This is an excerpt of a speech True Father delivered on October 29, 2001, at the Hotel Riviera Yuseong in Daejeon, Korea, during a Rally for the Nation of Cosmic Peace and Unity.
Respected leaders, ladies and gentlemen:
At this transitional point in human history, we have gathered as leaders from around the world that are concerned about the unification of Korea and world peace. The tragedies that took place in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania on September 11 truly shocked the entire world. Along with our concerns over peace and safety, we have come to reflect upon fundamental and serious questions of modern civilization and the future of humanity.
The Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace (IIFWP) and the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations
(WANGO) held a timely and significant conference in New York City, October 19–22. These two organizations, both of which I founded, brought together more than four hundred participants from 101 countries. The participants included heads of state and former ones, top leaders of major religions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Confucianism, and representatives of academia and non-governmental organizations. The participants debated seriously on how to find peaceful solutions to today’s crises.
My homeland, on the Korean Peninsula, remains a divided country and a trouble spot that, along with the Middle East, attracts the world’s attention. In my opening address at the New York conference, I communicated my vision for lasting and fundamental peace. I would like to share my views again with you leaders assembled here today. The title of my address is “The Nation and World of Peace Sought by God and Humanity.”
Throughout history, people have continuously aspired to a world of peace, but we have never realized that dream. Consider the end of the Cold War, which concluded a time of fierce political and military conflicts and struggles. Many people expected that the long-awaited era of peace and stability would arrive, supported by our highly developed science and technology.
Nonetheless, we came to realize that the seed of conflict, hatred and selfish desire embedded deeply within each of us is still alive and is creating evermore serious disasters in new shapes and forms. Violence against innocent people is certainly an inhumane criminal act, and it must be stopped. However, what can eradicate our inner conflicts and struggles and resolve fundamental human problems at their root? Where was the seed of hatred, conflict and struggle sown, and how did it come to be rooted so deeply within us?
Genesis
That seed was planted in the family of our first ancestors, Adam and Eve. The conflicts and struggles that resulted have continued from generation to generation until the present time.
How then can we resolve those conflicts and realize peace on earth? Historically, people have attempted to overcome conflicts and pursue peace through economic, political, diplomatic and military means. However, such methods obviously do not provide fundamental solutions, as we are still struggling with many unresolved problems.
There is only one fundamental way to resolve these issues. It is clear and simple. We must restore the family that our first ancestors lost; that is, the ideal family with God at its center, the family that has achieved perfection in true love, both vertically and horizontally.
God exists as the original being of true love and the invisible true parent of humankind. Nonetheless, love cannot exist alone. It exists in relationships, and it bears fruit only through relationships. That is why God created us, as his children, through whom he would seek to realize true love.
God’s first blessing to human beings, to “be fruitful” [Gen. 1:28], called God’s children to become the object partners of his true love by becoming true people. When we love someone, we want our object partner to be better than ourselves. Thus God, as our loving parent, wants his children to be better than he is. That is why God repeatedly invests himself in human beings, his object partners of love; he forgets about what he has already given while constantly desiring to give infinitely more and more love. This is so because love has its origin in the desire to live eternally for the sake of others.
God then bestowed the second Blessing, to “multiply” [Gen. 1:28]. Our first ancestors were to have grown to maturity as the children of God. After reaching maturity and becoming one in heart with God, they were to be blessed as true husband and wife. Then they were to become substantial true parents to their children, inheriting and passing on true love, true life and true lineage from God.
God’s ideal of creation was to perfect true love both vertically and horizontally, beginning in the first family of our common ancestors. Since God’s love is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal, that family also was to have been the absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal family, centered on true love. Human beings were to be the substantial embodiments of love, totally united with God in heart, and obtaining perfect freedom, happiness and the realization of all ideals. Then they would have become the lords of true love whom all beings in the universe would have loved and welcomed. This was God’s third blessing (Gen. 1:28). This is the blessing to create a living environment in which we experience joy and happiness, having dominion over all of creation. This includes the care and preservation of the world’s ecological balance as true stewards of the creation.
Tragically, our first ancestors could not inherit the three blessings of God and establish the family of true love. That means they did not become true individuals, true spouses, true parents and true lords centered on true love. Because they disobeyed God, he expelled them from the garden of Eden. As fallen people, they became false spouses to each other with false love that had nothing to do with God’s blessings. They gave birth to children and those children multi-plied to populate the world of today.
Since the Fall occurred at the very beginning of human history, people have not been born on the foundation of true love, in attendance to God. Instead, we have lived in a state of conflict, struggling between our minds and bodies. This conflict manifested in the tragedy of hatred and murder between two brothers, Cain and Abel, in the first family. This was the miserable reality in that family once it departed from God.
A family built on human relation-ships alone cannot become a family of the original ideal of creation. An ideal family must connect to God vertically and have a true person as its axis. Only under the true love of true parents, and among siblings who have and share a common axis, can a family enjoy relationships of ultimate harmony and peace. True love is experienced within an ideal family that bears good fruit. The family is the original and best school of love. Neither power nor knowledge can create true love.
