If God is our divine Parent and we human beings are His children, then surely God must feel great sadness of heart over His children’s bondage, degradation and rebellion.
Thus, religious traditions that revere a personal, compassionate God recognize God to have an aspect of sorrow. In Christianity, Jesus’ Passion has regularly represented the suffering of God, as the Father is one with His Son.
Although the biblical witness to God’s grief is sometimes eclipsed by the Aristotelian conception that perfection requires that God be impassible, contemporary theologians are affirming that the Creator also suffers.
In Mahayana Buddhism, the compassion of Shakyamuni and the commiseration of the bodhisattvas for human suffering stems from the heart of the cosmic Buddha who is the Father of all humanity.
For Father Moon, to know God means to experience God’s painful and grieving heart: broken at the Fall, sorrowful that His children continue to live in darkness, tortured by the power and arrogance of evil that holds His children in thrall, and agonized at the thorny path that His saints must walk as they strive to fulfill the providence and attain liberation.
By attaining such knowledge, we can become compassionate ourselves and persevere in the struggle to liberate humanity.
Sun Myung Moon
God’s Grief over the Human Fall and Humankind’s Sinful Condition
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him to His heart. Genesis 6.5-6
And it came to pass that the God of heaven all the workmanship of My hands; therefore looked upon the residue of His people, and He should not seeing these shall wept; and Enoch bore record of it, saying, “How suffer?” is it that and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains?” And Enoch said unto the Lord, How is it that you can weep, seeing you are holy, and from all eternity to all eternity?”…
The Lord said unto Enoch, “Behold these your brethren; they are and I gave to them their knowledge… and commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose Me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood; and the fire of My indignation is kindled against them; and in My hot displeasure will I send in the floods Genesis 6.5-6 upon them… misery shall be their doom; and the whole heavens shall weep over them, even all the workmanship of my hands therefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these shall suffer?
Pearl of Great Price, Moses 7.28-37 (Latter-Day Saints)
Abu Dharr reported God’s Messenger as saying, “I see what you do not see and I hear what you do not hear; heaven has groaned, and it has a right to groan.” Hadith of Ahmad, Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah (Islam)
Whatever kind of regret I, Tsukihi [God], may have borne, until now I have overlooked it and kept still patiently… Never think of this regret as slight! It is the result of the regret that has been accumulated and piled up. All people of the whole world are My children. Although I single-heartedly love them, unaware of this, each and every one of them equally is thinking only of dust. Think of the regret of God over these dusty minds! It is far beyond the expression of My words.29 Ofudesaki 17.64-70 (Tenrikyo)
Abuk, mother of Deng, Leave your home in the sky and come to work in our homes, Make our country to become clean like the original home of Deng, Come make our country as one: the country of Akwol Is not as one, either by night or by day, The child called Deng, his face has become sad, The children of Akwol have bewildered their Chief’s mind.30 Dinka Song (African Traditional Religions)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
God’s heart, was torn asunder and broken with indescribable grief and tears the moment Adam and Eve fell. (7:292, October 11, 1959)
Love is endless. Had God not established the principle of love, He would be alone. Dwelling by Himself, He would be unable to experience joy, anger, sorrow or happiness.
Although God’s love is absolute, once God lost His partners of love, He unexpectedly found Himself in an absolutely miserable and grim situation, such as no one in history has ever experienced. No one can comfort Him over this, ever. (204:101, July 1, 1990)
If Adam and Eve had not fallen, God their Creator, would have been their eternal Lord. But due to the Fall, Satan became their lord.
The Fall made this outcome unavoidable. Suppose a girl of noble birth, raised within the walls of her house, is raped by a gangster; to whom does she belong? She belongs to him. The same principle applies.
Adam was to have been the king of heaven and Eve his queen. To restore these original positions requires following the principle of creation. From the beginning of creation God laid down the law of eternal love to be fulfilled by Adam and Eve, so it has to be observed.
Were God to disregard this law, it would be tantamount to destroying the law of Heaven. God set up this heavenly law. If He were to negate it, that would be tantamount to negating humankind and to negating Himself as the absolute Creator.
That is why God had no alternative but to bring order through a course of re-creation. Who has known its long and painful history? (207:272, November 11, 1990)
How grieved was God that His enemy deprived Him of His throne! Unable to become the glorious God, He became the long-suffering and sorrowful God.
Although He is rightfully the King of His kingdom and the King of the universe, God has been mistreated as if He were dead. His enemy robbed Him of His ideal and violated His beloved children. The planet Earth has fully become His enemy’s plaything. (105:199, October 21, 1979)
Sun Myung Moon
Why is God’s heart full of grief?
