I sidestepped this in my first comment because, well, I don't have a great answer. It's not wrong for people to be happy that their family was sealed. It's not wrong for people to teach Church doctrines about encouraging temple marriage. I guess I would say that it's most important for people just to be aware of how many Church teachings can have a painful side for many members. Hopefully in being aware of those cases, people can teach doctrines without being deliberately exclusionary (the raising your hand thing, yikes), and without passing unnecessary judgment (using people in the ward as examples of what not to do, saying that this particular kind of family/person has messed up, saying that certain kinds of families love each other more, and so forth).Dragon Lady wrote:Eirene, having taught Primary and YW, I find myself often confronted that. My lesson topic is on Eternal Families and I know several of the students are not currently sealed as a family. How would you suggest approaching a situation like that? I try to be conscious of what I say, but I also don't want to side step the doctrine or downplay it, either.
I think in this case and in others like it (you know, talking about LGBT issues to people who may be gay or have gay family members, talking about self-reliance to people on Church or government welfare, etc), nobody should feel obligated to walk on eggshells around the doctrine itself. But, people tend to run into trouble when they start painting things with a black-and-white brush, forgetting that their audience is composed of actual people from a variety of backgrounds, who may already be feeling bad and can be easily injured by thoughtlessness.
Sorry I don't have any great, heal-all-wounds advice for this kind of thing! But I think that just remembering that issues can be painful for people, and actively trying to make everyone feel included and loved while teaching will go a long, long way.
