Authors
Saving all of humankind
The purpose of religion is to restore people to their original, unfallen condition, through the providence of salvation.
For this purpose, True Parents have been working both in the Unification Church and in the wider religious world. In our church, they have been raising family members with love and truth. In the wider religious world, they have been spreading the truth through interfaith initiatives.
1. What do human beings want most? If we have a certain desire, that desire should not be for the sake of ourselves. Once we have been engrafted to God, we should start anew with desires that are connected to God's desire.
We should find what God desires and go forth on the path to fulfill what He desires. As we pursue absolute value, we should pursue it not from our viewpoint, but from the viewpoint that arises in our relationship with God, the absolute Being who governs us.
Unless fallen human beings take this position, they cannot break free of their bond to the Fall. If we do not break free from that bond, however much we want to establish all the conditions of happiness, we will never be able to attain eternal happiness.
With God, we must become people who step forward more strongly than the evil ones who created the fallen environment. Unless we do so, there is no way to solve the human predicament.
All human beings are in this miserable position. Yet, God, in His compassion, has been taking responsibility for that, by carrying out the providence of salvation in every age of history and teaching people the path to salvation.
(032-094, 1970/06/28)
2. Ultimately, history has been pursuing the path of love. Because human beings began from God's love, God has purposed that human beings arrive at a world of love and unity.
However, it is the ones who guide humankind on that path who determine success or failure. I know that this is the right path in life.
Because I understand this, I confidently report to you the personal experiences of the struggles that I have carried out for this quest at the risk of my life.
When we look into the history of religion, we find that God's providence of salvation has been carried out amid the many ups and downs of human history. Because the providence of salvation will continue up until the Last Days, there needs to be a mainstream of religious practice.
Its final destination is to find the path of God's love and build the family of His love. Thereby, it is to establish the tribe of His love and then the nation of His love. (136-212, 1985/12/29)
3. This fallen world is occupied by evil. How can good people be raised in this kind of world? If the Lord who created heaven and earth exists, this must be a daunting challenge for Him.
Nurturing good people is what God has been doing as He carries out the providence of salvation on earth. God set up religions as His means of nurturing good people. Human beings have needed religions ever since the day they fell.
Even though human beings feel they still have a mind of goodness deep within them. It is because God endowed them with an original mind that can pursue religion and believe in God. God established the standard of goodness within human beings before evil arose, and this is the standard by which they can fulfill God's purpose of creation.
This means that we all have an original nature through which God's purpose of creation can be realized.
Our original nature constantly strives for God's purpose of goodness. It is innate and works naturally within us. The workings of conscience direct us in such a way that we will inevitably advance toward goodness. (016-108, 1966/01/02)
4. The purpose of religion is salvation. It is to save us from the state of conflict. Salvation means to go beyond the world of conflict into the world of peace. Since the root of the word “salvation” means “save,” we can understand that originally human beings were not meant to be in a state of conflict.
If you are admitted to the hospital, when you recover your health and are discharged you say, “I am healed.” Healing someone means restoring that person from a damaged condition to their original condition.
Accordingly, because humankind fell, we must recover our original unfallen state. What happens when we return to that position? The relationship between God and us can be formed anew. (273-213, 1995/10/29)
5. God established religions to transform the fallen people of the world, who are wild olive trees. The mission of religions and religious people is to transform those wild olive trees into true olive trees that can attain perfection. Since human beings fell away from God and became sinners, religion strives to bring us back to God.
Religion's role is to bring all humankind back to God. This is salvation. Thus far, religious people living a life of faith have been taught, “It is enough if I believe in religion and gain my salvation.”
However, the correct path for people of faith reaches farther than this; it is to save all humanity and help all people return to God.
Thus, true religious people should think, “The reason I believe in religion is to return my nation to God and return the world to God. Before I save my sons and daughters and descendants, first I will save my nation and the world.”
By doing this, once our nation receives salvation, our family will also be saved. Likewise, once the world receives salvation, our nation will also be saved. That is why a true religion seeks to save all humankind, and people of true faith return to God while striving to bring all humanity with them. (080-201, 1975/10/23)
6. Is it God's desire and hope to lift Christianity to Himself and sweep away all other religions like garbage? Those who think that way misunderstand God's view of salvation. God wants to save the entire world, not only Christianity.
Therefore, once God unites Christianity with Himself, He will strive to unite all other religions with Himself as well.
