Father’s Speech at IIPC First Anniversary Banquet which was held at Little Angels Arts Center on October 3, 2004
Respected past and present heads of state and government, religious, political and academic leaders from around the world, honored guests from Korea and abroad: We stand today at a truly extraordinary moment in history. We have come to the time, according to heavenly fortune, when it is possible to establish the heavenly peace kingdom. This is the ideal kingdom of heaven that brings to perfection God’s ideal of creation, on earth and in heaven. In anticipation of this day, heaven and earth have waited impatiently for thousands and tens of thousands of years, since the beginning of human history.
Throughout history, humanity has never ceased its yearning for peace. Even now, leaders of good conscience in many places around the world are devoting themselves sacrificially to bringing about world peace. World peace, however, cannot be accomplished through human yearning and human efforts alone. We must first come to a providential time when we can receive the heavenly fortune for establishing a world of peace. Second, when we reach this extraordinary providential moment, we must have a definite understanding of the nature of the world of peace that Heaven seeks to bring about through us. Furthermore, we must know the precise method by which this can be brought about.
As you know, exactly one year ago, I declared to heaven and earth the founding of the Interreligious and International Peace Council (or the interreligious and international peace UN). Over the past year, we have seen amazing progress and accomplished many things. We have successfully carried out many educational peace programs and pilgrimages for the sake of world peace in such places as the Middle East, where interreligious discord and even violence and conflict between people and nations is widespread; in the United States, which stands in a position to take on responsibilities of the second Israel; and in the Republic of Korea, where even now the tragic division between North and South continues, and people are pointing guns at each other.
Today, I would like to take this historic opportunity to speak on the topic, “Establishing the Peace Kingdom and Instituting Its Territory and the Realm of Its Citizens.” I want to convey to you a special message from Heaven for humanity in this age.
Absolute Values Centered on True Love
Ladies and gentlemen, when we examine the order of existence in the universe, we see that each and every being is created to live for the sake of others. This is the fundamental axis or foundation for the accomplishment of God’s ideal of creation. When God, the king of wisdom, created all things in the universe, He made sure that each being was rooted in true love. That is, He established the practice of true love as the basic principle of natural law and the essential key to the act of creation. True ideals, true love and true peace are not only God’s ideals of creation, they are also what humanity yearns to possess.
What was God’s purpose in creating human beings? God initiated His work of creation, because even He, though He is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, did not want to exist in a state of isolation. So, first, He created the entire universe as the environment for the human beings that He would later create and place at the center. Then, on that foundation, He created human beings as the object partners of His absolute love. God’s purpose of creation was that He wanted to feel joy as He related with the human beings He created. He wanted to watch them grow to perfection; receive the blessing of marriage from Him; multiply true children and build the ideal, the kingdom of heaven, in which they would live for eternity. True joy can only be experienced when one becomes the owner of true love.
God created human beings as the object partners of His absolute love and as His true children. What position could be more precious or closer to God than that of being His children? Based on the principle of creation that He set up, God invested Himself wholly and completely. God established absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience as the standard of His principle of creation, and invested 100 percent of His being in accordance with this fundamental principle. For God to reach the position of humanity’s true parent, true teacher, true owner and true king, it was first necessary for Him to perfect human beings, based on an absolute standard, as His object partners in true love. In this way, absolute values are created.
A lone individual being can never become an owner of true love. This can only be done in relation to an object partner. God, too, has no choice other than to exercise absolute obedience in the face of the true love principles of this absolute value realm. A husband and wife may have received blessings from the whole world when they married and live in such happiness that they lack nothing that the world can offer, but if they have no children between them they can never become parents. By the same logic, in order for God to stand in the position of the owner of true love, He needed to establish human beings as His object partners in the value realm of absolute love. In other words, it is absolutely impossible to establish absolute value centered on true love without being in relation to an object partner.
Please consider the order of the universe. Even if some being is large, it cannot sacrifice smaller beings for its own benefit. The concept of survival of the fittest, the so-called law of the jungle, is a view with roots in Hellenistic thought and is fundamentally incorrect. Those who espouse this kind of thinking fail to consider the absolute value of sacrificial love by which one being seeks to help a partner reach perfection as an owner or subject of true love. This perfection is achieved when the partner becomes an absolutely obedient object-partner, lives for the sake of its subject-partner, and invests itself in its partner with true love, and then forgets that it has made that investment. If we exclude true love, only a concept of struggle remains. God’s principle of creation, however, is not based on survival and multiplication through struggle. Instead, His principle is based on harmony and unity, achieved through a process of give and take action centered on true love and absolute values, in the context of subject- and object-partner relationships.
When a smaller being sacrifices itself for the sake of a larger being, we must not see this as happening in the context of the concept of struggle. It is an investment for mutual development; it must be a voluntary and sublime sacrifice for the sake of producing something greater. When an individual willingly sacrifices for the sake of the family, a family for the sake of a nation, and a nation for the sake of the world, how can this be seen as struggle? In this way, we can see absolute value of sacrificial love manifested in the practice whereby each partner seeks first to establish the other as an owner of true love.
