Delivered by Michael Harward in a sacrament meeting of the Montgomery Ward, Cincinnati Ohio East Stake, Mother’s Day Sunday 11 May 2025
At first glance, the Book of Mormon is pretty binary: there are the good folks who follow God and there are the bad folks who don’t. Mormon does a decent job of showing the goodness of the good. He also does a good job of showing the badness of the bad: think of the disobedient Lamanites, the disobedient Nephites, the triumvirate of Sherem, Nehor, and Korihor; the corrupt political leaders at the time of the brothers Nephi and Lehi.
To his credit, Mormon includes lots of instances where bad people change and become good: Alma the elder, and Alma the younger, Amulek, King Lamoni.
In contrast, I cannot think of an instance in the Book or Mormon where a good guy turns bad. A whole people who once were good turns bad, but Mormon doesn’t include any instances of individuals who start out good and then end up being bad. Laman and Lemuel may be the closest example we have, but they never were paragons of goodness, though they dabbled in it for short periods of time.
However, although there are very few to no instances where a good guy turns bad, there are a handful of cases where good people exhibit less than stellar behaviors.
I admire Lehi, father of Laman, Lemuel, Sam and Nephi, husband to Sariah. I admire his willingness and bravery to follow the Lord’s command to flee Jerusalem and take his family into the wilderness. He is a good and earnest man. But he isn’t consistent in being a good father. Any modern parent knows that the surest way to push a wayward child even further away is to compare him or her to a model sibling. I still cringe when I hear Lehi say to Laman and Lemuel, “If you only would be more like Nephi.”
Though he may have been a great Nephite general and leader of the armies, Moroni still could be a bit of a hothead. When the civic leaders were not doing what Moroni felt they should be doing, he lashed out at them and basically charged them with treason. Fortunately, the tension Moroni created was diffused by a wise Pahoran.
I don’t think Mormon is condoning these reprehensible behaviors. Instead, I think he wants us to acknowledge them and commit to not doing them ourselves.
So, what does this have to do with Mother’s Day?
Just as the Book of Mormon wants us to learn from both the positive and negative behaviors of individuals, we can derive good from understanding both the honorable and dishonorable ways we talk about and treat women. We can learn from both.
For starters, I think one of the greatest ways we dishonor mothers is to put them on a pedestal. I grew up with a friend who bought into the belief that mothers were special in the sight of God and as such, deserved a certain reverence. But what happened is that my friend ended up hating Mother’s Day because she never felt she got the proper respect and veneration from her children that she deserved.
In contrast, I applaud the recognition that motherhood is as much—if not more—an emotional/psychological trait than a biological one. We all know plenty of women who are profound and influential mothers yet have never had the opportunity to bear their own children. I thank God for the impact these mothers have had in my life.
I once overheard a husband (who to this day remains a friend even though he said what I am about to quote him as saying) ask his wife to make sure that when he came home from work, that the kids were in good moods, so he did not have to spend the precious time he had with his children correcting them. Though he was honoring his time, he was not honoring hers.
In contrast, I feel we honor mothers when we share the whole burden, when mother and father are yoked to the same family endeavor, both the good times and the bad, both the quality time and the crappy time. Somebody has got to clean the toilet, and I know of no eternal doctrine that says it must be the mother.
Another friend once confided in me that his young son was struggling in school because not only was he diagnosed with ADHD, he was also dyslexic. As my friend shared the many roadblocks that they were trying to hurdle with the school administration, he said “I’m just glad that it is not my job.” I wasn’t sure what he meant, so I asked him to explain. “I am glad that I am not the one who has to worry about his success in school. That’s my wife’s job.” I was incredulous, I was shocked, I was disappointed in what I felt was the way he dishonored his wife by dishonoring their shared burden.
I think one way we can honor mothers, especially as husbands and fathers, is to realize that once a child is born, the only thing a mother can do that a father cannot, is to breastfeed the baby. Every other responsibility is sharable—held and executed jointly. And this includes the ugly events such as changing diapers, disciplining, doing chores and making sure homework gets done.
Sometimes mothers dishonor their own motherhood. My sister described these women as Tennis Club Ladies. They were mothers, but their weekly match with their friends was more important to them than their children. They would rather someone else take care of their children so they could go to the club.
I will admit that my sister’s judgment may have been a bit harsh, but I think she is trying to make a point about priorities. My sister was the type of woman whose role as mother was her top priority. But that didn’t mean it was the only one. She honored her motherhood by caring deeply about it and making sure that she equipped herself for success, which meant doing things for others not in her family and carving out time for her own personal growth.
