2 doctrines to hold on to when your child steps away from the Church

Find peace by trusting in the doctrine of Christ.

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When a loved one steps away from the Church, we can easily be filled with very real pain and anguish. We wonder—what does this situation mean for our eternal future and theirs?

A guest on the Magnify podcast suggests two points of doctrine we can trust in these situations. Melinda Wheelwright Brown is a gospel thought leader and author of Eve and Adam. She is familiar with the pain of a child stepping away from the Church, and she says she has found true peace by trusting these two beautiful truths.

1. Progression Is Eternal

Melinda trusts in the truth that progression is an eternal experience. Growth and repentance don’t reach an end after this life. She quotes Brother Tad R. Callister, who, in a BYU devotional, said, “Perfection is a quest on both sides of the veil.”

And President Dallin H. Oaks taught in 2018, “The purpose of God’s plan was to give His children the opportunity to choose eternal life. This could be accomplished only by experience in mortality and, after death, by postmortal growth in the spirit world.”

“I think that can really give us peace,” Melinda says. “We can zoom out and see the bigger picture and then zoom back in and see what the next right step is.”

To help you zoom out, consider studying eternal progression and the plan of salvation. In show notes associated with the podcast, Melinda offers resources for study, including several quotes from the book The Christ Who Heals, including this one:

“[A woman named] Charlotte Haven recorded Joseph Smith as saying in a Nauvoo sermon that a spirit in the lowest kingdom ‘constantly progresses in spiritual knowledge until safely landed in the Celestial.’”

This eternal progression doesn’t negate justice, remove agency, or excuse repentance. This quote from Elder James E. Talmage may offer additional helpful insight:

“Repentance will be possible … even after death. ... It may appear that to teach the possibility of repentance beyond the grave may tend to weaken belief in the absolute necessity of repentance and reformation in this life. [There is] no reason for such objection when we consider that willful neglect here and now will render the process that much more lengthy and difficult in the future.” (The House of the Lord, page 101)

You can find more study resources on this topic from Melinda on magnifythegood.com.

2. God Is in Charge, and We Are His Stewards

Through her journey of having a child step away from the Church, Melinda has come to love Jacob 5. This chapter is the longest chapter in the Book of Mormon, with 77 verses.

“I think the length and the repetitiveness of [that chapter] is actually the message,” she says. “The Lord of the vineyard is 100 percent dedicated to doing everything it’s going to take. … I don’t think God is scared or worried. I think He’s patient.”

Mortal life often makes it hard to see the bigger picture of God’s plan. But studying Jacob 5 reminds us that God patiently keeps working—and keeps saving.

“The grand project is so much bigger and grander and greater than we can really wrap our heads around right now,” Melinda says. “Everything I study and learn points to that, whether it’s on this specific topic or not. And it is just a constant reminder to me that the big picture is much bigger. And it really is going to be OK.”

We are all offered this reassurance in Doctrine Covenants 123:17:

“Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed.”

An important detail to note is that the verse doesn’t say “for his arm to be extended”—it says for his arm to be revealed. This suggests that God’s arm is already reaching to those we love, even if we (or they) can’t see it yet.

Listen to the full Magnify episode wherever you get your podcasts. Or learn more about the podcast at magnifythegood.com.