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Belvedere
There are a great many religions on the earth, and the Unification Church is one of them. However, we are unique among them. Let us compare ourselves with traditional Christianity.
Many Christians believe that simply by having faith, they will receive salvation.
What kind of belief are we talking about when we say we believe in Jesus or God?
There are different kinds or levels of faith and belief.
Furthermore, there are significant differences between the faith of educated people and uneducated people. Learned people are not necessarily faithful people.
As you know, many scientists have been unable to be good Christians because of their rigidly analytical and skeptical natures.
Furthermore, people who are strong and full of determination will display more faith, while those who are weak-willed will not have such faith. If a certain person is strong-willed and confident, he will have the confidence that he can go anywhere and assert his thinking and even dominate others.
On the other hand, there are passive people who are more often controlled by the thoughts and opinions of others. There is a false concept among many people that only the weaker people in the world turn to God and have faith in Him, while the stronger and more confident people do not believe in or need God.
Does God have some kind of religion, or some sort of life of faith?
What is God's denomination?
Does God worship Jesus, or does He go to the Buddhist temple?
Does he follow Confucianism? We could say about God's faith that His faith is to hope for the best, to look forward to the fulfillment of His great vision.
What would be the center of that faith and the ideal of God?
True love is at the center. Can God feel the same kind of stimulation of love as men and women feel when they become partners in the give and take of love?
Although we know through the Divine Principle that God contains within Himself the dual essentialities of masculine and feminine, we also know that God is the universal subject and, as such, has a primarily positive nature.
Can God just be alone and stationary and feel the stimulation of love?
There is a normal body temperature for people—36.7 degrees Centigrade. If you feel your pulse, you will discover that you have approximately 72-80 beats per minute.
Although your heart is constantly pumping, how many times during the day do you stop and say, “I feel my heart working now”? Both our temperatures and our heartbeats are things that we are not normally aware of.
However, when you touch the hand of another person, you immediately recognize such things as whether that person's hand is warm or cool.
At that point, you compare your temperature with another's. Your body temperature is your standard of reference by which you automatically measure the temperature of others.
Every day, we unconsciously evaluate things, whether they are good or bad; usually, we are measuring that goodness or badness according to ourselves, our standards.
If we see something higher or better than ourselves, we say, “That is excellent.” If something is lower, then we say, “That is bad.” Thus, when God says, “It is excellent,” is He also applying this standard? Is he saying something is better than He? What do you think?
You probably never thought about that. Would God say, “It is excellent,” without really thinking about it? Would God look at His almighty power and exclaim, “I'm powerful! That is good!”
God created the entire universe, as well as mankind, so He possesses incredible wisdom and knowledge, besides simply power. Will he say, “Look at how smart and great I am!”?
What I am illustrating is the simple point that to evaluate something, or oneself, there must be at least two points of reference. There must be some reciprocal relationship or something with which to compare oneself.
Even though God is certainly almighty, without someone to appreciate His power, He cannot feel proud of that power.
If there were some earthly king who had no people in his kingdom yet claimed, “I have great power,” he would be a foolish king because nobody else could recognize his power.
Likewise, no matter how much power someone might have, even God, if He is all alone, that power will not have any true value.
When God created mankind, He first created Adam. At that point He didn't say, “It is excellent.” It was only after He had finished creating the woman that He said, “It is excellent.”
The first time throughout the entire six days of creation that God described something as “excellent” was after the completion of both Adam and Eve. This shows that within God's concept of creation, there is a need for a reciprocal relationship.
Only with the circuit of give and take can God be presented with the ultimate fulfillment of His ideal.
When you look at the world from this perspective, you can see many excellent phenomena. Look at yourself. Imagine that instead of having two lips, you only had one lower lip. Suppose that nobody had upper lips. No matter how eloquently you might speak, nobody could say, “It was excellent!”
Imagine having only one ear; you couldn't say that is excellent. But having two ears is excellent. Having only one nostril in your nose would be hideous, but since you have two nostrils, it is excellent!
Men and women walking side by side and sharing a reciprocal relationship are looked at by God, who says, “Behold! It is excellent.” There is harmony between the laughter of men and women. One is deep and bass, and the other is high and soprano, and when they come together. It is excellent.
Music itself is nothing apart from the harmony of sounds. There are high sounds coming together with deep bass sounds, blending and creating the harmony of music. High and low sounds, plus strong and weak sounds, coming together create harmony in music. Raise your hands if you like rainy days.
Generally speaking, most people do not prefer the feeling of a rainy day because it dampens one's feelings. On the other hand, imagine if we experienced day after day nothing but bright sunshine. That would become very monotonous.
From the point of view of harmony in weather, the changes between rainy days, sunny days, stormy days, mild days, and so forth are the source of excitement, greater interest, and beauty in life. After several days of rain, seeing sunshine in the morning instantly brightens up one's spirit, and we feel gratitude for the sun.
God has the dual essentialities, but His positive character is the subject. If we say the word “subject,” we denote the necessity of the word “object.” No matter how omnipotent God is, He is in the position of a subject needing an object.
