Father’s speech at the Assembly of the World Religions held on August 26, 1992, Seoul, Korea
Most distinguished religious leaders, scholars and representatives from each nation, as well as all religious people assembled here: It is an honor to welcome you to the third Assembly of the World’s Religions and express my happiness in meeting all of you. I hope that you will have a rewarding and fruitful time during your stay.
SETTING A TRADITION OF HARMONY AND SERVICE
This is the third conference of the Assembly of the World’s Religions. At the first conference, which was convened in 1985, I founded the Religious Youth Service and announced my plans for the first conference of the Council of the World’s Religions. These projects which I support every year, together with the publication of World Scripture last year, have become the front line of the campaign to unite worldwide inter-religious bodies in service activities and provide a stepping-stone for harmony and understanding among religions. In doing this they have set a valuable tradition for the future of humanity.
The second conference was convened in San Francisco in 1990; there I announced the founding of the Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace (IRFWP). In August 1991, the historical founding conference of the IRFWP took place in Seoul. This year the IRFWP and the International Religious Foundation are jointly convening this conference.
This third conference has been organized as part of the first World Culture and Sports Festival. Four years ago, when the Olympics were held in Seoul, I announced my plan for the World Culture and Sports Festival to open a new page of harmony, exchange and cooperation among the peoples of this world village. Although the Olympics play an extremely important role, they lack the vertical values and spiritual dimension, which are bestowed by God. Because religion lies at the heart of culture, the Assembly of the World’s Religions and IRFWP stand at the heart of the World Culture and Sports Festival. Religious ideals and the wisdom and values that accompany them should permeate the education, scholarship, art, athletics, news media, politics, and economics of the world, and become the standard for all fields of endeavor. The World Culture and Sports Festival seeks to guide humankind’s spiritual culture and promote the values which lead to true happiness. It will also be a historical event, pointing towards a peaceful new world culture harmonizing God, humankind and all things.
We are all aware that our world is immersed in deep suffering. Although the Cold War may have come to an end, conflicts still occur in all corners of the world, and evil, hatred and injustice continue to afflict humanity. Many people are suffering in despair, and spiritual poverty plagues even materially abundant, advanced nations. The solace people seek through drugs and indiscriminate sex leads to spiritual and physical ruin. Obviously nobody desires such a world of evil, conflict and despair.
THE CLASSIC RELIGIOUS QUEST
I came to call upon the original nature of humanity to dispel unhappiness and build a world overflowing with peace and joy. This is the classic quest of religions. Nonetheless, the ideal world for which humanity yearns has not yet been realized. At the core of religion lies the desire to reveal the source of the unhappiness and suffering of humanity. If we are ignorant of the source of suffering, we cannot even hope to eliminate it. The solution comes only from divine revelation.
Today I intend to clarify the fundamental cause of this problem and indicate its solution. God created the ancestors of mankind, Adam and Eve, and bestowed upon them the three great blessings: to be fruitful, to multiply and to have dominion over all things. The first blessing, to be fruitful, means that all individuals should grow and perfect their character centering on God. The second blessing signifies that perfected man and perfected woman should become a true couple, give birth to children, exemplify true parenthood, and form an ideal family. The third blessing is to create a heavenly environment on earth, free of want and distress, according to God’s plan.
God, the embodiment of true love, created sons and daughters as the objects of His love and destined them to become perfected incarnations of true love. They were to establish a heavenly environment based on their achievement of ideal conjugal love. Tragically, Adam and Eve did not perfect the true love implanted within them. While still immature, they took a course of deviated, unprincipled love and were driven out of paradise. Having lost true love, which is the source of life, and their original divine nature, our ancestors ignored God’s blessing and started married life centering on Satan’s love. Thus, they handed down the love, life and blood lineage of Satan to their descendants.
Determined to restore His ideal of creation unaccomplished due to the fall, and committed to save humankind from unhappiness, God has guided man by establishing religions. Accordingly, in place of Adam and Eve, who had become false parents, God had to send the Messiah-that is, True Parents-in order to give rebirth to all humanity. God’s ultimate and unchanging dispensational purpose is to find and establish True Parents. True Parents come as the personification of love and the seed of true life. A true family originates with the True Parents, and this family becomes the model for all families in their path of restoration.
THE REPEATED INVESTMENT OF LOVE
True, godly love is love which invests itself again and again, even forgetting what it has given. When God, who exists for the sake of others, created His object of love, He invested one hundred percent of His being. He did not stop there but longed to pour out an additional one hundred percent or even one thousand percent into His creation. The motivation for God’s continued investment is His desire that His loving children, the objects of His love, become better than Himself. Thus, the path of true love is the path of repeated giving. The path of True Parents, who are the embodiment of true love, is also that of sacrifice for others rather than the quest for recognition. The path that religious people should exemplify follows the same sacrificial principle that God established for His providence of salvation.
Because human life is conceived centering on the ideal of love, the essence of human life is love. A being who is born on the basis of love should be devoted to living for others, following God’s example. This is the principle of heaven. Consequently, one can say that people came into existence for the purpose of true love. True love starts from the point of living for others. God originally created our mind and body permeated with true love. People imbued with true love respond to it naturally. When our mind is centered on true love and responds to God, the body automatically acts in unison with the mind. The true desire of our mind and body is to inherit God’s true love completely and to respond to it substantially. This ideal of the unity of mind and body is achieved when we fully possess God’s true love. The ideal of genuine freedom, peace and happiness depends on us uniting our mind and body-centering on true love. The foundation for freedom and peace in the family, nation and world-is the unity of mind and body. The cardinal point of peace is found not at the global or national level, but in the relationship between mind and body within the individual.