More than that, God's providence of salvation is to save not only the earth but the entire cosmos. He wants to save all the people of the past, present, and future. He wants to save all the people who once lived on earth and are now in the spirit world, even the people who went to hell.
If God is the true owner and subject partner of true love and compassion, then after uniting all religions of the world, He would go on to bring the entire world into oneness and save every single soul without fail. (209-067, 1990/11/27)
7. Religion seeks God's kingdom, the God-centered nation. In the course of history, human beings also have been seeking God's kingdom, which must be built in this world. To accomplish this, we must place God at the center.
We were born to build such a world; we are meant to live for it and die for it. If we do this, we will truly be the patriots of God's nation. Not only that, we will be filial children before the Heavenly Parent.
We should live by this teaching so that we can provide for humankind a shortcut that everyone can take to enter God's kingdom. We are pioneering the path that the world's people will universally yearn to follow. It is the path by which unity will begin. (034-346, 1970/09/20)
From individual to family salvation
True Parents declared that the fundamental unit of human society is the family, not the individual. They taught that we must establish God-centered families, and then expand the scope of salvation from the family to the whole world.
Therefore, religions, that up to now have been concerned with saving the individual, must take up the work of saving the family. This is how they can take the lead in restoring the world.
To emphasize the importance of family salvation, 40 years after the church was founded as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC), in 1994, True Parents changed the name to the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU).
8. Religions until today have served mainly the purpose of pursuing salvation for individuals. Religions have sought to go over that one hill, individual salvation, ever since the beginning of history.
However, having gone over the hill of individual salvation, we have come to the next hill, the hill of family salvation.
The Unification Church is not a church that pursues the goal of saving the individual. Religion has focused on individual salvation for 6,000 years.
However, religion's purpose should now be changed to the salvation of the family. This is the historical task that the Unification Church has undertaken and is addressing.
Until now, no religion has arisen that made family salvation its goal. Because the goal of the numerous religions that have arisen and developed in history until now was saving the individual, they could not rise to the level of establishing God's nation. They did not have the salvation of society and the nation as their goal.
Thus, the Unification Church has taken on the challenge of saving the family. No individual can go over this hill of family salvation alone. Inevitably two people must go over it together.
While a husband and wife are going over this hill together, they should have a relationship of left and right, not front and back.
This is because the Fall occurred when Eve followed the Archangel and Adam followed Eve. Therefore, a husband and wife should stand side by side with the same rank. In that way, they will be able to save each other within their mutual relationship. (031-010, 1970/04/08)
9. Until now, in the age of the church, the focus has been on saving the individual. Now, however, the providential age has begun wherein the focus is on saving the family, led by families that have received the Blessing.
When families are united with God, we will move into the providential age for saving the clan and the nation. Then, when the leaders of the clan receive the Blessing, the entire clan will be saved.
In the next age we enter, if the head of a nation receives the Blessing of the entire nation receives salvation.
The level of salvation will leap. The age of the church is passing.
The fall of two individuals, Adam and Eve, turned the family, the clan, the nation, and the world upside down. We must restore all of it.
The mind and body must become one in God, the family must become one in God, the nation must become one, and the world must become one. All must be united in God's love.
In Adam's family, everything was pulled apart when it became connected to Satan's lineage, a deviated lineage. Yet now with the emergence of True Parents, we have arrived at the age of unity when the world will move toward equality.
On the foundation of True Parents, families can come to be under the leadership of husbands and wives who have each established mind-body unity, and on the foundation of those families, the whole world can be restored.
True Parents have brought the true lineage whereby the individual's body and mind can be reconnected with God.
On that basis, a man, and a woman who have perfect unity within themselves can form a perfect union in their marriage and family life. The world that expands horizontally from these perfect families is the kingdom of heaven where God reigns. (285-167, 1997/05/01)
10. With individual salvation as their goal, existing religions have been teaching individuals what they need to do to be saved from evil. However, the religion the world needs in the future is not a religion that focuses on the individual, but one that saves the family. For this, it will need to prepare a foundation.
The new movement to save the family that must appear will have to endure and overcome all manner of trials to stand in the position that is secured within the will of heaven and publicly recognized by humankind. Both God and human beings must be united in recognizing it. Once this happens, the movement will grow and expand worldwide.
The movement for the salvation of the family will not be limited to a particular nation, Korea for instance; rather the ideal it promotes for the family will transcend any particular nation or people.
