Children's Education

1. What is it that parents should give to their children while educating them? Education should not be about knowledge but, rather, about love. Both father and mother should teach how to become one by loving one another.

They should become a father and mother with whom God is pleased, and the mother and father should be pleased with one another. At the same time, they should strive to be parents whom their children like; then the children will want to make their parents proud of them. This is how parents should educate their children. (51-172, 1971.11.21)

2. Whether centered on God or Adam and Eve, the key is the four-position foundation. No matter how you look at it, it is the same four-position foundation. For this reason, we should receive education about love from God, based on His love.

What is the origin of this education?

It does not begin with human beings. Since God is their Parent, Adam and Eve should be educated about love by God. How is the standard of Adam and Eve's value determined? It is by the education they receive from God about love. For how long did Adam and Eve require this education?

It was necessary until they figured out God's standard of value for the completion of love. In other words, they should have reached full maturity based on the love they received from their Parent. (51-172, 1971.11.21)

Love, original sexuality, and education for the Blessing

3. Becoming a parent puts you in a position to represent God. Thus, as a teacher, you have to teach your children the principles of love, the love of the family, and the ideal of the nation, and raise them to become owners of the family and nation with proper qualifications.

To this day, our children are being educated in schools that do not provide the most essential education. They provide technical education. The home should be the place of character education. This is where parents bequeath the original lineage.

Parents have a solemn duty to establish a tradition connected to lineage with a perspective of thousands of years and to pass it on to their children. But this is not predestined; rather, it is a destiny we are responsible to accomplish. We cannot change our mother and father.

We cannot exchange our brothers and sisters. Knowing this, we need to establish the family tradition in the presence of God and bear fruit as true parents and true teachers. By this means, we are recreating a lineage based on love. After doing so, we need to leave behind us the position of true owners of a true lineage that can last forever. (316-169, 2000.02.11)

4. Blessed families must think concretely, not just conceptually, about God's sovereignty, God's people and God's territory. It is now time for us to take action, taking responsibility for this mission.

Every step we take should be toward this purpose. Even when educating children, parents have to think about how to raise them to become people who can fulfill the Will and mission.

A mother should think this way even when she nurses her baby. If we live like this, although we are only individuals, we represent the life, hope, and value of the whole, with a value that can stand before heaven and earth. (12-134, 1963.01.25)

5. Needless to say, you have to educate your children well. In addition, you should guide them to receive the Blessing at an early age. When three generations have received the Blessing, they can be bound together. Before you die you need to have three generations blessed.

This is how you can fulfill your responsibility. Just as the Israelites were connected through three families, Adam, Noah, and Abraham, the standard for you to be connected is three generations.

What should you do to achieve that?

You should create your tribe based on your sons and daughters and relatives who are to fulfill the same conditions. On that foundation, you can be free and accommodating with your tribe, and they can be the same toward you.
(31-283, 1970.06.04)

6. Toward your wife you should think, “In terms of receiving God's three kinds of love, she is the best. She is the best daughter in the world, she is the best wife in the world, and she will be the best mother who has ever existed.” You have to educate your children so that they can say proudly, “My father and mother are the best in the world. No one except God is better than they are.”

Education within Unification Church families should achieve this standard, and it should be publicly recognized. God should be able to say, “That's right,” and your descendants should say, “Yes.” My children say to me, “After God, my father is the best.” You, too, have to teach your children to think this way. (047-220, 1971.08.28)

7. Parents teach their children to love their brothers and sisters and to love their mother and father. At the same time, they need to teach them, “As much as I love you, I love my country.

Please love your country as much as I do.” If you teach them in this way, they will understand. You do not need to educate them on other things. In the end, they will understand, “In my family, my father and I live like this, and all other families in the nation should also live like this.

Establishing a nationwide and worldwide foundation together with my family means becoming a patriot in my country.” (95-052, 1977.10.23)

8. You have to teach your children to love the world more than they love their country. I am teaching not just the way of a patriot for the nation but the way of a saint for the world.