For this reason, we must completely rid our lives of all selfish thinking and actions. These can be thought of as the root of fallen nature, providing the cause for all evil. There is no difference between selfishness on an individual level and group selfishness. Both are diametrically opposed to the spirit of the absolute values derived from true love. They represent shameful behavior that seeks to compel others to sacrifice themselves for oneself and seeks to pursue one’s own interests exclusively, as opposed to leading a life of giving and of voluntarily sacrificing for the sake of others, that is, a life of true love lived for the sake of others. Such selfishness is a poison mushroom skillfully planted by Satan deep within the struggle between mind and body that came about through the fall of the first human ancestors.
If you pick this mushroom and eat it even once, thinking that it will help you get ahead in the world or give you a sense of pleasure, you will fall into addiction and find it difficult to escape from this evil trap, even through a lifetime of painful effort. Unfortunately, the world in which we live today is filled with such people who live in a pitiful state. In the absence of any clear solutions to this situation, countless innocent lives are being lost every day.
Please consider your own bodies. There is no part of your body that you can confidently call your own. Each of you was born as a result of the love between your father and mother. We know that 99.999 percent of our body comes from the blood, flesh and bones of our mother. The remaining 0.001 percent can be seen as the seed that comes to us from our father. How can we say that anything here is “mine,” and justify our living lives of selfish individualism? We must recognize that our bodies, everything about them, are extensions, or offshoots, of our parents. In other words, all the elements that make up your bodies were already present in your parents’ sperm and ova. No one, no matter who he may be, can be an exception to this great principle of creation.
Consider the concepts of “front” and “back.” The fact that a person uses the word, “front” assumes an acknowledgement of “back” as a preexisting condition. In the same way, the word “above” can only exist on the basis of a prior acknowledgement of “below.” When a person says “left,” this presupposes “right.”
By the same logic, the word “man” can exist only because of the prior existence of a being called “woman.” In other words, men are born for the sake of women, and women are born for the sake of men. If there were no men, there would be no need for women. By the same logic, if there were no women, the existence of men would be without value. Ultimately, there is nothing about any of us that lets us say we were born for our own sake. All beings exist and function for the sake of a partner. This means we were created to move toward the ideal world through reciprocal relationships.
Nothing comes into being for its own sake. The life that is in accordance with God’s ideal of creation is the life of giving for the sake of others, of sacrificing with love, and of seeking to perfect the owners of love through obedience. Because we are each created for the sake of a partner, it is only natural that we should live our lives for the sake of that partner. In this way, absolute values come into being.
Absolute Faith, Absolute Love, Absolute Obedience
How, then, can human beings, who are descendants of the Fall, shed our fallen nature, establish absolute values through our reciprocal partners, and establish the peace kingdom that is God’s earnest desire on the levels of the individual, family, nation and world?
First, we must resemble God. What did God do when He created all the creatures of the universe? Didn’t He believe and act in accordance with the absolute standard of the principle and order of creation that He Himself had established? Furthermore, He planted within us an absolute standard of love.
In your lives, too, if you adhere to and practice these three major principles of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, not only the great religious leaders in the heavenly world but also your good ancestors will be fully mobilized to guarantee your happiness. See what happens when you practice such an absolute standard of faith, love and obedience for the sake of your parents, husband or wife, and brothers and sisters. If this were done, how could the root of the pursuit of unprincipled pleasure and selfish individualism work its way in? If you come to live according to this absolute standard, Heaven, too, will protect you and watch over you according to this same absolute standard.
Second, because we, through no choice of our own, are descendants of the Fall and have been born with an inherited fallen nature, it is the task of each of us to bring about three great revolutions in our individual lives. I refer to the revolution through indemnity, the revolution of conscience and the revolution of heart.
The revolution through indemnity means that you must indemnify your internal and external right of ownership, and establish a standard that transcends that realm of indemnity. You must carry out a revolution in your own lives by which you boldly shake off all the habits and even the way of thinking that you acquired during the time before the coming of heaven, which was the time of the realm of satanic rule. On that foundation, you must practice an absolute standard of true love, which is the standard for our lives in the time after the coming of heaven, and live eternally as God’s true children. In addition, you must go through a revolutionary course in which all your property and your external rights of ownership are turned over to Heaven. Then, after you cut off all ties to the satanic world and separate yourselves from Satan, you inherit Heaven’s blessings. That means to increase heaven’s wealth as sanctified assets such that Satan will never again be able to claim ownership over them.
To what does the revolution of conscience refer? This is an internal revolution in which we must practice absolute obedience to the voice of our conscience. I am sure you cannot deny that within you there is still the unending struggle between the commands of your conscience, which pursues that which is good, and the temptations of your physical mind, which pursues the desires of your physical body. To bring this shameful internal conflict to an end, we must have a clear understanding of the role and function of our conscience.