The religion that arises to engage in this kind of movement will become the religion that the world needs from this time on. (032-199, 1970/07/15)
11. It is not our purpose to work for individual salvation. We are here to set up the foundation for family salvation. Godly families are the cornerstone for building a godly society and a godly nation. That is why true families have to appear.
Beings whose nature is true unite with true others, even if they are told not to. On the other hand, no matter how much we try to unite what does not have the nature to unite, oil and water, for example, will not unite but remain separate.
Thee the more we try, the more they resist. If we become families with the essential quality that can attract other families to harmonize and unite with us, we can become their role models, and we should be able to form a tribe sharing the same essential quality.
The family that I am referring to is different from families that live according to the habitual ways they inherited from their forebears. It is different from families that conform to present-day society and its norms, and who plan their lives and take measures according to their circumstances in the world.
I am talking about becoming model families that do not conform to today's society and environment, but transcend them. (035-130, 1970/10/11)
12. Until now, people had faith in receiving salvation as individuals. Our faith must be fundamentally different from that. Its substance must be different. In other religions, people on the path of faith say, “More than what happens to the world, my nation, my tribe, even my family, what is paramount is my salvation. If need be, I would even cut off from my family rather than risk my salvation.”
On the other hand, in the Unification Church, our path should demonstrate that I exist as an individual too to save my family, which exists to save our tribe, and our tribe exists for the salvation of our people.
Our nation, likewise, does not exist for its own sake but for the salvation of the world. This should be the stance of members of the Unification Church. It is fundamentally different from that of believers in other religions.
The family is the foundation for building God's nation. Since that is our goal, we do not focus on individual salvation but rather on family salvation. In the past when people made a relationship with God, they mainly focused on their vertical position in front of God. But in this era, our relationship with God must encompass more than just our vertical position before Him. That exclusively vertical focus is limited to the individual level.
Thus far, a life of faith was limited to the individual. Now, however, after establishing that vertical aspect in your relationship with God, you must become a subject partner who substantiates the fruit of your vertical relationship of oneness in your relationships with others on the horizontal plane.
You need to build that foundation of unity both vertically and horizontally. This differs from the life of faith that other believers have been leading.
Today we in the Unification Church need to strive to stand in a position that is entirely different from the position that believers in conventional religions have sought until now. (045-061, 1971/06/13)
13. There are multitudes of people in this world, and we can divide them into men and women. Our fundamental purpose is to seek the secret that will enable man and woman to become one.
When we find it, the original family that was lost in the beginning will emerge as the fruit of history. Thus far that original family has not emerged, despite humankind's long search for it. But once that origin appears and spreads its seeds, it will become a new tree. This is the meaning of the Blessing in the Unification Church.
A wise person thinks about how to leap from the individual stage to the family stage, and then how to leap from the family stage to the tribal stage.
People who do that can save the family, and when such families are formed, they can save the tribe. In die same way, the tribe must surmount obstacles to save the people, the people must surmount obstacles to save the nation, and the nation must surmount obstacles to save the world.
In this way, the restoration of the world will be simple. We must go over seven stages, of the individual, family, tribe, people, nation, world, and cosmos. When we go beyond these seven stages and ascend to the eighth stage, we reach God's level. (031-191, 1970/05/31)
14. Jesus said, “God is my Father, and I am His only-begotten Son.” The only Son of God is the one whom God the Father loves entirely. In this way, Jesus revealed the relationship between God and himself, which applies to all human beings.
As God's only Son and the first to receive God's complete love, Jesus revealed the essence of the relationship between heaven and earth. Hence, no one understands God's love for human beings as Jesus does.
Further, Jesus called himself the Bridegroom and referred to us as his bride. To be his bride means we are all his counterparts in love. There is no relationship more intimate than that of bride and groom.
Furthermore, Jesus called us his brothers and sisters. Here he was speaking of the family that is formed by the will of God and the will of human beings together. Only Christianity has discussed this issue. We human beings long to be a part of that family. Thus, the path to forming it is the path of hope.
When a man and a woman create a family together, their family should become not only a haven for the human heart, but also a haven for heavens heart. Jesus sought for such a family, one that would be centered on God as well as on human beings, a family where husband and wife, and God would be united.
Only when God and human beings become one flesh can the ideal world be realized. (039-261, 1971/01/15)
The parent-type religion
The purpose of religion is not only to liberate humankind from suffering and evil. By recovering the original world that God created, its ultimate goal is to liberate God. God suffers in bitter grief and pain from having lost His children.
