right. On the other hand, you can’t afford to believe me. You have to find out for yourself whether it is right or not.
There were times in the Prophet’s life [Joseph Smith] when he didn’t get the support of his wife. And yet that didn’t stop him from fulfilling his mission. If it had stopped him from fulfilling his mission, he would not have been a servant of Christ. It is that simple.
How can we gain the strength to do this? First of all we must obtain the foundation for being servants of Christ. We have to be servants of Christ: we have to be responsive to Him in the spirit. Then, one of the gifts of the spirit that we will receive is the gift of love. And if these relationships are worked out and perfected in a pure, self-sacrificing, long-suffering love—the pure charity that Paul talks about—it will work. If you try to work this on a hardnosed, puritanistic, business-like arrangement, it will never work. It has to be done in love.
The pure love that I am talking about is strictly a gift of the spirit. Nobody has it naturally. There are some people who are very kind and loving, but their love is not pure until they become servants of Christ and receive that pure gift.
What would you do when somebody over you in authority is not a very good steward? Suppose they are abusing their stewardship. This becomes a real test; this becomes a trial. And I have a very simple formula as to what to do about it. This again is a little drastic: so I hope you will bear with me.
Let me use an analogy. Suppose you had some books that were very valuable to you. You had them in a ten cent box and the box was falling apart. What would you do? You would replace the box wouldn’t you so that you could take care of the books? Suppose that the box was just filled with excelsior—and you didn’t care whether you had the excelsior or not—what would you do? Would you replace the box? Probably not. You would probably let it stay as it is.
All right, now let’s try a different level. Suppose there was a ward where there was a bishop and the bishop was doing a very poor job. He wasn’t a servant of the Lord; he was just riding high and mighty in his authority and power exercising unrighteous dominion. But, suppose the people of the ward were very faithful people and they tried to follow his leadership. What do you suppose the Lord would do to that bishop? He would replace him. On the other hand suppose that the people under the same bishop were slothful and didn’t care what the bishop said; they didn’t do what the bishop said anyway. What would the Lord do about that bishop? Probably nothing. Do you see why?
If you have a bishop you think is wrong, what is the best thing you can do to help that bishop? The best thing you can do is to support him. Do everything he says to do as faithfully as you can. Now, when you do that, if you and the other members of the ward became faithful to that bishop and honored him in his priesthood something powerful would happen to that bishop. Do you have any idea what it would be? The Lord would begin to work upon that bishop, and he would harrow up the soul of that man until he either got in line or He (the Lord) would get rid of him. That is the way it works. But remember there are limits. No person has to follow any bishop to hell. It is within the stewardship of each ward member to be able to inquire of the Lord to find out how and how far to follow that bishop.
But if the people aren’t doing what you say, as the bishop you just go on bumbling along—you, and the people, all the same. It doesn’t then matter, does it?
What is your conscience? It is the spirit of the Lord. I was told by my bishop once to stand at the door of the church and physically throw out a certain person if that person came. That was hard for me to take. But I prayed about it and I got confirmation. Yes, that is what I ought to do. Fortunately, the person didn’t show up.
I have been in that circumstance at least a dozen times, where there was something very important that I was told to do by the presiding authority over me that I didn’t think was right. In every case, when I have gone to the Lord, the Lord has said to do it. Now, I admit, there might be a circumstance where He might say don’t do it. But, if that ever came I would immediately check with the authority over the person speaking to me to find out if I was out of line or if the one I was questioning was out of line. I never yet have been told to go against an authority in the Church, although I have surely wondered sometimes. But as I have sought the will of the Lord the always has been to support that man.
So I believe if a wife has a husband and she doesn’t think he is a very good servant of the Lord, the best thing she can do is to go to the Lord. The Lord will probably say for her to obey him as if he were perfect. That is pretty strong medicine. But that is her stewardship. And if she does that, the Lord is going to get busy on him. The Lord will begin to work on him. The Lord has marvelous ways to bring husbands around. But if the wife isn’t paying any attention to the husband anyway, and the husband isn’t very faithful, and the wife wants the husband to get faithful so that she will have some point in being faithful, it probably will never come to pass.
All of this, of course, pertains to people married in the temple. I am not talking about any other circumstance, because unless people are married in the temple they have no stewardship in marriage. That is to say, their marriage is not appointed of God and is not, strictly speaking in the eyes of the Lord, a marriage.
No woman has to follow any man to hell. You see, the crux of the matter is this. When a girl accepts a man as her husband, she must be willing to accept him as the lord. Now, if she doesn’t think enough of him, if he isn’t that good, she hadn’t better marry him. If he isn’t that grown up yet that he is a servant of God and able to speak for the Lord to her and to be the source of blessing that she needs to fill her role as a wife and mother, she is jumping off the cliff to marry him. If young people would get married right, you see, most of this problem would be eliminated.
Supposing they are already married and she didn’t know this before she got married. Then, what does she do? The solution, generally, is to honor the covenant that has been made, and to serve as righteously and as faithfully, as sweetly and as humbly, as is possible.