Since this way of the saint involves the laws for governing a nation, I am also teaching you how to fulfill the dutiful way and become a prince or princess in the kingdom of heaven. (148-127, 1986.10.05)

9. You have to be true mothers and fathers who, even while racing ahead, can say to your children: “If I die now, you must take this baton and keep running. I am going this way of suffering to save the world. I must do this to enable a new world to emerge.

That is the hope of God, the hope of True Parents, and the hope of your father and mother. And that must be your hope too. I believe this unchanging hope allows everyone to find happiness; that is why I am going this way.”

Currently of your death, you should be able to say this to your children and ask them to commit to carrying on your work. (148-131, 1986.10.05)

10. As parents, we need to have the educational resources by which to teach our children. We should be able to testify: “My beloved sons and daughters, you should not be indebted to your parents, brothers and sisters, or neighbors.

I tried my best all my life, applying myself intensely, to avoid debt, until my fingers became bent and their skin as coarse as horsehide. My hands became like this through serving our neighbors and living for the sake of others.”
(85-136, 1976.03.02)

11. A true teacher does not teach academics but one who teaches love. Of course, parents are one with their children based on love and the blood relationship, but they should also be teachers of love.

That is why we parents should teach our children saying, “You should behave this way as brothers and sisters, you should behave that way as husband and wife, and this and that way with your relatives.”

Thereby we can educate them with love so that, through harmony and unity among family members, they can bring prosperity to the family and finally become owners of love. This is the duty of parents. (198-063, 1990.01.21)

Parents must show the example

12. Brothers and sisters need to follow the example of their parents loving each other. Daughters represent the mother and sons represent the father, and they need to learn the tradition of love with which the parents love each other.

However, since there have been no true parents from whom to learn such love in Satan's world, we now have to teach our children to follow the example of the True Parents through the way of filial piety. In the Unification Church, given our relationship, and the relationship between my family and your family, your children will take after the heart that you have toward me.

Children learn hearts from their parents. You have to be people about whom your children can say, “My parents carry on, regardless of what difficulties they face. Their way of life transcends time, the environment, and their standard of living.” At the same time, you have to set the tradition in your family that your children will listen to your directions and follow you in any circumstances.

Your children should be able to say, “This is the way our parents went, so we have to go this way too. Considering all the circumstances, isn't this what we should do?”

You should have your children follow your example by serving your parents as a couple. By doing so, you set the standard by which to educate your descendants. (30-087, 1970.03.17)

13. Parents should educate their children about Heaven. In teaching your children, the first step is for you to set an example. Before instructing your children about filial piety, you should be a child of filial piety. If you first become a devoted son or daughter, according to Heaven's law, you will establish Heaven's tradition of filial piety.

On this foundation, you then teach your sons and daughters the way of loyal patriots in the heavenly nation. If your children cry for the Republic of Korea, teach them, holding their hands and with tears in your eyes, “You are people who have no nation. This nation is not your true nation.

There is another country that, in a real sense, we have to serve.” You should feel God's concern as closely as you feel your baby's breathing when you hold him or her to your bosom. You should teach your children while shedding tears and feeling God's concern. Only then can you expand the depth and breadth of your children's education. (30-113, 1970.03.17)

14. You need to have the mindset that whatever you own belongs to the Father. Sons and daughters should offer everything to the Father. For this, you should inspire your children to emulate Jesus in their loyalty to Heaven. In every possible way, you parents need to encourage your children to follow the right path of the Unification Church.

This is what you have to do. To achieve this objective, it is you who first has to follow this path, for only then can you teach and educate your children to do the same.

It violates the heavenly principles if parents try to educate their children to do something they have not done themselves. I teach you only that which I have established as a foundation, by bringing victory through my practice.
(23-322, 1969.06.08)

15. Personal fortune should support family fortune; family fortune should support that of society; the fortune of society should support that of the nation; the nation's fortune should support that of the world; the world's fortune should support the fortune of heaven and earth, and that in turn should support God's fortune.

