Happy 32nd Children’s Day.
My topic today is filial piety. We understand the meaning of filial piety as the son or daughter’s devotion to their parents, and it is very significant in a life of faith.
Heavenly Father created us solely to manifest the ideal world of love. Since love cannot be achieved alone, God must have a counterpart who can reciprocate His love with the very same intensity, devotion, dedication, and desire as He has.
We have certain traits that separate us from all the rest of God’s creation: the ability to choose, volition, and creativity.
Why do we have these traits and how are we to utilize them to fulfill God’s purpose for creation?
To answer these questions you have to go back to the beginning. Heavenly Father knew the fall could happen if Adam and Eve deceived Him, so why did that loving God put mankind in such a position?
Just as within God is the desire to create and to realize the ideals of love, so also must God’s counterpart choose love as God chose love based on his desire. Whatever man receives, he must have the ability to choose to give back, to reciprocate. Without a reciprocal base, there is no give and take. Without give and take there is no realization of love.
So it is not blueprinted for man to automatically return God’s love. God had to put man in the position of being able to freely choose to either return His love or not because man has to be involved in this creation process. He must choose to desire the ideals of love as much as God. It is uncertain because there is a definite possibility man won’t choose to realize love.
Can you realize love based on selfishness or by only thinking about your existence?
No! Most of you are blessed and know that if you are going to realize love within the family setting, both you and your spouse must choose to freely give to each other. You cannot achieve love alone.
Therefore, that man must be in a position to make his own decision to realize the value of love. Although the commandment might not have been clear to Adam and Eve, Adam should have utilized his creativity to give himself reasons to desire the same things that God desires. It could be as simple as “I love my Father. I am his son. I don’t care what possibilities, no matter how appealing they sound, lie out there other than what God is prescribing for me to follow.
Dr. Sun Myung Moon
I love my Father, and I will not abandon Him.” That is a very simple, logical reason that should have come from within Adam, unprovoked by anyone else. It is important that man can choose his reason for uniting with God. That is why God could not intervene in that process. If man had chosen to desire God as much as God desires man, the fall would never have occurred.
Use Your Creativity
The basis of filial piety is dedication and devotion to your parents.
Why do you feel that you should dedicate yourself to your parents?
Adam is separate from God, but if he had de-sired God as much as God desired him and realized that he must follow the path of God, then he would have established unity with his origin. Our parents are the source of our life, and when we establish oneness, we establish one origin.
That is the bottom line. Without deeply realizing the value of becoming part of something larger than your self you have no right or condition to become His counterpart of love. You must inherit God’s essence and become a godlike being.
It is everyone’s responsibility to realize the value of True Parents on your own. You cannot learn True Parents’ values from someone else’s lips. Think about it.
When you pray, what do you do?
Yes, you reflect on certain things that you have done, but most of the time you try to think about Father’s course, and about the bright, better future. You desperately pray to try to understand and inherit Father’s heart.
Most of you do not know what kind of tortuous life he had to endure, but you want to know. For example, you don’t know the wretched conditions that existed more than forty years ago in Hungnam prison. Just thinking about all the atrocities they committed will bring tears to your eyes.
So when you pray you try to visualize how difficult his life was: “God, please let me know, I want to know Father’s heart.” The more your prayer is dedicated to trying to become closer to True Parents, the more you become spiritually open. By praying and imagining in this way, you are using your creativity to understand how Father could endure that terrible torture, having water with pepper in it poured through his nose, being hung on a ceiling beam and spun around, and being beaten unconscious with a stick, awakened, and then beaten again over and over. And you try to imagine what was going through the minds of those who were torturing Father.
Most of you don’t know what it was like in Danbury either. I went with Mother every time she went to Danbury. Father had to wear a prison uniform, and since he couldn’t dye his hair, it was all white. He knows that he is the embodiment of Heavenly Father, and therefore he wants to take care of his body as much as he can. At the same time, he didn’t want to show his body to the other prisoners, so he could not even bathe. The only way to wash was to wipe himself off with a wet towel. So literally he stunk.
Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon
When I sat by him, physically it was very difficult to take because the smell was very unpleasant. I realized the only way to become a true filial son is to perfect yourself centering on the spirit, and transcend the physical body.
