How can I get closer to God?

The Divine Principle teaches that every human being was created to live in direct heart-to-heart relationship with God as a beloved child — a bond the Fall severed, leaving a spiritual wall between humanity and the Creator.

Drawing closer to God, in Unification theology, is therefore not a matter of technique but of restoring an original position that was lost: the parent–child relationship must be rebuilt through sincere devotion (jeongseong), prayer, and a life of true love invested in others rather than in oneself. No single ritual bridges the gap by itself; closeness to God is built day by day, through the direction in which a person pours their heart.

This understanding runs through the arc of the Exposition of the Divine Principle — creation, Fall, and restoration — and through Rev. Sun Myung Moon's teaching on true love, filial heart, and the life of devotion.

Divine Principle Basis

The Exposition of the Divine Principle treats the question of closeness to God as inseparable from three theological frames that must be taken together.

First, the Principle of Creation establishes that humans were designed to stand in direct give-and-take relationship with God — as sons and daughters whose hearts would resonate with His. God's original purpose for Adam and Eve was to reach maturity within His love, marry, form a God-centered family, and exercise dominion over creation. In that unfallen state, closeness to God would have been the natural condition of human life, not a spiritual achievement.

Second, the Principle of the Human Fall describes how this original position was lost. Through the misuse of love before maturity, humanity's first ancestors inherited a lineage disconnected from God and transmitted that broken condition to all their descendants. Rev. Moon repeatedly describes this as a series of “walls” — individual, family, tribal, national, worldwide, and cosmic — standing between the fallen human being and the Heavenly Parent.

Third, the Principle of Restoration frames the path back. Because the original position was lost through an inherited condition and not merely through personal sin, closeness cannot be restored by pardon alone; it requires re-creation — working through conditions of devotion and indemnity that reverse what was lost.

This is why the tradition speaks of “drawing closer to God” less as a single moment of conversion and more as a lifelong process of rebuilding the original relationship.

Key Concepts

Shimjeong (heart) — The impulse to seek joy by loving, which the Divine Principle treats as the innermost core of God's nature and the deepest link between God and human beings.

Jeongseong (devotion) — Sustained, heartfelt effort offered to Heaven through prayer, service, and daily discipline; the practical substance of a closer relationship with God.

True Love — Love that gives without expecting return and keeps giving even after forgetting what was given; in Unification teaching, the love that draws God's presence into a human life.

Restoration through indemnity — The process by which fallen humanity recovers the original relationship with God by walking a reverse path — making conditions that undo what was lost at the Fall.

The Everyday Picture

Rev. Moon often compared the life of devotion to lowering an anchor rope from Heaven. Just as a ship cannot climb into the sky on its own, so a fallen human being cannot simply reach upward and grasp God — but devotion, offered patiently day after day, allows Heaven to drop a rope down into the ordinary circumstances of a person's life.

As he put it in a 1987 sermon (169-223, October 31, 1987), continued effort thickens the rope into a ladder, and further effort turns the ladder into a mountain wide enough for others to climb.

The image reframes “getting closer to God” as less a matter of emotional intensity and more a matter of persistence over time — the slow accumulation of effort that builds the bridge God cannot build alone. The full quote appears in Deeper Context below.

Deeper Context

A recurring theme across Rev. Moon's sermons is that the most fundamental obstacle to closeness with God is not God's distance but the residue of the fallen self. “

After the first ancestors fell, countless walls were built — individual, family, tribal, national, global, and cosmic. Those seven-stage walls block your path.

How can they be torn down?

The foundation on which those walls stand is the body” (239-261, December 6, 1992). Closeness with God, on this view, begins with a sustained reversal of the body's self-centered direction toward a life lived for others.

True love begins the moment you invest your life and then forget it. That is where God dwells. That is parental love — investing and forgetting, investing and forgetting. Since the Fall, God has continued in exactly this way. He will continue until all humanity is saved.

— Sun Myung Moon (337-077, 10/22/2000)
Cham Bumo Gyeong

This passage explains why Unification thought treats self-giving love, rather than religious feeling, as the primary condition for God's indwelling.

Where there is true love — love given and forgotten — God is present; closeness is an effect of that posture, not a goal pursued for its own sake.