Only when He accomplishes that can He say, “It is excellent.” When God uttered those words in the Garden of Eden, was it for the sake of Adam, Eve, or for His own sake?
There are four different possibilities: Adam, Eve, God, or all three. What is the definition of “excellent”? It would have to be something that would satisfy everybody's needs—Adam's, Eve's, as well as God's.
Logically, God says, “It is excellent,” not just for the sake of any one of the beings, but only because some common goal is fulfilled for everyone. That fulfillment is nothing apart from love.
Why is love the center of goodness?
It is because once love is put into motion, everybody will follow that motion. God will follow that, and so will Adam and Eve. Can you lock yourself in a closet and say, “I have love. It is in here.”
Are there all different kinds of love?
Men pursue women and women pursue men, but they are not actually pursuing each other; they are seeking love. After God completes the creation of Adam and Eve, He said, “It is excellent.”
Was God looking at something external about Adam and Eve?
No, He was looking at the love within them and saying, “It is excellent.”
Men and women are wholly unique kinds of people. Young boys often behave wildly and run around doing all kinds of things, while girls usually prefer to play more placidly.
Actually, each extreme envies the other. Boys play outside and get themselves filthy; when they come home and look at their sisters, sitting and playing and looking very clean, the boys sense that such a character is something they miss.
On the other hand, when a girl considers the dirty, masculine hands of a boy, compared to her own smaller and cleaner ones, she will envy and desire such a different kind of hand. Therefore, each misses the qualities of the other and starts to desire and admire the other.
God planned to bring together man and woman from those two extremes and let them meet in the center. One day at the breakfast table, someone said, “Father, you spoke very harshly of women on January 1. You seem to be saying that men and women are innately unequal.
How could you say that?”
My response was to say that if the subject and object were absolutely identical, one could be the other and vice versa. But man naturally seeks to reach out, to go outward, while the woman naturally seeks her home, to go inside. They are two differently built characters. Women are more responsive, and man is more aggressive and prone to taking the initiative.
The height, weight, strength, and even the voice are different between men and women. How can the two be absolutely equal or the same? Why am I criticized then? I am just trying to speak the truth.
However, there is one way in which men and women are equal, under the realm of love. In love, there is true equality. Many women try to gain their rights by demanding them from society. They say, “We want to be able to do anything and everything that men do in society.”
However, it is more effective to claim your equality of love. Which would you prefer—equality of love or equality of working rights? Now you understand that Reverend Moon is not anti-woman; in fact, I am the most pro-woman person.
As soon as God saw the center of love of men and women in His creation, He uttered His statement, “It is excellent.” The contents of that goodness were centered upon love.
God is love, so why did He have to create human beings?
It is because love can only be fulfilled through the stimulation of an object. There is nothing more stimulating than love—every cell, every hair on your head is stimulated by love.
The power of love can expand without limit or can become as small as you want. When you encounter true love and you try to express your joy, you can't fully express it.
True love is so deep, so profound, and so huge you can't begin to measure it. As soon as that love leaves you, you feel dark, downcast, and distressed.
When love comes toward you, everything inside of you is lit up—your eyes are bright, and all your senses and your body are lit up. At the same time, when love goes away from you, even though you open your eyes, ears, and mouth, nothing seems to be functioning properly. Everything feels closed within you.
Do you think I am speaking the truth?
The love of God is like electricity—it comes upon you and lights you up. It gives you light and heat. You may not realize the strength of that light until you turn off that switch; then you will feel the darkness.
Once you turn on the switch again, the brightness clearly shows the difference between that and the darkness. When electrical current rushes through a wire and lights up a bulb, it makes such a powerful impact. It is like Niagara Falls, crashing downward and splashing up.
Thus, we can understand why God created both night and day, not just daytime. If the sun were always in the position of noon, wouldn't people become bored?
Think about all the glorious poems written about the morning time—if there were no variation in the sun's position, then there would not be any morning.
Our universe is designed to give continuous stimulation to human beings. That stimulation comes through harmony and the interplay of differences.
For whom were women born?
Were you born for yourselves? No, you were born for men. What about men? Are you too “dignified” to say you were born for women? Actually, you were born for each other, but only because of love; you were actually born for love.
Can you accept that without hurting your dignity?
Everyone was born for the purpose of fulfilling love. No matter who we are, no matter how old or young, all human beings are living in the pursuit of love.
For whom does God exist, then?
Since God is the universal Subject, He needs an object. Who is that object, the monkey? Monkeys love their children so much! When the baby monkey has some lice biting him, the mother monkey picks them out and eats them.
What about you? Would you eat lice off your child's body? No?
Is your love for your child inferior to the monkeys'?
No, you can say that the love of a monkey is different from the love of people. Monkeys are simply animals; they mate any time they want and have no ethics or procedures to their love. However, humans have certain ethics and morals.
Within the animal world, the male deer, the buck, is normally very aggressive and warlike. When one buck wins over the others, he gains the right to the whole herd of females. The females have no choice but to submit to that male. I think that the Western tradition of dueling between two men for a woman is similar to this.