If the point comes where the Lord tells her that she ought to depart from him, she can go to her bishop, and if that is right, he will get the same counsel. And there again she is going to those who have stewardship over the matter.
When she gets married in the first place, she ought to counsel with those who have stewardship over her, namely her father and mother. And if a girl has a righteous father and mother and can counsel with them and be assured, both through the spirit of the Lord and through her parents, that she is marrying a man of God who will lead her to exaltation, blessed is she. But I am afraid some marriages aren’t made that way.
How long should a wife endure an unhappy marriage? As long as the Lord directs her to stay with him. She ought to stay with him and be as faithful to him as she can be. Her own salvation rests not on what he does but on how faithful she is in fulfilling her stewardship.
As I have watched couples recently in the Church, I find that one of the biggest problems that active LDS couples are having is that the wife doesn’t think the husband is very righteous and therefore she won’t do what he says. This is the source of endless misery and grief. I believe that as long as the wife is bound by the temple covenant she will do the very best thing by the Lord and by righteousness to obey her husband faithfully. This may be difficult. But, nevertheless, this is the kind of trial and faithfulness in stewardship by which we show that we are worthy of exaltation. If a woman can serve faithfully under an evil man, she surely has demonstrated she can serve faithfully under a righteous man, and some day she will be given a righteous man to be her head and her guide if her husband rejects the opportunity. But I have seen marvelous transformations in brethren when their wives have been faithful. The brethren have seen that there is really some point in being a servant of the Lord, because they have responsibility. When their wife does everything they say, they get a little bit scared lest they tell their wife the wrong thing to do. And being a little bit scared, they get on their knees and ask the Lord, and then they try to become righteous, then mighty and powerful. When their wives come to them for blessings in the priesthood they get shaken up a little bit. So they repent of their sins and try to be righteous. It is marvelous what can happen.
Lehi got a little out of line in the Book of Mormon, and he began to rear up against the Lord for the terrible afflictions they were having. So what did Nephi do? He went to Lehi and asked that he act as the father. He said, “Father, tell me where to go that we might have food?”
Lehi was in no shape to get revelation at all because he had been railing against the Lord, but he had to humble himself and pray to the Lord. He received revelation and he told Nephi where to go and Nephi went and got the meat and they were saved.
Now this is a marvelous principle; the principle of obedience in stewardship. If we can learn to live it, it is one of the great keys in the establishment of Zion.
When a young man marries, his stewardship relationship to his father doesn’t change one bit. When a young lady marries, her stewardship relationship changes drastically. That is to say, she passes from the stewardship of her father to the stewardship of her husband. And that is why there should be agreement by all parties concerned in the stewardship—by the Church, by the father and mother, by the groom, and, of course, on the part of the girl, herself—that this transfer is all right.
The more I learn about marriage the more I see the importance of knowing what we are getting into. Only through perfecting ourselves in these stewardship relationships in marriage can we ever have a faint hope for exaltation. Exaltation is the perfection of the marriage relationship.
We are to become one with Christ—not two, but one. But Christ is the head. We are the hands and the feet. We take our direction from him. We are members of His body. In exactly the same sense as that relationship, the husband and the wife must be one—the husband the head and the wife the body, as it were—but they should function in perfect harmony and unity and love to accomplish the purposes of the family.
Now the purpose of the family is the begetting and rearing of children unto the Lord. If the parents are together, if they are completely united in that particular goal, then they will be greatly blessed by the Lord in executing that task, and they can act as one.
There are also stewardships in political matters. If we have political stewardship, then we become bound as servants of Christ to do His will in that stewardship. President McKay has instructed us as Latter-day Saints to do what we could do to get the principles of Section 121 operative in every stewardship in the world, not just the Church stewardships but the civil stewardships as well. The point is not to operate on the basis of force, but on the basis of persuasion and kindness and love.
When many people get a stewardship, they assume unrighteous dominion; they forget that the powers of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven. The power of heaven through which the power of the priesthood becomes operative is the Holy Ghost, and when any man becomes unrighteous or any woman becomes unrighteous and exercises unrighteous dominion and if they seek to cover their sins and gratify their pride and their vain ambitions, the spirit of the Lord is grieved. And when it is withdrawn from them, amen to their priesthood. They have lost their priesthood and authority. They might be able to get it back, but in anything they do without it, they are exercising unrighteous dominion, they are outside their stewardship, which is another very important thing we want to remember. We can act as stewards only under the direction of the Lord. If we try to do this by ourselves, through our own wisdom, we are simply serving the adversary, which is to say, we have broken the lines of stewardship.
In conclusion, let me simply say, will you please not take anything I have said as the final word. I am here to throw out suggestions to you, but I hope you will find the suggestions worthy of thought and prayer. I hope you will find them valuable in the sense of correct understanding of the relationship the Lord would have us come into.
I bear you my testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I feel with all my soul the importance and necessity of our making these relationships right in the spirit of the Lord, in the power of the pure love of Christ. And I bear you this testimony in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
