"I believe most parents . . . try to teach their children right from wrong, to be honest, to respect others and their property, to live morally clean lives, and to love their families," said Elder Jack H Goaslind of the Presidency of the Seventy at the October 1995 general conference.
"They work hard to teach them the importance of the saving ordinances, such as baptism for the remission of sins. They want their sons to be ordained to the priesthood at the appropriate age. They teach their children to know that to be married in the right place to the right person at the right time by the right authority is critical to exaltation."Elder Goaslind said that those lessons, and others like them, are crucial to every Latter-day Saint. "If these lessons are learned through the Spirit, taught under the strong influence of a strong testimony of the atonement of the Savior, they are taught and learned in an atmosphere of love and trust that goes a long way in ensuring they will be retained," he said. "As the scripture teaches, `Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.' (Prov. 22:6.) The belief, and finally conviction, that Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter's son, the Redeemer of Israel - even our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ - gave His life in a selfless sacrifice so that we may have immortality and eternal life bring into focus every other teaching that we impart to our children and others for whom we have a stewardship.
"Sometimes I think that we fear too much to link all of our teaching to the foundation of gospel truths. Too often, perhaps, we teach children to obey a law or a principle because our family expects that obedience. They might observe another truth in order to please a neighbor or a bishop, and another for yet some other reason. When we teach an eternal truth to our children and don't explain it in the context of a firm testimony of the Savior, we miss the power of the example of the greatest teacher the world has ever known."