The woman just has to wait for the outcome; whoever wins the duel wins the right to her!
Strength and power are the determining factors of the animal world, but this should not be the case in the world of human beings. Because of morality, a weaker person can be respected due to other character qualities.
Thus, the love of humans is more elevated than that of animals; it is ultimately centered upon God. Animals, on the other hand, have no thought of God when they are mating. Humans do think of God when they make total oneness in love.
Since God has both male and female characteristics, when men and women come together in love, they are presenting the total image of God. Within that “love bag,” there is always room for two men and a woman.
When men and women come together in total unity, they become a unit of minus to God, who is the big plus. There is give and take between the plus and minus.
Should Adam and Eve, inside their “love bag,” just look at each other, or should they look together toward God?
Yes, together the two of them look up at God. That is the reason we teach in our church that before you love your spouse, you must love God first.
This is why you are sometimes called upon to go out from your happy homes. Occasionally, I might ask the wives to go out and work on the front line.
How can we do such a thing?
Only because the love of God comes first, before our spouses or anyone. We have this kind of spirit in the Unification Church.
If your husband complains and says, “Don't go! Stay here and take care of me!” you will say, “No! I have a mandate! I love God more than I love you!” You should be able to say that to each other.
You must realize that to survive and truly prosper, you must bring God into your life. If God declares an emergency, you must participate fully in that emergency.
Why do men and women need each other?
It is not for their mutual satisfaction primarily; they need each other to be able to resemble God in their unity.
Together they exist in the total image of God, and that is the reason they need each other. Therefore, we can understand why love affairs between people of the same sex are not healthy.
What if this room were full of homosexuals and lesbians?
Even though they might not like it, they would have to admit that what I am saying is truthful. They would not be able to hold up their heads proudly before this truth. They have simply not yet learned why God created men and women in the first place. They do not understand the duty and responsibility of men and women and that we are not here simply for our mutual satisfaction but for the primary purpose of pleasing God. We must reflect His perfect image.
All people need to have the absolute love of God. To be able to receive that love, you must create your foundation. Only with perfected men and women together can that be done. Let us compare men and women with wires that conduct electricity.
Although one may be like a gold wire, with perfect conductivity, and the other like a copper wire with less conductivity, they can still share the electricity equally as long as the current is running.
Therefore, if someone exclaims, “I am a gold wire, and I would rather not be connected to anyone else but another gold wire,” then he will be extinguished in the presence of a copper wire.
One's first love is very critical. Your first contact with love should be done with great care because that meeting is like 100% gold wires connecting. A person's first love is one of 100% conductance; it doesn't matter whether the beloved is Black. white or yellow.
Once you come into contact with each other, you make a spark of great power. Therefore, first love should be experienced cautiously.
Intense first love, done in a rightful and honorable way, comes together and creates a beautiful and powerful spark. The love of God will spark with that love, and it becomes the best, most extraordinary spark in Heaven.
The impact of that spark is so strong that it flattens you to the ground. Yet still you feel joyful, even knocked out on the ground, because of the impact of love.
When you are in a thunderstorm, with its lightning and thunder, you can look at the skies and say, “Oh, God is in love!” God's love could be manifested in the form of a thunderstorm, the clashing of the sparks of universal love in the sky.
After a very sunny, hot day, it is common that a rainy, cloudy day will come soon because intense hot weather brings moisture.
The most intense age for a man and woman for love to spark between them is in their teens. At the peak of the teen years, a boy and a girl can meet and find their fulfillment by matching with their “other half.”
Once love joins two people together, the man actually occupies the woman's area and the woman occupies the man's area—they swap places, in a way.
The woman goes into the man's area to meet with him; the man goes into the woman's area to meet with her. This motion creates a circling action.
When a man and woman are separate, they cannot make this circling motion of love; they must be a part of a pair to create it. Their movement actually creates a spiral.
During their teen years, men and women are supposed to meet with true love at their center. Thus, by meeting at that center, you are also meeting with God.
This is the reason teenagers are such poets, artists, and musicians—they are attached to that true love center of their lives. They are in an “activated” state, with their antennae being wide open to the world.
Their perceptions are very sharp. A young man in his teen years will feel that he cannot experience the world fully by himself; he is inevitably drawn to a young woman, and vice versa.
When the two people come together in the clash of love, they become like a new antenna together, with new perceptions. This is why teenagers have to be so careful with their love; it is effortless for boys and girls to make a mistake at that time, with such strong emotional urges.
Love should be consummated only with the approval of the parents, the nation, the universe, and the approval of God. No one's love is just a private experience. It is always a public thing, coming from the very center of the universe—God.
It is passed on through the world, nation, society, and then to the family and the individual. It comes to the individual as a public item, so you should know how to be a proper custodian of this love. Love has to be publicly and righteously handled.
However, America today has become a place where love is mishandled and degraded; it has become a place where love is tossed into the trash can, and then people try to gain nourishment from that trash can love.