A SPIRITUAL AND MORAL CRISIS
Yesterday, thirty thousand couples from all corners of the world received the holy blessing and established a new family tradition centering on God. The ceremony you attended was not simply an important wedding ceremony convened by one religious order. Society is being shaken to its foundations by the collapse of sexual morality, the deviant behavior of young people and the breakdown of families. How should we tackle this situation? The seeds of moral corruption sown by Satan and the ancestors of humankind have borne their historical fruit. We have witnessed the phenomena of the Last Days of hell on earth; heavenly traditions have been abandoned, and human morality has been ravaged, and people have become animals. This tragedy has been exacerbated by a tendency to extreme egocentrism and a tolerance of free sex which seems to have imbued immorality with a rosy hue.
Spiritually and morally, our world is facing a profound crisis. Not only is family order disintegrating, but also the minds and bodies of youth, who represent the next generation, are being damaged. This crisis facing humanity can only be solved through the Messiah, True Parents, who are the owners of God’s true love and true life. Contrary to popular trends, God’s ideal of marriage emphasizes the eternal bond between one man and one woman committed to God, the sanctity of love and sex, God’s blessing and marriage for one’s descendants. This movement promotes the eternal ideal of couples and families centering on God’s love in one hundred sixty nations, regardless of race and national boundary; thus, it represents the bright future and hope of humanity.
THE BASIC UNIT OF GOD’S IDEAL
The basic unit of God’s ideal of creation is the family. The family is the foundation for the society and nation. God’s ideal of a one world family, transcending race and based on true love, is directly connected to the realization of a peaceful world. People throughout the world can have children of goodness and practice correct ethics when they build blessed families under God’s ideal of true love and become exemplary husbands and wives. Ideal families, which are the fruit of true love, are the foundation for ideal societies, nations, and ultimately, an ideal world. The international joint wedding ceremony is providing a fundamental solution to the chronic ailments of modern society by restoring the original ideal for the family.
The time has come for religions to display their leadership in the world. Leadership cannot emerge from blind faith or an arrogant and self-righteous attitude stemming from narrow-mindedness. True leadership arises when one subordinates oneself to the will of heaven and acts altruistically. It is time for religious people to appreciate their responsibility towards the conditions of this age and its unprincipled facets, and to examine them-selves deeply. Religious people should repent for failing to exemplify love, for becoming engrossed in their personal salvation, and for focusing on the interests of their denominations rather than investing their whole efforts in the salvation of humankind. What is needed now is not merely faith, but the practice of love.
God is calling us. He passionately seeks to challenge the injustice and evil in the world and express His true love. All religions should be of one mind in making known and practicing God’s fervent hope for humanity. God, who transcends all ritual and doctrinal disputes, desires believers to raise up their spirit through profound spiritual dialogue and exchange with Him. Religions should establish the spiritual order to which people, with their spiritual nature, should adhere. A religion should systematize its spiritual order and create a lifestyle which expresses itself rationally. Religious leaders of all creeds should set an example of personal purity, show respect for each other, and raise up influential inter-religious organizations.
CEASELESS DEDICATION
Until I founded the Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace last year, I endured enormous difficulties. For forty years, I trod the path of sacrifice, living for others and promoting the vision of inter-religious harmony and the accomplishment of the ideal of world peace centering on God’s will. Despite the persecution by a number of intolerant religious groups in various countries, despite the misunderstanding by successive generations of political regimes, and at the cost of all kinds of personal sacrifices, I determinedly worked to establish an ecumenical movement, an ecumenical theological seminary, the New Ecumenical Religious Association, and the publication of the World Scriptures. I have also continually supported the Council of the World’s Religions and the Assembly of the World’s Religions for the promotion of inter-religious harmony.
One may ask why I have initiated all these projects. All I desire when I involve myself in these activities, including the holding of the Assembly of the World’s Religions, and the activities of the Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace, is to fulfill the will of God, the Parent of mankind. My only aspiration is that, together with all of you enlightened religious leaders and religious scholars, we can realize the hope of God and all people on the earth.
BEYOND RELIGIOUS HARMONY TO WORLD PEACE
Rather than satisfying ourselves with inter-religious harmony, the next step from here is to involve ourselves more positively in social activities, by creating a broad-based unified organization aimed at world peace, together with opinion-makers in the academic, political and media spheres. In nurturing this organization and guiding it to fulfill God’s will on earth, religions should exemplify the spirit of living for others.
Let us all reopen our spiritual ears, incline them toward heaven, and follow God’s advice with a humble heart. God has bequeathed a mission on the religious leaders of this age: to guide properly the spirit of humanity and secure the spiritual and mental order of the new world culture.
I hope that this conference will provide a forum for discussion based on God’s wisdom, transcending the dimension of human insight. I want to express my appreciation for the dedication of His Grace Dr. Gregorios, who has provided a model for organization and management as chairman of the conference. I would also like to thank all the committee chairmen and representatives for their hard work. Lastly, I pray that God may bless you, your religious activities, and your families. Thank you.