Disintegration of the family
Honorable leaders! What do you feel when you look at the reality of our society and the youth in our contemporary world? Do you feel hope for a bright future? I believe that you must agonize over the increasing rates of crime, violence, drug abuse, immorality, corruption, teen pregnancy and so forth. These arise out of a confusion of values, and portend greater darkness enveloping our youth.
How did we arrive at this point? Better school systems and social improvements might have delayed the onset of these problems, but would not address their fundamental cause, which is the breakdown and loss of our families. This breakdown is a product of the time we are living in, a time when humankind is harvesting the fruit sown when we lost the first family of true love.
It was that family’s failure to realize true love that has led to phenomena Associated with family breakdown, including individual breakdown, as well as countless problems on the national and world-wide levels. Of particular concern is the emotional instability of youth, which leads to diminishing life goals, spiritual aimlessness, and unhealthy, self-destructive lifestyles. World leaders who are concerned about the future have to be very serious in order to solve the real problems of young people avoiding marriage, rampant divorce and so forth; trends that destroy the fundamental foundation of families.
Having lost the first and second blessings, humankind does not understand the importance of completing one’s individual growth, which is the foundation for sacred and eternal conjugal love. Most of our young people are not aware of the importance of keeping purity before marriage and reaching personal maturity through true love. This is why they do not understand the value of true love, which is the fundamental root of joy, happiness and all ideals.
The tendency to make light of trust and fidelity between husband and wife and to ignore the sacredness of marriage is an internal cause of indescribable disasters and tragedies for humankind. True love has been driven out by the so-called free love culture, in which people seek only sexual release as the cardinal yet momentary pleasure. The rapid spread of HIVAIDS and sexually transmitted diseases threatens the very existence of the human race.
It is said that there is no safety zone against the AIDS virus. A greater terror than the terrorism from which the entire world has been trembling is before us. Once contracted, its victims must give up their dreams for happiness, ideals and life itself. Unless we resolve this catastrophe plaguing our planet, how can we consider our-selves leaders?
Nor have we taken responsibility for the third blessing endowed by God, to “have dominion over the creation.” This requires that we take care of all creatures with true love. What would happen if the natural world were to rebel against the abuse and misuse it suffers at the hands of human beings who lord over it? Are not those symptoms beginning to appear? Before the natural world punishes our intolerable arrogance we have to stand before nature in true love as people of restored integrity.
Respected leaders, in order to examine today’s problem at a more fundamental level, I would like to consider the relationship between the true “I” and the true “we” in the context of God’s ideal of creation.
As a result of the Fall, human beings did not achieve the position of the true “I.” For this reason, God has never been able to use the word “we.” That is to say that God has never been able to stand within the realm of the consciousness of his ideal of creation and establish a relationship that would allow him to say, “This is my creation” or “This is my child.”
So our present concept of “I” has no relationship with the original ideal of God’s creation, and it is for this reason that we have to deny ourselves absolutely.
God has conducted his providence so that he could establish true men and true women, that is, his sons and daughters, whom he could freely include within his concept of “we.” Because God is the subject partner of love, life and lineage, he sought true sons and daughters who would live eternally with a complete and unbreakable standard.
To achieve that, we first have to perfect our individual character through uniting our mind and body and, on that foundation, to build a vertical parent–child relationship with God. A vertical relationship by itself, however, is not sufficient to bring the word “we” into being. We also need to create a horizontal relationship in harmony with the vertical. To do this, man and woman must forma true husband-wife relationship through a Blessed marriage, bear children, build a true family and forma four-position foundation involving three generations. Only then will God use the word “we” with reference individual character reference to a family unit.
How, then, can we advance to such a position? God created all things from a position in which his mind and body were completely one. His creation was an act of total investment involving absolute love and absolute faith. There was no possibility that he would consider his own interests or situation. This was the fountainhead of love that seeks to give one hundred percent and then still continues giving. This is true for God and it is true for our families as well.
Parents, who stand in the position of God, have to invest themselves completely and absolutely with true love. In terms of the logic of origin-division- union, they give birth and rear children from the position of the origin, thus establishing a vertical axis for the concept of “we.” If the husband and wife, who stand in the position of division from the origin, become one with each other based on true love, they will establish the horizontal axis. Then the children, who are in the position of union, will align themselves automatically with the vertical and horizontal axes and become one; they will establish a new axis reaching from front to back. There will be an original family that accomplishes this, substantiating the concept of “we” that is complete vertically, horizontally and front to back.
This is the reason the family is so important; it is the most valuable gift given to us from Heaven. If the environment we call the family did not exist, how would we establish this absolute standard of “I?” If not for the family, we would never even dare to think of a “we” that is complete vertically, horizontally and front to back. The cradle of love, peace and happiness is nothing other than this family.