Who created this trash can of love? Satan did.
The first spark of true love is so important, and it should not be misused. Once that intense first spark is misused, it is impossible to completely unwind that mistake.
Each person has the duty to preserve their pure first love until the time when it can spark for the sake of the universe and for God.
Therefore, you cannot behave casually toward your love; that is the way an animal behaves. Love is noble and sacred; it is not vulgar or dirty, although the sacredness of love can be defiled into dirty love.
Why is it that your love can only come after your blessing?
It is because God, through the blessing of the True Parents, bestows His blessing upon you, which makes your love authentic, justified, and public. It becomes God's sacred love at that time because through your blessing, your love is linked up with God through the world, the nation, the society, and the family.
This connection is authentic, and your individual love is no longer isolated.
Anybody who tries to deny this and claim, “Love is just my private affair,” is wrong.
Can you say that you created that person whom you love or that he or she is your “private property?”
Did you create your own love? You cannot claim even your love as your private property. Do you think that I am speaking falsehood? If you do, please come forward and explain how I am wrong. There is no greater logic than this. Love is sacred.
Occasionally, a man will come home with a heavy heart, frustrated from his day. His wife should be there to lighten his heart with a smile.
Likewise, when the husband finds that his wife is unhappy and discouraged for some reason, he should become like sunshine to her to help her out. This is the function of our art, songs, and even our humor—to bring brightness into our lives.
Although I have been speaking about important things, I haven't yet come near to the topic of today's sermon!
People often deny God because they say that an omnipotent, almighty God who would have created a world like this would have to be very foolish, indeed. They cannot believe that an almighty God would have created such a dirty, corrupt world. Because of this, they cannot believe that God exists.
You should be aware of this fact. By listening to my sermons, you will be able to give your Divine Principle lectures with greater clarity and confidence.
Even God has His own faith and belief—He has His own vision and hope for the future. To fulfill this faith, God has been engaged in the work of restoration. We might ask why God could not clean up this world all at once.
How can He put up with so much evil and corruption in the world?
No one can look at the wonder of this vast, infinite universe and not sense that there is some wonderful power behind it. But at the same time, when a person looks at the corruption of human society, it is common that he will doubt the existence of God. He will wonder why, if God exists, He doesn't do something about this world.
Karl Marx was confused about God in this way. He felt a contradiction within himself, between his childhood faith in God and the questions he had in his mind.
His theory of dialectics, which is based upon the importance of conflict and struggle, arose from within his mind and experience of conflict. He could not accept the existence of God, given the reality of so much conflict and struggle in the world. He proclaimed that for him, history and material were “god.”
Communisma unique, or Marxism, is an ideology that strives to explain the universe on an atheistic basis.
Every person has within himself some fervor for an ideal. Working within the framework of contradiction, communism tries to solve the problems of the world.
However, it only looks at the problems externally. This is why communists deny God and proclaim materialism. Religion, on the other hand, recognizes the same contradictions but digs deeper into the situation.
Human history is undeniably a history of struggle and conflict, so communists believe that progress can only be gained through the same process: struggle and conflict. But the true cause of all the struggles has not been revealed to them; that is the responsibility of religion.
When you dig down deeper and deeper, you will hit the core where true peace and true love prevail; however, that core has not yet been revealed. America is a nation founded upon the Christian philosophy. But they have not yet dug down to the very depths and core of Christianity; they have not yet found the foundation.
A purely external viewpoint promotes individualism and division, while an internal viewpoint promotes the well-being of the whole and unification. Thus, the two are contradictory viewpoints.
I am not denying the rights of individuals or the fact that valid divisions exist within the world. I am simply saying that the largest purpose and unification come first, and upon that foundation, everything external can be fulfilled as well. Within the family, a man and woman come together to create one whole, common purpose, and they create some form of unity.
Only then do they go out and do their individual activities, but first, they must create the structure of a common purpose within the family.
When the whole purpose is placed in the subjective position and the individual purpose in the objective, both can be fulfilled. But if you try to reverse that order, everything is destroyed.
An important question is, if God exists, why do such divisions and conflicts exist?
We can answer by explaining the fall of man. Because of the fall, man's internal life was destroyed, and only his external life was able to flourish.
God had to devise some method by which to restore the world, so He inspired the development of the different religions throughout history. The one simple sign of God's existence is that there are major religions all over the world.
Religions can be likened to “repair shops” for mankind. There are many types of shops; one shop will repair a particular aspect of a man. Perhaps one repair shop will be able to correct only one small problem, symbolically like the bone in one finger.
Another shop might be able to repair a fingertip and claim that they are the best shop in the world. As far as the fingertip is concerned, they are entitled to say they are the best. The repair shop for a different finger might have a unique process.
Once the repair shop for fingers has fixed all ten fingers, then it has completely fulfilled its responsibility. It will have to close its business because it cannot do anything more for the person. It could then join together with another religion, which represents the repair shop for the right arm.
When that religion has done its job, it will have to join with the religion for the body if it wants to stay in operation. When the body-religion finishes its mission, it should join with the brain-religion.