Devotion lowers Heaven's anchor rope into a place where there is none. Link stitch by stitch until the rope reaches down. When devotion is offered, the rope descends, and on it you can climb freely to the heavenly country. Without it, you cannot ascend. So you must offer devotion and secure the rope. Once secured, you can climb on it as much as you wish. Then the door of prayer opens, and as you continue, the rope broadens horizontally — it becomes a ladder. With still more devotion, the ladder becomes a mountain, and from that high peak you meet Heaven and connect.

— Sun Myung Moon (169-223, 10/31/1987)
Cham Bumo Gyeong

This is the theological grammar behind the Everyday Picture above. Jeongseong is described not as a private spiritual mood but as a cumulative, measurable effort that alters the structure of the relationship between earth and Heaven.

Prayer, in this framework, is active struggle rather than passive requesting. “When I pray, I grip the top of this world and wrestle it; within five minutes I am sweating. It is the highest kind of fight” (212-039, January 1, 1991).

Prayer here is closer to Jacob's wrestling than to quiet meditation — an engagement with God in which the believer's own conviction is part of what allows the answer to come.

When you pray, do not keep doubting, "Will God really listen?" Believe and say, "It will be done!" — and it will be. Even if ten years or a hundred years pass, if you say you will keep rising and never go down, God will always help you. God is not trying to accomplish a purpose that can be finished in a few years; His purpose extends across countless generations. Hold to that purpose with unchanging conviction, and you will be the kind of person God desires.

— Sun Myung Moon (066-213, 05/07/1973)
Cham Bumo Gyeong

This quote makes explicit what devotion assumes: that closeness to God unfolds on God's timescale, not ours. Patience is not a secondary virtue in this tradition; it is structurally required, because restoration spans generations.

The path is further described in terms of expanding circles of love. Rev. Moon summarizes it as the progression hyo-ja → chungshin → seong-in → seong-ja — the filial son who loves his parents becomes the loyal subject who loves his country, who becomes the sage who loves the world, who becomes the saint who loves God (206-176, October 7, 1990).

In this scheme, getting closer to God is inseparable from growing the scope of one's love outward. One does not ascend to God directly over the heads of family, nation, and humanity; one reaches God through them.

"A true saint, a son or daughter of God, is one who lives for everything that belongs to God just as they live for God Himself" (133-243, July 19, 1984).

Finally, Unification theology treats the conscience as the nearest point of contact with God within the self. Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon has taught that conscience is itself a second Heavenly Parent — the inner presence that makes closeness possible from within.

How can we become one with Heavenly Parent? Because the first ancestors fell, humanity descended into ignorance and the original nature of creation was hidden. The walls of ignorance have grown thick over six thousand years. Human strength alone cannot cross them. But the Heavenly Parent, the substance of love, is always ready to help us. Everything depends on ourselves. We must awaken the conscience. Conscience is the second Heavenly Parent. If we live a life of prayer and gratitude in spirit and truth, we will hear Heavenly Parent's voice and feel Him like a tremor.

— Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon (08/12/2014)
Cham Bumo Gyeong

This is perhaps the most compact summary in the tradition of how an individual closes the distance: by waking the conscience, offering constant gratitude, and letting the Heavenly Parent's presence register inwardly as an almost physical recognition.

Comparative Religion

Christianity — Christian traditions converge on the idea that closeness to God is restored by grace through Christ, while cultivated through prayer, scripture, sacraments, and charity.

Augustine, in his Confessions, frames the human heart as restless “until it rests in Thee” — naming an existential homesickness for God that parallels the Unification claim that the Fall left a wound only relationship can heal. Eastern Orthodox theology speaks of theosis, the gradual participation in the divine nature through prayer and the virtues, which resonates with the Divine Principle's picture of restoration as re-creation rather than mere pardon.

Judaism — Jewish tradition emphasizes teshuvah (return or repentance) and the life of mitzvot (commandments) as the texture of closeness to God. The Hebrew prophets repeatedly call Israel to draw near through justice, faithful covenant, and mercy (Micah 6:8; Hosea 6:6).

Hasidic thought treats devekut — cleaving to God — as achievable through joyful devotion in ordinary work and relationships.