The conscience knows everything about you, every move you make and every thought you have. It knows these things before your teacher does. It knows them before your parents do. It knows them before God does. What happens when you go against the commands of your conscience? You will be attacked by pangs of conscience. Dust gathers, grime builds up and wounds open up on your soul. Such wounds can never be erased. They are fearful baggage that you must carry with you when you go to the spirit world. You must work in a revolutionary way to suppress your physical mind and receive the guidance of your conscience, so that you may become a treasure, that is, a clear, unblemished, and clean soul, ready for the day that you make your way forward into the presence of God.
What is the revolution of heart? I have said that God created human beings as His children. What, then, is the connection that ties each of you to God? It is the love and heart between parent and child. If there is no communication of heart between parent and child, how can they maintain a relationship of love and respect? Human beings, who have lived for thousands of years under the influence of the fallen realm, are still slaves in our hearts to false parents, false love, and false lineage. If we are to escape from this yoke, we must constantly live lives of true love, practicing forgiveness and always giving to others. Through this process, we are able to return to the realm of God’s loving ownership. If your heartstrings are still tied to selfish individualistic ways in pursuit of the vainglory of the satanic world, you will end up on a path of hopelessness and lamentation. On the other hand, if you live for the sake of others, that is, if yours is a constructive life of seeking to be the first to yield to others and give to others, your heart will be tied to the heart of God eternally. In other words, this means you must completely cut your ties with the false parent, receive the Holy Blessing from the True Parents who have been manifested in this world as substantiations of the invisible God, and secure Heaven’s true lineage.
Third, you must scrutinize your own lives every moment of every day. I am sure you all had experiences back when you were in school, looking at a problem on a test paper and not being able to make up your mind whether the correct answer was right or wrong. [Koreans mark an answer “O” if it is right and “X” if it is wrong.] The same is true with your lives. I am asking you, in the course of your daily lives where you are faced with innumerable situations, each different from the others, to analyze and scrutinize each moment as to whether or not you are right or wrong and grade yourselves. Both in its shape and in its nature, an “O” can embrace and digest an “X.” An “X,” however, cannot embrace an “O.”
If have given yourself an “O,” you are likely living in an affirmative and hopeful way. You have set a vertical axis that extends up to heaven, and you are leading a life as at high noon-without any shadow. Yours is probably a life of great depth and breadth, in which you are able to forgive and embrace even your enemies in the spirit of true love. If have given yourself an “X,” however, you are likely living in a shameful way, where your heart is filled with negative elements, such as insecurity, irritation, bitterness, and envy. You are probably leading a life where your mind and thoughts are narrow and intolerant, and you are being selfish and individualistic to the point that you do not see what is happening with anyone around you.
I believe that you have a choice that could not be clearer. Every moment of your lives must deserve an “O” grade. You must receive a grade of “O,” which is perfectly round and not out of shape in any way. You must come to have the form of an “O,” which forms a 90-degree angle with the center, no matter where it is placed. Please lead lives in which you pursue the true “O,” so that you can look at the brightly burning sun and not be ashamed, and you can face with honor the vast and infinite universe, and you can stand before all of creation and have nothing to hide. An “O” symbolizes harmony, unity and peace. Whereas “X” symbolizes death, “O” symbolizes love and life. When your mind and body become completely one, you will take on the appearance of an “O,” and when your mind and body are in a state of chaos as a result of conflict, your appearance will take on the shape of an “X.”
Ladies and gentlemen, humanity is now at a time when it must return gratitude and glory to God and True Parents. Humanity must offer gratitude for eternity to the True Parents for inaugurating the period after the coming of heaven, an unprecedented event in history and one that will never be repeated in the future; and for bringing about the era of the arrival of the realm of true liberation and complete freedom. The time has come for humanity to boldly break out of the fallen Garden of Eden, covered in the very beginning with falsehood and blood as a result of the mistake of Adam and Eve. We must all rise up with extraordinary determination in response to Heaven’s call.
Please give careful thought to the reasons you are here today. Is it simply because you received an invitation from the sponsors, and therefore you came to participate in a conference? Whether you desired it or not, you have been called by Heaven. Just as I suddenly received Heaven’s call as a young man of fifteen [sixteen by Korean reckoning] and began an eighty-year course of blood, sweat and tears for the sake of bringing true liberation and complete freedom to God, and for the sake of saving humanity from Satan’s yoke, so also you must now go forward determined to offer your lives in order to accomplish God’s exalted will for a World Peace UN.
In closing, let me say that I hope you may receive the blessings of heavenly fortune that are pouring down like a waterfall and that you may each accomplish your mission as a proud citizen of Cheon Il Guk, the Kingdom of Heaven, in the presence of God, True Parents, and all humanity. May God’s blessing be with you and your families for all eternity.
Thank you.