It is because of Satan. It is because human beings planted Satan’s blood and flesh through partaking of his false love. It is because they sowed the Devil’s seeds, which propagated as the Devil’s families.
God wished to rejoice, singing, “May my families live with true love for ten thousand years under Heaven’s dominion!” However, with the appearance of the Devil’s families multiplying throughout the world, God’s dreams were shattered. (214:282, February 3, 1991)
Can you imagine how much it breaks God’s heart to observe human misery every hour of every day? What happened to God’s dignity when His sons and daughters, whom He intended to glorify as princes and princesses, became cripples, fell into a pit filled with dung and were stuck upside-down in hell?
What became of the dignity of the omniscient and omnipotent God, of the absolute God? Can He show His face? (218:240, August 19, 1991)
As long as human beings live in despair, God also lives in despair. As long as Satan shackles human beings on earth, the world of darkness under his dominion will also remain in the spirit world. (2:246, June 9, 1957)
God’s Painful Struggle to Save Humankind
When man is sore troubled, the Shekhinah says, “How heavy is My head, how heavy is My arm.” If God suffers so for the blood of the wicked, how much more for the blood of the righteous. Mishnah, Sanhedrin 6.5 (Judaism)
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Matthew 23.37
“In all their afflictions He was afflicted” (Isaiah 63.9). So God said to Moses, “Do you not notice that I dwell in distress when the Israelites dwell in distress? Know from the place whence I speak with you, from the midst of thorns [the Burning Bush], it is as if I stand in their distresses.” Exodus Rabbah (Judaism)
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son. The more I called them, the more they went from Me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and burning incense to idols. Yet it was I that taught Ephraim to walk, I took him up in My arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of compassion, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them. Hosea 11.1-4
The Enlightened One, because He saw mankind drowning in the great sea of birth, death and sorrow, and longed to save them, for this was moved to pity. Because He saw the men of the world straying in false paths, and none to guide them, for this He was moved to pity. Because He saw that they lay wallowing in the mire of the Five Lusts, in dissolute abandonment, for this He was moved to pity.
Because He saw them still fettered to their wealth, their wives and their children, knowing not how to cast them aside, for this He was moved to pity. Because He saw them doing evil with hand, heart, and tongue, and many times receiving the bitter fruits of sin, yet ever yielding to their desires, for this He was moved to pity.
Because He saw that they slaked the thirst of the Five Lusts as it were with brackish water, for this He was moved to pity. Because He saw that though they longed for happiness, they made for themselves no karma of happiness; and though they hated pain, yet willingly made for themselves a karma of pain; and though they coveted the joys of heaven, would not follow His commandments on earth, for this He was moved to pity.
Because He saw them afraid of birth, old age, and death, yet still pursuing the works that lead to birth, old age, and death, for this He was moved to pity. Because He saw them consumed by the fires of pain and sorrow, yet knowing not where to seek the still waters of samadhi, for this He was moved to pity.
Because He saw them living in an evil time, subjected to tyrannous kings and suffering many ills, yet heedlessly following after pleasure, for this He was moved to pity. Because He saw them living in a time of wars, killing and wounding one another; and knew that for the riotous hatred that had flourished in their hearts they were doomed to pay an endless retribution, for this He was moved to pity.
Because many born at the time of His incarnation had heard Him preach the Holy Law, yet could not receive it, for this He was moved to pity. Because some had great riches that they could not bear to give away, for this He was moved to pity. Because He saw the men of the world plowing their fields, sowing the seed, trafficking, huckstering, buying, and selling; and at the end winning nothing but bitterness, for this He was moved to pity.31 Upasaka Sila Sutra (Buddhism)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
Naturally, we want to protect our loved ones, even with our very life. Such is the original ideal of creation. The same is true for God, who loves His children. He became a sorrowful God who has had to invest His very life. (206:24, October 3, 1990)
I cannot count the days I spent in tears and lamentation after I came to know this world of God’s inner heart. Who could even dare to imagine that God was stricken with grief?
He created the first human ancestors as His children and tried to raise them to be His eternal object partners in true love, yet they took the path of the Human Fall.
Who could imagine God’s misery and humiliation, even as He walked His providence of salvation for tens of thousands of years? Anger exploded within Him over the injustice of it all. His heart sighed in lamentation.
God should be the Father and King of glory, but the enemy Satan stole His throne and His position as Parent. Although God is clearly alive and carrying out His providence, people say, “God is dead,” and they mock and mistreat Him.