Islam — Islam teaches that God is nearer to a person than their jugular vein (Qur'an 50:16) and that the path of closeness (qurb) is walked through the five pillars, especially salat (ritual prayer) and dhikr (remembrance of God).

Al-Ghazali, in Ihya Ulum al-Din (“The Revival of the Religious Sciences”), develops a detailed discipline of purifying the heart from the vices that veil it from God — an emphasis on inner work that runs parallel to the Unification concept of jeongseong.

Buddhism — Buddhist traditions do not share the Abrahamic picture of a personal Creator, so “closeness to God” does not map onto them directly. However, Mahāyāna traditions teach that cultivating bodhicitta — the aspiration to benefit all beings — and practicing the pāramitās (generosity, morality, patience, effort, meditation, wisdom) gradually uncovers the original nature obscured by ignorance.

The functional parallel with Unification thought is the shared premise that an original condition exists, that it has been obscured, and that sustained compassionate practice uncovers it.

What these traditions share with Unification theology is the conviction that an original relationship or condition has been lost or obscured, and that it must be restored through sustained inner and outer work — not recovered by wish or claimed by right.

What distinguishes the Unification account is its emphasis on the lost position specifically — the Fall as a displacement from the status of God's child — and on the restoration of that position through the life and lineage of True Parents, who open the path so that their descendants can walk it.

Key Takeaway

• In Unification theology, closeness to God begins with recognizing that the Fall displaced humanity from its original position as God's children, leaving walls that must be dismantled, not merely climbed over.
• In plain terms, getting closer to God is a slow, patient process of pointing your daily life — your work, your relationships, your attention — away from yourself and toward Him and others.
• The core practices are devotion (jeongseong), sincere prayer, and a life of true love that invests in others and then forgets what was given.
• The path moves outward in expanding circles — filial son, loyal citizen, sage, saint — because one does not reach God by bypassing family, nation, and humanity but by loving through them.
• Conscience, cultivated by gratitude and spiritual discipline, is described as the “second Heavenly Parent” — the nearest point of contact with God already inside each person.

Related Questions

Why do I need indemnity to restore my relationship with God?

The Divine Principle teaches that the Fall created an inherited disconnection from God that pardon alone cannot reverse; restoration requires making conditions that undo the original loss. Indemnity is the principled path by which a person walks back what was walked away from.

What role does prayer play in the Unification tradition?

Prayer in Unification teaching is less a request and more a sustained engagement — a way of offering devotion, aligning with God's heart, and cooperating with spiritual work that ripens across generations. Rev. Moon described it as the highest kind of wrestling.

Why is living for others central to closeness with God?

Because the Divine Principle identifies self-centered love as the structure of the Fall itself, reversing that direction — living for others — is the practical substance of drawing near to God. True love, offered without return and then forgotten, is the condition under which God dwells in a human life.

In Their Own Words

The filial son becomes the loyal subject; the loyal subject becomes the sage; the sage becomes the saint. All of these have love as their core. Only a husband and wife who truly love each other can become filial children; filial children become loyal subjects; loyal subjects become sages; sages become saints. And the saint inherits everything.

— Sun Myung Moon (206-176, 10/07/1990)
Cham Bumo Gyeong

The progression here is not a sequence of titles but a single motion: love, expanded step by step, becomes the form in which a person stands in God's presence.

Closeness to God, in Rev. Moon's teaching, is measured by how wide one's love has grown.

After Adam's fall countless walls were built, but True Parents have come and opened roads free of walls, centered on love, between the heavenly world and the earthly world. Whether to go or not is up to you. Through True Parents a highway has been made in every heart. To travel the highway, you must drive your own car. Through True Parents the walls that blocked the heart and the spiritual and physical worlds have come down, and the water of a great pipe can now flow into every home unhindered.

— Sun Myung Moon (169-125, 10/29/1987)
Cham Bumo Gyeong

This passage completes the picture: True Parents are described as having removed the structural barriers raised by the Fall, but travel on the opened road remains each person's own responsibility.

Closeness to God, in the Unification view, is neither earned alone nor given automatically — it is a road now open that each person must choose to walk.