In the Principle it is clearly stated that to receive a blessing, one must be perfected centering on sungsang/hyungsang, with sungsang in the subject position and hyungsang as the object. When we connect with God and True Parents in prayer, in our spirit there is a certain comfort and happiness. But because this fallen world is not centered on God and True Parents, the physical body cannot obtain that joy and we must endure many painful things. So at Danbury, my spirit said, “I love you, Father,” while my body said, “You stink.”
Do you think an ideal world would lock up Father?
NO! Would an ideal world crucify Jesus?
No way! But we lost this environment to Satan, so within myself,f there was a struggle, with my physical body saying it was unpleasant, and my spirit saying, “God … (long tearful pause).” Therefore, we must ask, “How can I make this world such that my spirit and my body can rejoice with God and True Parents? They desperately want this kind of world.
Adam’s responsibility was to center himself on his spirit, which desires to unite with God, with his body following. As rational creatures, we must create reasons for the physical body to follow the spirit no matter what we are desiring physically.
I must dictate: “Hey body, you must follow this way.” Then you are a step closer to the realm of perfection and can realize harmony within yourself. If Adam had followed the commandment of God and perfected himself centering on his spirit, unity between God and man would have been achieved, and Adam would have become worthy to receive God’s blessing. In the same way, your body must unite with your spirit, and that becomes the seed of building a filial, pious family, tribe, society, nation, and the world.
That is why you need to realize that the role of tribal messiahship can only be fulfilled when you realize the value of the Blessing. Unless you achieve the ideal condition within the Blessing, you cannot fulfill your responsibility as a tribal messiah.
Hyo Jin Nim
You know, the more I stand in this position to talk to you, the more I realize how difficult Father’s life has been. No one likes repeating oneself or hearing certain things being repeated. If you put yourself in Father’s position, you can truly start to appreciate what Father has given us all throughout his life.
Many people cannot understand how we could allow Father to choose our spouse, but your commitment to be blessed by True Parents is the ultimate testimony of your love for humanity. And Father knows that.
Re-establishing The Origin
We must try to inherit Father’s love and his understanding of love. We lack filial piety in the church. Most of you feel that the Father is the insurance for your salvation, but salvation is just the beginning, not your final destiny. After salvation you must do certain deeds to become counterparts of love to God it’s not automatic.
Based on your ability to reason, you must realize the value of True Parents and of what they have given to you and that what is right is uniting with True Parents.
Reestablishment of the origin is the essence of restoration. That is why True Parents exist. Only through the marital relationship can you procreate and create the seed of love. Unless you put yourself in the position to become Godlike, and through His Blessing have the power to procreate, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. And before you can receive the Blessing, you must desire to realize true love more than anything else.
As long as we can procreate, humanity will just grow and grow. But the idea is that all humanity should dwell centering on the Principle of love. The concept of love is very precise. That is why the universe has boundaries and why within the Principle boundaries exist. But even within those limits is the possibility of expansion and growth, plus the boundary itself is growing. I cannot say that I understand the eternal concept of love.
There is no way for me to see all the possibilities we can create through the Blessing. They are endless! We can eternally grow and the boundary of love will never reach the end because we are talking about eternity.
It’s mind-boggling when you think about it! That is why we need to be humble. I don’t know what my next child will look like but I know they must accept the Principle and be one more inclusion into the ever-growing boundary of love! So I’ll study them and try to understand who and what they are and what they can offer to the large scheme of things in realizing the ideal world of love.
In every relationship, there is a subject and an object. Man is in the object position to God, and the archangel is in the object position to man. Man represents Heavenly Father in this physical world, which is supposed to represent the ideal world of love.
Once you receive the Blessing from God, you have a right to have a family and have dominion over creation and the angelic world, multiplying goodness through your God-centered family a trinity of the husband and wife united centering on God.
The ideals of love are not based on selfishness. Certain physical joys can come based on selfish desires, but it is temporal because they cannot reciprocate with you forever. For eternal joy, you need someone who will reciprocate love with you forever.
Once man becomes the reflection and physical manifestation of God and enters into the kingdom of heaven, God takes on even the physical form of man, and all His children are connected through the heavenly genealogy to True Parents’ lineage.
Centering on True Parents, all this becomes the body. So, literally, in a sense, God’s presence can be revealed in many different ways once you become engrafted onto True Parents; you become part of True Parents.
Mankind becomes God. Satan knew he was to serve mankind, because man as the visualization of God represents Heavenly Father in the physical form, but selfish desire came into Satan to subjugate mankind and create his version of what the ideal world should be. Restoration is reversing this process. Because restoration has to take place on a substantial level, a physical being, Cain, must surrender his subjectivity to Abel, who is the object, and reinstate the ideal subject/object relationship; then Abel bequeaths the ideal object position to Cain.