This notion of dishonoring women rears its ugly head whenever a mother faces the dilemma of whether to stay at home or take a job outside the home. I think it is a dishonor to women that they almost always have to face this dilemma, whereas fathers almost never do. But the more insidious form of dishonor is manifest when we knowingly or unwittingly feel entitled to pressure a mother to make the choice we think she should make.
I feel that the best way I can honor a mother’s decision to stay at home or to take another job is my acceptance of the choice that she has made and acknowledge that it is the best choice for her and her situation.
One of the most hurtful ways we dishonor women is to simply not listen to them. Sometimes it is a willful non-listening. But in what I think are more instances than the willful ignoring, we let what we think they are saying get in the way of understanding what they really are saying.
When we lived in the state of Delaware, we often would take at least one trip to the beach in the summer, either to the South Jersey or the Delaware beaches. In fact, for a couple of summers we rented a house and spent a whole week at the beach. Our kids had a great time. I loved going to the beach, having lived in Florida when I was quite young. I always assumed Nancy liked the beach especially since she grew up in Southern California. Why would anyone not like the beach? But after 5 years, I finally listened to what she was saying and got that she really didn’t like the beach.
I think I must say that the most egregious way we can dishonor women is to not think of them as equals and to treat them as second-class citizens. I once was visiting a ward on the day a new Elder’s Quorum presidency was installed—which in those days happened during priesthood meeting. The new president spoke about fulfilling our responsibilities as priesthood holders, and concluded his remarks with this: “Brethren, if you are not going to magnify your priesthood responsibilities, you might as well be a woman.” What? How much hurt would his wife or mother feel if they had heard him say that dishonorable thing to them directly?
In the early days of planning for the Book of Mormon videos the church produced, a directive came down that the only spoken words in the films would be direct quotations from the Book of Mormon itself. One of the female leads quietly but directly reminded all present that that would mean no woman would say anything in any of the films because there are no quotations from women in the Book of Mormon. I admire the bravery of this sister to ask that the women in the films not be treated as second-class citizens but be honored as equals.
Another way we dishonor women is to not support the decisions they have made, particularly those that they are responsible for. When we were on our mission, Nancy and two other women were charged with creating and installing a new exhibit in the church history museum. They took their assignment seriously and planned for every detail. The night of the installation, the director decided that he would change a significant aspect of the exhibit. He didn’t see it as a big deal, but the fact that he demanded the change, indicated that he did not completely trust the women. He dishonored their decision.
I was once in a ward council where one of the women shared a vision for a ward activity that she had had and shared some of the initial decisions she had made. I must admit that for some of us, the initial reaction was that it was too big and too complex. Fortunately, the council honored her vision and decisions. In fact, the whole council ended getting on board and the activity was a grand success.
Now that I have shared a few examples of honoring and dishonoring women, I would like to conclude by taking the same notion of honor and dishonor and apply it to a special mother that we all have in common, and that is our Mother Earth. Where Nephi and Mormon describe Mother Earth as nothing more than a lifeless place to house and protect the dead, Enoch and Mormon describe her anthropomorphically: Enoch describes Mother Earth as an entity who speaks and expresses emotion; Mormon describes her as someone who curses the hidden weapons of the Jaredites so that they cannot be found again.
So how can we honor and dishonor Mother Earth?
First of all, just as we should treat mothers and women as divine children of God, so we can remember that the earth is a divine gift, given by God as part of His plan to have us experience mortality.
Secondly, just as we take responsibility to care for our mothers, so we can take responsibility for taking care of the earth. Like the man given ten talents, we want to give the earth back to God in a better state than when He left it with us.
Third, we individually take responsibility for our mothers and the earth. We do not leave it up to someone else. We all do our part with this shared responsibility.
Fourth, we take responsibility for preserving either the life and/or the memory of our mothers and Mother Earth so that they last across generations.
In short, we honor our Mother Earth by being good stewards.
Bishop Gerald Causse of the presiding bishopric of the church teaches us:
There are many things that we can do—collectively and individually—to be good stewards. Considering our individual circumstances, each of us can use the bountiful resources of the earth more reverently and prudently. We can support community efforts to care for the earth. We can adopt personal lifestyles and behaviors that respect God’s creations and make our own living spaces tidier, more beautiful, and more inspirational. (“Our Earthly Stewardship,” October 2022 LDS General Conference)
May we love, respect and honor the wonderful mothers in our lives and the glorious Mother Earth who provides so abundantly for us.
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