If you live with the heart that your daily life is connected with the world's fortune and God's fortune, your life represents the realm of life on the world level. No one under Heaven can stop such a person.

Do not become a husband who brings shame to his wife. Your wife is God's envoy. Your children are God's envoys. Their role as envoys is to serve as your closest aides, monitor you, and educate you to follow the right path.

You must not be a father who feels shame before his children. Do not feed these envoys from Heaven with stolen goods. You cannot attend Heaven or your ancestors after committing fraud. (163-034, 1987.04.18)

16. When you educate your children, I hope you can say, “I went this way for the sake of God's Will, so I want you to go this way too.” When a husband, wife, or parents die, they should be able to say the following words as their last will: “In my conscience, I have not one iota of shame.

Please follow the same way I have gone. This is the best gift in the whole universe I can give you.” This is the will of all wills. You can add, “If you do as I bid you, the world will be yours; God and the universe will belong to you.”
(125-106, 1983.03.13)

17. As a couple, we should be able to show our sons and daughters an example of how a husband and wife should live. Our children should be inspired to say, “Our father and mother have such a good relationship.

I want to marry as soon as possible and live the way they do.” It is the father and mother who should be able to teach the children how to lead their lives. Everything depends on the father and mother. (260-297, 1994.05.19)

18. The family is the headquarters of education. When I married my wife, we promised each other that we would not show our tears in front of our children.

What sin do children have?

No matter how angry, bitter, or sorrowful we are, no matter how much we have been crying, when we hear their voices as they come to greet us in the morning, we need to show our children the same face we showed them yesterday. A mother should hold her children lovingly and let them kiss her and then kiss their father. (251-098, 1993.10.17)

19. Where there is no unity between husband and wife, there is neither freedom nor peace. If you want peace through the unity of husband and wife, first, you have to unite your mind and body.

This is the first article of my education. To this day, many religious leaders have thought that they were good, while the world was bad. Yet, that is not the case because they have not achieved the first article.

If a mother and father, as a husband and wife, do not live in unity, heaven, and earth will ignore them. On the other hand, when a couple is united and three generations of a family are united, the whole world will come to you.
(243-170, 1993.01.03)

20. You have to be filial sons and daughters and loyal patriots. Until now, from God's viewpoint, there have been no real devoted children, loyal patriots, or saints. You have to pray for your brothers and sisters as you would for the world. When you do so, along with the Parents, you can be recognized as a holy son or daughter, and stand before God.

This is the formula. You have to educate your children by showing them how you attend me in your home. Teach them, “This man went through a path of suffering that changed history. By him the world is blessed. Let us attend him in our family. It will be a great blessing for our family to do so.” (283-080, 1997.04.08)

21. As fathers and mothers, please do not let your children see you quarrel. You should never allow this to happen. You should promise this between husband and wife. This applies to my family too. To this day, my children say, “Our mother and father never fight.

They are the best mother and father in the world.” We have to teach our children to think that their parents are better than any king, that they are the hero and heroine of hope, greater than anyone else.

If you have a son, he should be able to say, “I want to be like my dad.” Your daughter should be able to say, “I would like to be a woman like my mom.” You have to raise your children like this. This is true education. (90-123, 1976.12.21)

22. Your children should be able to testify that they never in their life saw their mother and father fight.

I know there are all sorts of situations that can arise in life, but even so, you should not point fingers, push and shove, or drag each other down. No matter how upset the father is, he should not look at his son with an angry face. This is my philosophy.

That is why my children think their father and mother are always experiencing peace and love as a couple. They think their mother is the best of all mothers and their father is the best of all fathers.

The mother and father are each a second God. When you ask your children, “Do you want God or do you want your mother and father?” they should answer, “I want my mother and father.” Even God likes that answer. That is something precious. The education that leads to this has the highest value of all.
(165-094, 1987.05.20)