What is the Unification Church?
We are the brain religion. The brain coordinates the activities of the entire body, even down to the blood, which circulates through the foot. Ultimately, every bit of blood circulates throughout the whole body, to every part, including the brain.
Unification church members are like the body's blood—you go to every part of the world, into every part of society, touching people of every race and culture. You find your joy in that way.
When you have been in the Unification Church for just three years, studying Divine Principle and listening to these sermons, you can become the most knowledgeable person with a talent for speaking eloquently.
Your perceptions become sharpened. Can you compare this Belvedere classroom with those of Yale and Harvard? You will not find such a classroom as this anywhere else in the world.
But how much have you paid for tuition?
If I decided to charge tuition, it would certainly be high, but I would rather not charge tuition. I am only working for the sake of love so that you men and women can fulfill your love properly. I am giving you the truth, and truth is love. In giving this to you, I am actually serving not you but true love. Do you have true love in your mind, or are you trying to get true love?
Most people do not realize the importance of human responsibility when trying to understand God and the universe. They only try to figure out why God hasn't done something.
However, God and man are in a joint venture on this earth. Without the fulfillment of human responsibility, even God cannot fulfill His plan of creation. Reverend Moon has come to the world proclaiming the truth that God gave man a portion of responsibility to perfect himself.
How serious have you been about your responsibility?
Because of human responsibility, God has not yet received His liberation either. All the suffering in the world is because of the failure of mankind to fulfill its responsibility; this is the source of the chaos and confusion in society.
If there had been no fall of man, the responsibility of humanity would have been effortless to fulfill. Why is that? There would have been no source of distraction to prevent people from achieving their perfection.
However, due to the failure of man in the beginning, our responsibility now is very difficult. An adverse power came into being, which can pull people far away from their perfection. Divine Principle teaches that God has a symbolic 95% responsibility and man has the other 5%.
Why did God give us this responsibility?
It is because God wants people to inherit His creative ability. What is at the center of that inheritance? True love is at the center. By fulfilling our 5% portion of responsibility, we become entitled to inherit the entire creation of God.
With true love, you can do anything; nothing is impossible. You can even subjugate your worst enemy. True love is the power of true subjugation; with true love, the enemy eventually surrenders on his own.
Therefore, nothing is more ideal than true love. No peace is greater than that of true love; no power is greater than that of true love. I want to ask you women: to whom or to what can you totally surrender yourselves?
You would only want to surrender to a true man who has true love, isn't that correct? Everything that comes from true love is welcomed.
There can be no talk of peace on earth without the omnipotence of true love. Even if God didn't exist, we would still have to strive to create true love to bring the world into unity, harmony, and peace.
However, God is not a hypothesis; He exists, and true love exists. True love has the power to motivate people to unite voluntarily; they don't have to be forced into harmony.
Our goal is true love, and we are moving toward that goal. God gave a portion of responsibility to mankind to protect true love; without that human responsibility, our love would have been reduced to the level of animals. But with human responsibility comes human discipline.
The institution of the family is God's most sacred and important institution; that is the arena in which true love can be practiced and consummated. In the Unification Church, you have learned about the Heavenly four-position foundation as the goal and ideal of God's creation
I want you to understand that through the fulfillment of human responsibility, you are entitled to take the position of receiving the blessing. You are given that blessing as a confirmation from God; this is the most wonderful gift in the Unification Church.
Men absolutely need women, and women need men, but they must fulfill their human responsibility before they are entitled to receive the marriage blessing. The love between husband and wife is an example of universal, public love. When you love your husband, you are loving the entire male world, including the masculine attributes of God.
When you love your wife, you are loving all the femininity of the universe, including God's feminine attributes. When you realize this, God becomes so intimate with you; He is not far away or alien. You become a friend, even a partner, of God Himself.
When you are dwelling deeply in love with God, you can reach into His pockets and pull everything out. Just like two lovers embracing, you can do anything to Him, and He enjoys it, like pulling out His handkerchief or His billfold.
When the wife does that to her husband, he feels joyful to be so familiar with her. Even if the husband only has one dirty handkerchief in his pocket, the wife will cherish it because she loves him.
I want you to understand what a different world we are living in here. There is infinite, eternal value in this world.
Do you understand now that only by fulfilling your human responsibility do you become eligible to receive true love?
Men and women who are capable of fulfilling their responsibilities shall be entitled to receive the blessing. When you are blessed, you receive the right to experience true love for eternity, and God wants to be responsible for you for eternity. There is only one true love—true love is unique, as well as unchanging and eternal.
If God changed the way people do, how could we ever trust Him?
But God is unchanging and eternal; He wants to make a relationship with mankind through true love. However, people are constantly changing, day in and day out, so there is no way God can relate to them.
Do you truly understand this?
Sometimes, after a person receives the blessing, he will think, “Why did Father give me that person as my spouse? I don't particularly care for her or him.