Still, He perseveres on the path with patient endurance, waiting for the day when human beings will come to understand this truth. Because God conducts His providence on a foundation of true love—which calls us to live for the sake of others—and on the basis of eternity, He does not just annihilate the universe and begin again after seeing His children descend into the bottomless pit of the Human Fall.
With the power of His omniscience and omnipotence, He could have judged the world and Satan at once, smashing them to pieces. Though He has this power, He chose to absorb all the contempt and accusation into Himself.
He voluntarily placed Himself in a prison-like environment, because He is our Father. Ladies and gentlemen, have you spent even one day before our God, our Father, shedding tears of repentance because you empathize with Him?
How can you stand before God and still close your eyes as if to block out how He bites His tongue and endures us human beings, who inherited the lineage of the Devil and became the tools of Satan?
How can you be so insensitive to how God anxiously looks forward to the day of His liberation and release? (May 1, 2004)
When Jesus was on the cross, God had to turn away and allow His beloved Son to be killed. Who knew the wretchedness in God’s mind and heart at that moment?
The Bible does not explain it, but wasn’t there some reason why God could not intervene to prevent His Son’s death?…
Likewise, we think that God should have stood on the side of His chosen ones. Seeing them suffer persecution wherever they went—beaten, decapitated, and burned in pitch—we might ask, “Why was God not able to prevent this?”
Instead, you should think how grievously and distressed God was that He could not exercise His almighty power to save them. How can we still say that He is the Most High God? (64:222, November 12, 1972)
What kind of God is our Father? He has walked the most tragic path through the course of history. He has suffered tragedies more horrible than any human tragedy.
When God saw His children languishing in sorrow and suffering and despair, He did not say, “You deserve it.” Our Father worked to save His children pierced with sorrow by placing Himself in greater sorrow; He worked to save His children moaning in pain by going to a place of even greater pain. He did not hesitate even to go to His death to save His children who were on the verge of death. Once we understand this, how should we live?
If we see a pitiful old person on the street, bent over with age, we should think, “That is what my Father must look like as He seeks after me.”
When we see a laborer’s swollen hands, we should think, “My Father’s hands are even more torn up and swollen than his.” When we see a pitiful beggar, we should think, “This beggar is not a beggar; instead he is my Father,” and humbly bow our heads.
God’s heart is embedded even in lives that appear insignificant and wretched. We should shed tears with the understanding that each of these people is our Father, and then we should cast aside our dignity and help them. This is the only way we will come to know God. (8:345-46, February 28, 1960)
Sharing God’s Tears
My grief is beyond healing, my heart is sick within me. Hark, the cry of the daughter of my people from the length and breadth of the land: “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?” Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images, and with their foreign idols? “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”
For the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold on me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored? O that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! Jeremiah 8.18-9.1
Let not those who hope in thee be put to shame through me, O Lord God of hosts; let not those who seek thee be brought to dishonor through me, O God of Israel. For it is for thy sake that I have borne reproach, that shame has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brethren, an alien to my mother’s sons. For zeal for thy house has consumed me, and the insults of those who insult thee have fallen on me. Psalm 69.6-9
Do not pray for a thing that you lack, for your prayer will not be accepted. Rather when you wish to pray, pray for the heaviness that is in the Head of the world. For the want of the thing that you lack is [a want] in the indwelling Glory.
For man is a part of God, and the want that is in the part is in the whole, and the whole suffers the same want as the part. Therefore let your prayer be directed to the want of the whole. Pray continually for God’s glory that it may be redeemed from its exile. Israel Baal Shem Tov34 (Judaism)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
People who experience the heart of God in their lives cannot come before God without shedding tears, no matter where they are.
They know the original Will of God and struggle to become His sons and daughters. If you are among them, sharing God’s Will and desire, He will visit you and weep with you. Where are the roots of God’s grief?
They are inside us. They are inside our nation, this world and all things of creation.
We must carry on a movement to eradicate them and restore God’s joy. For us, the center of our life of faith should be to experience God’s grief. (4:60, March 2, 1958)
Is God deserving of pity?
Many people would question why the all-knowing and almighty God needs to be pitied. Still, regardless of how all-knowing and almighty He may be, nothing can relieve Him from the shock of losing His beloved children.
If there had been a way for God to find relief from that shock by Himself, He would not have had to suffer through a six-thousand-year course of history. (35:88, October 4, 1970)
God seeks people thirsting for faith and hope and burning with love, who say, “God is in shackles on account of humankind, including me; God was accused by Satan because of me; Jesus died on the cross for me; the Holy Spirit went through a bloody history of struggle on my behalf.