That is why True Parents offered all that they did throughout their lives to liberate God. This life-long effort was consummated on January 13, 2001, when they conducted the Enthronement Ceremony for God's Kingship. With that, God was finally liberated.
Throughout history
15. We should not believe in religion just to receive salvation as an individual. We should not believe in Islam or Christianity just to seek our salvation. We should believe in liberating God.
Muhammad wants us to love humankind and God more than ourselves. Jesus wants us to love God and humankind more than we love ourselves.
Furthermore, as True Father, I am teaching you to love humankind and God more than yourself. You must love humankind more than yourselves, and God more than humankind. This is an ironclad rule. From this perspective, religious people should set their sights on what they can do to liberate humankind and to liberate God. (210-140, 1990/12/17)
16. The course of restoration does not end with the restoration of the individual. With individuals as the seeds, we should restore the family. Then, with restored families as the seeds, we must restore the tribe.
Once we have restored a tribe, that tribe will be the base for efforts to restore the people, the nation, the world, and going further, restore the cosmos. Once we have completed all these, the liberation of God will take place.
At this point, we have not yet been able to liberate God. History has not yet reached the point where God can see the completion of His original plan, the realization of the ideal of creation on the cosmic level.
Although God did His part at the creation, we human beings failed to fulfill what God had intended for us to fulfill. That is why God has not been free. Hence, when human beings are liberated from this kind of failure, God also will be liberated for the first time.
Thus, while the mission of religion has been to liberate human beings, its goal should not end there. This is because we still have to liberate God. When God's Will for humankind is fulfilled, it will be the time of His fulfillment as well.
That will be the beginning of happiness for all humankind on earth and throughout the cosmos, with God at the center. This fundamental principle is also applicable to the nation, the tribe, the family, and the individual. (227-305, 1992/02/16)
17. No one up to now has understood the purpose of salvation. No one could define it. Yet, amid the confusion within the world, the Unification Church presents the definition of salvation. That is, the providence of salvation is the providence of restoration. The term “restoration” is a wonderful discovery.
It says that we are to return to the world before Adam and Eve committed sin, the world where they would have been able to receive God's love completely.
For this reason, God's purpose in offering salvation, the Messiah's purpose in opening the path to salvation, and our purpose in receiving salvation, are the same.
Our purpose in believing in religion is nothing other than to find the world free of sin, the original world where the first human beings lived with God. The Messiah's purpose is for us, all people of the world, to become one as brothers and sisters and together return to the world of God's love.
Further, God's purpose is to realize His ideal which all of us return to Him. So the purpose of God, the Messiah, and humankind are one. These three can and should be in unity.
This is what we are trying to achieve. We are striving to liberate God, liberate the Messiah, liberate humankind, and create a world of love where everyone will find happiness together. The Unification Church has progressed thus far based on this perspective.
That is why we in the Unification Church are striving to unite religions. All religions on earth must come into accord with each other and with the Will of God. (080-203, 1975/10/23)
18. My life has been a thorny path. The adversities and struggles that I faced on my path truly cannot be described in words. There were many times when I was on the brink of death and thought, “This is the end.” The fact that I am still alive is itself a miracle.
There was a moment in my life when I came to the profound realization that the living God is my Father.
Ever since then, I have lived every second of every minute not paying attention to anything or anyone but to God alone, with single-minded, absolute determination to accomplish the Will of my Heavenly Father.
God loves us human beings with that same kind of single-minded devotion. Reflecting on this, how small is the number of people on this earth who truly know His love? God is burning with passion to make all humanity happy and to build the kingdom of heaven here on earth.
God's original nature is true love, and the original relationship between God and human beings is the relationship of a parent and child. However, people throughout history have not only been ignorant of this; they have driven nails into His heart with their continually unfilial behavior.
I discovered that Heavenly Father is truly the Parent of all humankind. He is like a parent whose child is lost and whose broken heart is filled with bitter pain and sorrow.
Ever since I came to know the deep, aching bitterness inside of God, I made it my purpose in life to relieve His sorrow. Liberating God from that sorrow, loneliness, and anguish has been the purpose of my life to this day. (198-162, 1990/02/01)
19. Religion should connect us to the world of the heart--the world of God's heart. In this process, religion must teach us in detail that God is the most miserable being in the entire cosmos.