Someone else got a better wife or husband.” I can only say to that, “What do you mean? You are like Adam and Eve, living in the Garden of Eden, and there is no other Adam or Eve for you! There are only the two of you!”
Even if you have a wife or husband who is crippled, she or he is the only one for you.
If it had happened that Adam had been crippled and Eve had refused to have anything to do with him, what would have happened?
She would have denied all of human history, the entire purpose of creation, and the fulfillment of the ideal of God! She would have gone straight down into hell because there is no greater crime than that of denying love.
If Eve had loved a crippled Adam even more intensely because he was crippled, God would have blessed them with the most extraordinary children. Occasionally, I might match a beautiful woman with a hideous man.
If that woman is completely loyal to her husband and he loves her faithfully, I can proclaim that they will give birth to the most extraordinary children. That is the law of the universe.
God doesn't look at people only horizontally; there is the vertical factor that comes into play. I can see the total vertical potential of your couples, while you can only see the horizontal reality. There is a difference.
Are you entitled to complain, then, about your husband or wife?
First, you must love him or her intensely, and then, if you want to say something about them, I might give you my attention, but not before you have given your wholehearted love to them.
We are seeing an incredible revolution here in the Unification Church. One Korean man, representing the Oriental race, has come to the center of Western society, the United States, and is bringing together all five colors of skin, mixing them into Heavenly couples. Everyone is accepting each other in gratitude! This is the greatest of all revolutions ever seen in human history, don't you agree?
Because of the failure of human responsibility, many barriers have been created throughout history. Each failure created new barriers between people and groups of people, but because of these barriers, “compartments” were created in which God could work, one by one.
Therefore, this phenomenon of many barriers is not necessarily a bad thing. Throughout history, the greatest of all walls and barriers were built by the religions of the world.
The secular world has created its own walls, but so has the religious world. The walls within the secular world have been crumbling and have become lower and lower, while the walls within the religious world have become higher and higher all the time.
Why is this?
It is because this safeguards the integrity and purity of each religion—infiltration is prevented.
In the process of restoration, God has erected His own kinds of walls to protect His restored territory and gradually extend it.
What are those walls?
There are two areas with their walls—the satanic world and the Heavenly world—and their walls are extended all the way out to the worldwide level. At this time in history, we are seeing the walls between the free world and the communist world.
Which wall is the more severe and confining?
Certainly, it is the communist wall.
Within the democratic world, freedom is the keyword. Certainly, no one who promotes the ideal of freedom wants to be destroyed by that freedom. The United States is the most freedom-loving country in the world, yet there is also an abuse of freedom here. Because of this abuse, this nation has put itself into a position where it is vulnerable to being eaten by communism. It is not prepared to swallow the communist world.
If a student passes all the required tests and receives his diploma, then he is qualified to claim his degree and be free of school.
On the other hand, he might fail all his examinations but still say, “I am a free person, and I am entitled to receive this diploma, so give it to me.”
However, no one can do that. By the same token, we must understand that true freedom can be enjoyed by people only when they have fulfilled their quota of responsibility; thereafter, they can enjoy their right to freedom.
Imagine a woman who proclaims that she is free and then leaves her baby unattended and goes to the movie. Is that the exercise of freedom or the abuse of it? Certainly, it is the abuse of freedom.
Freedomcommunist comes only after the fulfillment of responsibility for everyone. When you fulfill your human responsibility given to you by God, you are entitled to enjoy your freedom as much as you want.
I am teaching the members of the Unification Church about their responsibility all the time. When you faithfully fulfill your responsibility, you can be free to enjoy your freedom. Should you say, “I am a free person; I am entitled to decide what I want and what I do,” before you fulfill your responsibility?
We must fulfill our responsibilities first and then enjoy our right to freedom. Particularly in the Unification Church, this is the teaching.
We must obey the rules and disciplines as an important part of our responsibilities. Without the fulfillment of that responsibility, you will have no way to inherit the creative power of God.
When it is time for fundraising, the Unification Church members go out. Likewise, when we need to witness, we fulfill that responsibility. When we are under a 40-day condition, we go out and work hard and suffer; in that way, you become a part of history.
But if you shirk that responsibility, you are negating your part in Unification Church history, and you will feel shame. Shame is not freedom. You must go beyond all shame, fulfill your responsibility, and then claim your right to freedom.
We should be stronger and more disciplined than the communist world—voluntarily, not at gunpoint. In that way, we will be able to liberate them. The stronger can digest the weaker, not the other way around. America is talking now about building up a stronger defense for the sake of safeguarding freedom.
That is a natural and common-sense way of looking at it; the American people should unite and make whatever sacrifices necessary to have a strong defense because it is the strong who will digest the weak.
National policies can be decided according to this principle. According to this view of God, a nation can analyze what is right or wrong.
I support President Reagan because he has the right understanding of many things, including this point of a strong national defense. I must speak out about the U.S. President because God's truth has to make an impact upon the leaders of the world, particularly the free world.