God, please give me the strength. I will bring rest and liberation to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.” (7:162, August 30, 1959)
God, our Parent, cannot free Himself from lamentation until all people are free from lamentation. How can any parents be comfortable while their beloved children are in misery? This explains why we should liberate God, who exists in such a state. How shall we liberate God?
Since we live in a realm beset by restrictions, which also restrict God from loving all people, we are responsible for restoring the realm of liberation where God can freely love all people. Since we were corrupted through the Fall, we must liberate God by becoming children who are victorious over the Fall. (65:100, November 13, 1972)
As long as God, the Center of the universe, is in anguish, human beings have no way to salvation. Who can lift away the suffering of God?
Only someone who experiences the depth of God’s suffering in his own life and suffers even beyond that. If God were joyful and happy, then all beings immersed in suffering could hope to find a way to happiness. But how can salvation be possible while God, the center of the universe, is suffering?
Therefore, at all cost, we must not let God remain in suffering. There is no question that the fall of God’s children, Adam and Eve, was the pinnacle of God’s suffering. God is the Father of humankind and Adam and Eve were His first children.
Their fall had a direct impact on God. The resulting separation caused God incredible pain—physically, mentally and emotionally. When they departed [from the Garden of Eden], God must have wept bitter tears.
That pain in God’s body, mind and heart was the beginning of human suffering; it has continued through history… However, Adam and Eve did not understand the seriousness of their sin.
They might have felt some anguish in their minds and hearts because the left the bosom of God their Father, but they were unable to grasp the gravity of the pain and suffering they caused God.
Ever since, God has had to relate to human beings who lack any perception of His suffering heart. For God, this is the ultimate agony. How can you possibly experience God’s heart?
By listening to a sermon like this you may feel it conceptually, but you still do not feel His sorrow down to your bones. Consider a woman who loses her parents, husband, and children, as well as all her possessions, in a tragic accident. How would she feel?
Although during her lifetime in the fallen world she could see and experience many types of evil and sin, her pain and grief at losing her entire family would be unbearable. How much more shock and grief God must have felt, being completely pure and never having experienced any sin, suffering, or crime.
Today many people commit suicide. Do you think the despair that drives people to commit suicide can be compared to God’s despair at the moment Adam and Eve fell? No one but God is truly entitled to use the word ‘suffering’… We may experience tragedies in our life, yet as time passes the pain and grief will ease.
However, God is a spiritual being. He has no concept of time. During one thousand years or even ten thousand years, the pain of the Human Fall has never left God’s mind and heart.
Nevertheless, could God not simply cast His suffering out of His heart? More than omniscient and omnipotent, God is absolute in love. (94:34-36, June 26, 1977)
How many tears have you shed for God? Have you ever sought out a way to take on suffering and toil on behalf of God’s pain and toil, even though your own limbs might be torn off?
You have not tried. In seeking to become God’s sons and daughters, you have to shed tears for the purpose of the whole. When you meet God, you should comfort Him with unending tears.
Representing the original ancestors, you should say, “Father, I am Thy son (daughter). How great was Thy sorrow upon losing me! How many times throughout history until the present day hast Thou suffered humiliation, pain and extreme hardship from my descendants!”
The almighty, all-knowing God certainly has the authority to judge the entire world and even Satan. Yet God cries out in pain, knowing that even though He is capable of bringing judgment, He cannot destroy the world He toiled to create.
Our hearts break when we think of God in this situation. God is not dwelling in a heavenly place. He stands lonely and desolate, accused by Satan, robbed of His foothold by the satanic world… How much have you wept in sympathy with God’s situation? The issue comes down to this. (51:111, November 18, 1971)
Father! Humankind knows not Thy sorrowful heart permeating the earth.
Humankind does not know Heaven’s sad tears soaking the footprints of human history; hence we are ignorant of Heaven’s endless lamentations encircling our minds and bodies.
We confess that we are descendants of rebellion who cannot establish our dignity before Heaven or be trusted by Heaven. Father, no one on earth can stop Thy tears; no one can hold and comfort Thee in Thy sorrow; no one can protect Thee on Thy path.
Therefore, the grief on this earth is Heaven’s grief permeating the earth; the sorrow on this earth is Heaven’s sorrow permeating the earth; the frustration on this earth is Heaven’s frustration permeating the earth…
When in these last days we despair, we turn towards Heaven and cry out, “O God, please help us! “Father, please have compassion on humankind!” Yet who in this age clings to Thy heart, sharing Thine anguish?
Who clings to Thy mind, weeping with Thee? If there were such a person, Thou wouldst call him Thy true son or Thy true daughter, grasping him or her as Thine object partner on earth. (6:235-36, May 24, 1959)
Sun Myung Moon