Also, John the Baptist was to become the ideal object to Jesus Christ by surrendering his so-called birthright subjectivity to him. Then the nation of Israel, centering on Jesus, was to go outward to the world and lay the condition to restore subjectivity on a worldwide level. That is why the unification of Korea is so important.
Father has indemnified all past failures and now is literally giving you the opportunity to create and perfect yourself. Perfecting your abilities requires a lot of sacrifice and self-motivation. If you’re centered on your body, you don’t want to sacrifice because the body seeks joy in the moment.
Father dismantled the Unification Church in Korea and is now dismantling the Unification Church all over the world! He is telling you that you have to go back to your homes and become tribal messiahs. It is your responsibility to do it on your own.
You have to start making the right offering to True Parents. Filial piety is complete dedication, complete devotion to True Parents. “What I am doing I am doing because I love you, Father. I am not doing this to be recognized.”
I hate being in the public eye but it is my responsibility as Father’s eldest son to carry on his tradition and inherit what he wants to bequeath. You don’t feel the depth of gratitude that you should feel. (long pause)
Promoting God’s Ideal
Changing America is a very difficult thing. For instance, we have to address the proliferation of racial hatred. Only Unificationists can solve this racial problem because only the Principle states the importance of indemnity.
It is very easy to say, “Well, let us all forget about the past and just move on, because we are all facing difficult times as a nation.”
But we have to repent for all historical wrongdoing and take responsibility to resolve the current problems. Because white people have falsely subjugated black people, they now must become objects to black people, based on love, and sacrifice enough to give the black community opportunities to stand up on their own through such things as better education and restructuring the welfare system. I am not saying that we should promote black supremacy.
When Cain forfeits his subjectivity and becomes an object to Abel, it does not mean that Abel can then oppress Cain.
Do you think it is God’s will to realize His ideal world so He can oppress mankind for His selfish gain?
That is not the ideal world.
But how are we going to promote God’s ideal?
We need a national-level forum. That is why Father has supported so many media projects. What I am now trying to create in New York is very important.
Everything I do is for Father. If I were doing it for myself, I wouldn’t be standing here in front of you. I surely would not push myself into the kind of hell that I always push myself into. I challenge you to do it too!
I want to give everything that I have and offer all of my abilities. When everyone’s abilities are praised, an environment is created where all of your unique gifts are encouraged to fully blossom for the sake of others, not just for yourself, just as Father desperately tried to perfect himself, sacrificing everything to bless you and make you tribal messiahs. (long tearful pause) This is a filial son: “I am dedicating my love to you, Father. I will perfect it, and I will selflessly sacrifice all my abilities for you.”
During Father’s lifetime, we have to help all of humanity understand his value. Tell others what he has done for you. Share your life experiences, your victories, and what motivated you to overcome certain difficulties.
When you were desperately trying to unite with Father, what kind of reasoning and attitudes helped you persevere in a Principled way?
All of your experiences will matter because they are necessary to convince humanity. You need substantial examples, large enough to encompass all of humanity.
Every day of your life, you should be desperately seeking what to offer to True Parents. Your offering is what kind of thinking and attitudes helped you overcome difficulties and made you who you are.
In other words, what helped you love God and True Parents more?
That is giving something back to True Parents because that is sowing the seed of love. And that is the only thing that will transform humanity. Satan will only succumb to us when we have a foundation of substance large enough to embrace and recreate humanity.
Father is now absolutely devoting himself to restoring Korea because it is the time. Once that is finished, his responsibility is finished. Father has perfected himself and will have perfected the Adam nation. We call Korea the primary nation not because it is superior but because there has to be a perfected Adamic figure within the world family of nations.
It is very important to have dominion over the communications media as quickly as possible. It would be ideal if all of our members could partake in this process because eventually, it would help you to fulfill your tribal messiahship responsibilities and get the word out.
People misunderstand us because they don’t know who we are. In the past, we only were able to use someone else’s forum, and if we deviated from their agenda to express ourselves, people felt we were very subjective.
Especially in America, the land of democracy, objectivity is very important. In Korea, people are a little more subjective. Korea has been invaded by surrounding countries over nine hundred and fifty times through our recorded five thousand years of history which works out to be about every five years! It is inconceivable how we could survive and keep our heritage under those circumstances. So Koreans always feel we are on the defensive, fighting off an offensive attack from our neighboring countries.