Since I came to this country, the Presidents have been Nixon, Ford, Carter, and now Reagan. Carter's administration went against the principles of God, and therefore, I spoke out against him. At the time of Watergate, I spoke in support of Nixon—not for the survival of just one administration, but for the sake of the entire free world.
All these points arise from the basic Principle, centered on God, and they are not the random result of someone's whim. I want you to understand the importance of fulfilling human responsibility.
Every part of you—even your eyes, nose, and hair—has its responsibility, and by fulfilling it, they are entitled to belong to the rest of the body.
If you are a person who is not fulfilling his responsibility, even your clothing will accuse you and say, “You have no right to wear me!” The entire universe will accuse you—the trees, the dirt, rocks, etc.
Every person bears his cross of human responsibility as he walks the path of life.
You cannot deny this. It was not only Jesus who had to bear the cross.
Jesus said that only those who would take up their cross and follow him could be his disciples. He was saying that those who bear their cross of human responsibility would become worthy in the sight of God. The greater the level of responsibility, the larger the cross to bear.
The Unification Church is pursuing the level of cosmic salvation, the greatest of all responsibilities, and therefore, we must bear the greatest of all crosses.
For this reason, the path of Reverend Moon has been extraordinarily difficult, and I have been bearing one of the greatest of crosses throughout human history.
However, I have always been willing to go this way. Unless you, too, bear your cross and move forward to the final goal, you cannot be truly free.
It has not been a simple or easy task to come here to the United States from an Oriental culture and attempt to digest and bring about change in this culture. Tremendous sacrifices have been made for the sake of fulfilling this responsibility.
Right after the Washington Monument rally, I declared our next goal to be a Moscow rally. That was an incredible declaration, and it requires a tremendous cross to be borne to accomplish it. Each of us today is aiming toward Moscow and trying to become champions for that rally.
Do you have that feeling and that confidence?
You should be more determined and committed than the KGB, which wants to destroy us. You must be willing to follow the directions of your superiors. You don't like that, do you?
Our wall shall push Satan's wall into the corner and cause it to fall completely.
If Satan wants to come into our territory, we will say, “OK, come in, but you have to fulfill your responsibilities first, the way we do.” That will stop Satan. If he could do that, he wouldn't be Satan in the first place.
Satan's first responsibility as Lucifer was to love Adam and Eve, but he was jealous of them. You can say to him, “Did you love God, Satan? That is your responsibility. That is what we are doing here.”
I understand this truth very well. Between the physical world and the spirit world, there is also a wall of responsibility. To enter the high places in the spirit world, you have to fulfill certain responsibilities while you are living here on earth.
If you cannot fulfill completely, at least you must set the right conditions to be accepted. This is the reason for the Home Church providence.
The responsibility for mankind is not only upon the shoulders of Adam and Eve; during the process of restoration, it has come upon the shoulders of every person to fulfill human responsibility to be restored.
Are you thinking, “Well, the Koreans and the Japanese may have their responsibilities, but not us Western people. We are the most civilized society; we don't need such responsibility.”
Actually, the truth is that the American people should work harder in the pursuit of their responsibilities than even the Koreans or the Japanese.
Therefore, if I ask more from you than the Koreans or Japanese, will you accept that? Will you accept it reluctantly or willingly? You are sitting here on the floor, Oriental style, for hours. Are you doing it willingly or reluctantly?
Since the Western nations have been failing in their responsibility, God has been taking the blessing away from them and giving it to the Asian nations, such as Japan. When the sunrise comes, plants turn toward the east to receive the most sunshine. As the sun rises, the plants reach out toward it.
In the afternoon, the sun moves toward the west, and the plants follow it all the way until sundown. As soon as it is dark, the plants reorient themselves toward the east to wait for the sunrise again the next day.
Western civilization is now heading toward darkness, the sundown, so all the creation is turning toward the east, waiting for the sunrise. Moonies, particularly, are facing the east, leading the rest of the world.
Everybody else is saying, “Why are you facing that direction? The sun is still up above,” but you all know what is coming in the near future. Even though other people are calling you crazy, they will soon learn what you know.
Do you understand now about human responsibility?
How many times during the day do you think about your responsibility?
You must be aware of your responsibility every moment of the day, while you are eating, when you go to the bathroom, and when you are walking. Adam and Eve did not think of their responsibility soon enough and often enough, and therefore they fell.
In order not to repeat their mistake, we must be thinking of our responsibility all the time. We must not follow the pattern of fallen Adam and Eve, but rather become restored and victorious Adams and Eves.
We must start a new greeting in the Unification Church. Rather than saying “Good morning” or “Good night,” we should say “HR” (pronounced like “Hur,”), which stands for Human Responsibility. As we fulfill this responsibility, a new civilization can be born.
When you greet each other with “HR” all the time, other people will say, “What are you crazy people saying?” You can respond simply, “You will understand soon enough.” You can say, “Morning HR!” or “Night HR!” After all, that is easier to say!
The problem with the Unification Church is that many members are forgetting the importance of human responsibility. This Sunday is the last Sunday of the month of January in the new year of 1983. The slogan for this year is, “Home Church is Our Land of Settlement.”