God is not happy in His greatness. On the contrary, God feels miserable, full of pain, bitterness, and sorrow. He is indignant about the countless situations when He was painfully mistreated. A religion must appear that teaches about God's heart in detail.
People who do not understand that God is sorrowful tend to think that God just brings judgment upon human beings. They do not know that He needs liberation as much as we human beings do.
Therefore, God is calling for the emergence of a religion that can teach the people of this era about God's heart throughout history. When a religion emerges that can teach the heart of God and connect people with His heart, it will fulfill the mission of religion in the present time and for all time to come.
And by enabling people to comfort God and even to represent His heart, this religion will certainly remain in the Last Days. (151-128, 1962/10/28)
20. Religion exists at different levels and for different purposes, those of the servant, of the adopted child, of the direct child, and, ultimately, of the parents.
The reason people have needed religion and a savior is due to the Fall. If the first human beings had not fallen, neither a savior nor religion would have been necessary.
People would have become one with God without any difficulty. They would have dwelt in the eternal love of God while they lived on this earth.
All the children and descendants of that original mother and father would have constituted the heavenly kingdom. They would have lived in the kingdom of heaven on earth and then gone to the kingdom of heaven in heaven.
Then, by what standard can we determine which is the best religion? We can do it based on the standard of the principled qualifications required for human beings to stand as God's object partners.
These qualifications are what the first human beings would have possessed had they not fallen but had remained in relationship with God, the Lord of Creation, in the state of original goodness.
We can identify four requisites: they would have related to God as His son or daughter, they would have become one body with God, they would have exercised His ability as co-creators, and they would have experienced the joy of inheriting His work of creation.
Religions can be ranked based on the extent to which they accord with these requisites. These are the criteria according to which a religion's standing can be decided. (053-296, 1972/03/04)
21. Although there are numerous religions in the world, the final religion is the religion of the parents. Religion can give us rebirth and bring us into complete oneness by the principles of God's original nature.
The Unification Church strives to carry out the mission of the parent religion. It is working to complete this mission fully. For this, it must first complete the unfulfilled missions of the servant religion, the adopted child religion, and the child religion.
The Unification Church has emerged in God's Will as the all-embracing religion, the parent religion. It is only through this religion that we human beings can achieve our hope. It brings the possibility of unity.
Because all human beings inherit an evil lineage from fallen parents, the good parents who can completely restore everything through indemnity must appear. After restoring everything, they will be able to return us to God's lineage so that we can display God's original nature.
Until this original standard is completely accomplished, people of innate perfection, whose mind and body are naturally not in conflict, will not emerge. (056-304, 1972/05/18)
22. Where must religions go? They must seek to make a bond with True Parents. The ultimate purpose of religion is to pass through the door of God's love and restore our original bond with God and our position as God's children by finding the original True Parents. Among religions, Christianity is most closely pursuing this goal.
That is why Christianity became a worldwide religion. Nevertheless, because it has not accepted the True Parents, in reality, Christianity could not become the global religion to lead the world into a global culture in the Last Days. Worse, in its midst, an ideology emerged declaring that God does not exist.
We Unification Church members strive to fulfill our responsibility by becoming original men and women centered on God's love, and by linking people, who have been lost, to True Parents.
Unless we do this, no matter how much people claim that they have unified the world, it will not be unified in the true sense.
Our religion needs to bring people to the original man from before the Fall, who is centered on the love of God. We need to center on that man who is connected to God's inner heart and support his marriage with a woman with whom God can share joy.
This is what we must do to complete the work to inaugurate the True Parents on this earth. Unless we become such a religion, we will not be able to unite all the religions in the world. Nor will we be able to unite all humankind. (022-010, 1969/01/01)
23. The Old Testament Age was the age for making material offerings. The New Testament Age was the age of offering beloved sons and daughters. In other words, the Old Testament Age prepared the way for sons and daughters to live based on material offerings, while the New Testament Age sacrificed those sons and daughters to prepare the way for the Lord at the Second Advent. The reason True Parents have been following a path of sacrifice in their historical course is to serve and attend God in the world.
For the first time, I have revealed that these are the paths that religions must go in the course of the providence of salvation.
That is, on the path that religions have trod, there are religions at the level of the servant, the adopted child, the stepchild, and the legitimate child. On these foundations, the religion of the parents has arrived and is advancing toward the peaceful kingdom of heaven.
(206-098, 1990/10/03)
Sun Myung Moon