That kind of person can say what he wants. Koreans tend to speak whatever is on their minds. American people don’t like that. So we need a telecommunications medium through which we can truthfully reveal who we are.
What is the essence of my message?
You can grow as much as you can allow yourself to grow! It is important that we perfect ourselves, centering on what is given to us, and offer ourselves selflessly to True Parents.
Offering Your Best
I want to change this world. Allow yourself to grow so that you can change America, or at least change your tribe. Know yourself, nurture all of your abilities, let them come alive, and offer them to True Parents. Then you can claim that you are a filial son or filial daughter of Heavenly Father and True Parents. That is what I will try to do too. I want to make sure that all the glory goes to my Father.
Ultimately we can receive back through True Parents what we offer because we are their extension. When you give certain things, you are not losing anything because they will return to you in the greater fold.
Through my reasoning I realize that the only way I can achieve love is to dedicate myself as Father has done on every level, even expanding my love widely enough to encapsulate the universe and possess God! It is a long way to go. I am even having difficulty possessing you people! It is sometimes difficult, but let us try to do it for the sake of Father. Then everything that we have, harnessed with the right vision, can change America.
I am assisting Father in creating a medium through which you can be more effective in communicating to your society and hometown, and ultimately to all of America. Prepare yourselves so that you can be effective! Perfect your ability to write, to speak, to make music to ultimately spread the truth the best you can!
We have to stimulate people to think because restoration can only occur within oneself. You can’t force someone to be restored. We need a medium to express natural truths, centered on Principle, so people can be motivated to change their ways. The physical body grows through observation, but all we observe now are things centered on selfishness, not God.
Why should Father always get second best?
You don’t even offer True Parents the second-best things. And we have this self-justification insurance policy built in: “Oh, Father is a loving Father. True Parents are the absolute manifestation of love! Although I am filled with imperfections, Father is going to love me.” Forget that idea! Yes, everyone must go through a period of growth, but you must reach perfection!
How much did you dedicate yourselves to True Parents?
Did you achieve all of your potential? Did you speak every day about Father? Did you write some ground-breaking paper? Did you create music that can stir young people’s minds? Did you make a documentary on Father’s life to blow the minds of all the intellectuals? What did you do?
Yes, he is a loving Father, but for you to receive that love and accomplish your ultimate responsibility to return that love, you have to reach perfection. That is, you have to be willing to give everything that you have for the sake of love.
That is perfection! Did you invest 100 percent, or 50 or 20?
The criterion is that you must invest everything! That is why it is difficult to become like God. If it was easy, why would we have to suffer so long? Go out and do something!
When you know a little more than someone else, you may feel superior. Well, knowledge does not determine your position! Your effort to perfect your love determines your position in God’s great scheme of subject and object relationships. Even your missions, the businesses you run, are you doing them for your physical prestige, or are you truly sincerely doing them to help Father?
We all have a long way to go to perfect ourselves and to inherit Father’s way and tradition. Step by step you must invest effort and then try to give to others. Joe Longo is my right-hand man. He can say a lot of profound things, and so can you. You American people have to resurrect the American church.
Without the Blessing, there is no kingdom of heaven in heaven. So what you have received is something you can never get anywhere else. If you understand what you have received, you had better offer everything. Many of you don’t even understand the basic concepts of Principle, so although you have good intentions and try to offer certain things, they don’t count because they aren’t what God needs.
We have to commit ourselves to action! If you want to inherit the essence of the Principle, you have got to start sacrificing. Inspiration only comes through sacrifice, because sacrifice is giving and then God can give back to you. If you want inspiration to restore all humanity, then you had better sacrifice more than humanity has historically ever sacrificed!
I know it is difficult to receive from me because, to many of you, I am a young guy.
But let us unite and change America. We can do it. Whatever I have, I’ll give it to you.
I am excited. You should be too, sacrificing and making yourself more available for what is to come in the future. So, come on, be there with me! (Applause) God bless you and have a good year! I want you to dedicate your life as much as you absolutely can to True Parents.
If you can do that, this church has a hopeful future. And we will change the world. If one man, Father, can change the world to the degree that he has changed it, all of us united can change this world ten thousand times over!
Please inherit Father’s love and commitment and persevere through all the difficulties. And overcome yourself, please. Thank you very much.
Hyo Jin Nim