Have you been fulfilling that slogan?
You should make up your mind: “Unless I fulfill this day's responsibility, I will not eat or sleep. Or do you say, “Well, that might be Reverend Moon's rule, but I would rather not live in such a rigid, disciplined way.”
Do you like human responsibility?
If you had no human responsibility to fulfill, you would be no different from people who follow Satan's ways. There would be no distinction between you and Satan.
Human responsibility is the boundary line for God so that His people can make themselves distinctly different from the satanic world.
We must fulfill that responsibility no matter what. You should think of your lives in relation to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible. Fire and brimstone are coming down from Heaven, and the city is under judgment, but because you listened to the word of God and fulfilled your human responsibility, you have a way to escape from that suffering.
The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah had stone walls; as soon as you could go over those walls, you would be saved. Going over that wall is the symbol of your responsibility; inside that wall, everyone is judged by the fire.
What is at the center of that human responsibility?
It is true love. To fulfill your responsibility, you must go through the indemnity process. No matter how great Bo Hi Pak may be, to fulfill his responsibility, he must pay indemnity.
There are no exceptions to the rule. Reverend Moon is bound by the same rule. I may be famous, you may think I am great, but still I must go the road of indemnity to fulfill my responsibility.
My entire life has been nothing but that road. I am paying indemnity for the sake of the universe. You may be thinking, “I am so tired because I have been in the Unification Church for several years, and I have received so much persecution!” But think of my life. I have been living my entire life under those circumstances.
Reverend Moon is in the same position as you. When I feel I have done enough, I must think about God. Throughout all of human history, God has been suffering and paying His indemnity to fulfill His responsibility.
True love does not belong to Adam, to Eve, or even just to God. It belongs to everybody in the universe. Therefore, God had to take the road of indemnity. That is logical.
Certainly, God has suffered more than anyone in the universe to prepare this foundation and to be in a position to give His inheritance to mankind. If you have the desire to receive this expensive inheritance freely and easily, you have the mind of a thief.
If you have a shred of conscience within you, you cannot feel towards God: “Just give me Your inheritance for free.” God has made so many sacrifices for that inheritance! You must walk the road of indemnification. No one can escape from it, from the individual level through the family, tribe, nation, and world.
I can see a tendency among people who have been in the Unification Church for several years to think, “I have done my share in the church.”
However, they are forgetting about the road of indemnity. When you become ill, you need to take medicine. Nobody wants to take that bitter medicine, but you must take it.
If a patient refuses to take his medicine, he must be admonished to open his mouth and take it. That is an action of love. What if the doctor said, “Leave him alone if he refuses his medicine and let him die?”
Is that love?
If anyone loves to hear the word “indemnity,” please raise your hand. Even I don't like that word; I have tasted more of it than you, so I probably hate it more than you. However, it is our inevitable destiny; without it, you cannot be restored.
Mankind can be compared to a leaky boat. There is a hole in the bottom, and water is coming in, which will eventually drown everybody in the boat. Someone has to sacrifice himself and plug that hole, even if you have to go down to the bottom of the boat and use your body as the plug.
You may drown, but all the rest of mankind can be saved—the whole boat can be saved. That is the kind of situation we are in. Maybe the rest of humanity isn't even aware of the hole in the bottom of the boat, but God and history know. That particular deed will be recorded forever in history. That will become the tradition for the future.
In the confused and chaotic situation of the world today, the word “indemnity” is the crucial one. I often think about the Olympic game of pole vaulting because that really symbolizes my identity role. I have had to lift myself with a high pole and hurl myself over to the other side.
The Washington Times was my pole vault—when everyone else was sleeping, I jumped high and went way over the goal. Every Moonie thinks he is doing well and understands the truth, but you often forget the two most elementary, fundamental aspects: responsibility and indemnity. Those are like the two ears, the two hands, and the two feet. A person who refuses one or the other is like a person with only one foot, one hand, or one ear.
You certainly can't run or make progress in that condition. Unless you use responsibility and indemnity like your two feet, working together with them, you will not make progress.
You women—look at me straight and tell me, do you like the word indemnity?
For the sake of providence, are you willing to accept it? Today, you should remind yourselves of the importance of human responsibility and indemnity. You may forget about eating or sleeping, but think of this. You may forget your beloved, but think of
this. No matter how strongly we pursue the goal, without using the two pillars of responsibility and indemnity, we will not reach it. The same reality binds even God. True Parents will not reach the goal without going that road.
The Unification Church will not reach our goal without going that road. Without responsibility and indemnity, nothing will be accomplished.
Do you just want to get to the goal freely and easily?
Even in the secular world, it is clearly understood that to achieve something like a Ph.D., one must go through a hard course and complete all the requirements. How much more difficult it is to achieve God's will.
Today you should say, “On this last day of January, 1983, I have realized human responsibility and indemnity. Now I know the greeting, HR, and with that kind of spirit, we are going to win the victory.” If you can say that, please raise your hands and show me!
Sun Myung Moon