Everybody knows that we are living in an evil world. No matter how good a life a person may say he lived on earth, at the end of his life, he looks back and realizes that his life was not so good after all. Everyone wants to have a balance of more good than bad when, at the point of death, they count the actions of their life.
Generally, a person is apt to feel great regret if his life shows a balance of bad over good. Similarly, we can count the good and bad things of a society to determine whether it is predominantly good or bad.
Looking back through human history, we can see that everyone has inherited bad things, but history should have provided only good things. Considering this, everyone can see that this world is not a good world but a bad world. Then how did this bad world come about? That is our most important question.
If goodness came first, if the seed of goodness was planted first, then the fruits of goodness could be harvested. But very unfortunately, the bad seed was planted in the very soil of goodness.
If the bad seed had been planted in the soil of evil, then evil would grow eternally; but since the seed of evil was planted in the soil of good, the harvest has been a mixture of good and evil. Therefore, evil will remain only until the last days.
This present generation belongs to a realm of evil history; that is, evil has dominion over this world. So now, what has God been doing to overcome this situation? We have to think about God and Satan; we have to compare what God and Satan have been doing.
In God, the Absolute Good, only goodness can exist; evil can never exist in God. God, the Absolute, must be good in the beginning, good in the process, and good in the end. In Satan, on the other hand, there is never any good; he was evil in the beginning, evil in the process, and his end is evil. If the enemy Satan were doing good before God while man longs to unite with God, then man would be confused; therefore, evil must always be seen in the position of evil.
Man is the one who has been the buffer zone between the excellent God and the oppositely bad Satan. Therefore, throughout our lives, if we seek goodness, God can be with us, but if we do bad things, then evil will be with us. This is the destiny of all mankind.
In the course of our lives, the most important and valuable thing is to know how to seek the right way, in agreement with Heaven. If we do so, we'll be on God's side; if not, we'll be on the evil side. Therefore, we have to believe in God, the center of absolute goodness.
Only to the degree that we are one with Heaven can we find the true origin of goodness, and through the process of goodness, harvest good things. At the point of one's death, if he has a balance of more bad things than good things, then he will remain under the dominion of evil; but if the balance shows even one more iota of good, then he will exist in the realm of goodness.
Sun Myung Moon
What is the life of faith?
What is the reason for faith?
We must know that the reason we have faith is to prevent us from doing evil so that we can leave behind many good things in the course of our lives.
Now, what is the highest form of faith that we can expect to reach?
It is the complete, perfected goodness as it is written in Matthew 5:48, "You must be perfect, even as your Heavenly Father is perfect."
Since God, the absolute subject, loves man so wholeheartedly, then man can stand in the position of perfect object to God as the fruits of goodness. Man longs to stand in this position of goodness.
Naturally, God does not want man to stand in the position of badness or evil; He does not want man to be "groaning in travail'; He does not want man to be in the least accused by Satan.
Therefore, God, the perfect absolute subject of goodness, expects man to become his perfect object for the substantial realization of goodness, and also He expects man to live as such throughout his life on earth.
God never has the slightest expectation that man would do evil in the future; He wants man to be everlastingly good. He wants us to be good, not only in our lives on earth, but through our descendants in the ages to come. Also, in the past, he has had some good results in trying to lay a good foundation.
Now, let us think about what has happened since the fall of Adam and Eve.
Between God and Satan, Adam and Eve should have reached the position of good. Because they could not reach it by themselves, God had to work in history. Adam and Eve should have obtained the highest position in relation to God, the highest position that mankind can reach. Man, who is born for happiness, seeks happiness until finally he wants to reach the highest realm of goodness and happiness. What is this realm like?
Sun Myung Moon
It is the place where Adam and Eve respect God as their true parent, and God loves them as His true children; the place where Adam and Eve receive the highest amount and highest expression of God's love, as His son and daughter.
Since God created Adam and Eve and loved them as His children, then in what way do they wish to be loved by God?
Their standard is the most hoped-for position, that in which they can be loved by God as His son and daughter. Which love do they wish? Complete love. But the fact that man is fallen means that man did not achieve the position to be loved completely by God throughout their whole lives.
They could have been, so to speak, the perfect beginning of the story of love, centered on the absolute God. We are very sorry Adam and Eve did not achieve that goal in their lives. That is the fall of man. Needless to say, God cannot but exist in sorrow and tears if He, the perfect subject of love, really loves His creation, which He wanted to love perfectly.
We can conclude that God has had to tread the thorny path of restoration, overcoming all tribulations and hardships to recover His authority and to fulfill all of His words. Since He is absolute, all of His projects must be absolutely successful. Even though all of God's plans had been broken down due to the fall of Adam and Eve, He had to recover and accomplish all of His original ideals.
The fall indicates the fact that Adam did not begin his life centered on God during his own lifetime as a true son of God.
If he had begun his life as God's true son, receiving God's complete love, then what would have happened?
Adam and Eve would have been loved by God as a perfect couple. If they had matured and had been raised and nurtured in the bosom of God's love, not fallen from Him at all, this couple, God's pride and joy, would have begun the history of goodness as man's original ancestor.
Then Adam and Eve could only have been the happiest people, standing in the position of objects united with God into one, centered on God's absolute love. All the things that God possesses would be theirs, and all the joy that God feels would be theirs; God's happiness would be Adam and Eve's, Eve's happiness would be Adam's, and the joyfulness of Adam and Eve would be God's; and so they and God could enjoy abundant love in the place where God and man are unified.
This would be the fulfilled, mature position in which Adam and Eve could be loved by God as the true husband and wife. Very regretfully, they did not make such a good foundation in their lives. This is what brought about the fall of man.
Adam and Eve could not receive God's complete love as perfected parents. Parents who have not been loved completely cannot give complete love to their children, either.
If Adam and Eve had become parents after having experienced perfect love, they could also love perfectly; but in the position of imperfect parents, without the experience of perfect love, they could only love their children according to the degree of love that they had felt. Parents can never love their children to a higher degree than they felt before. From this, we can see that man has never been loved as true children by those who should have been directly related to God originally.
Even today in the fallen world, people respect very highly the love of their parents, and there are some good parents in this world who are willing to sacrifice and even give their lives for the sake of their children.
If the love of even the fallen world is so great, then we can imagine that the love of original Man, loved by God as His perfect children, perfect couple, and perfect parents, must be strong indeed! This original love is the strongest, the ultimate one, the absolute standard. Before such a love, even God himself would be so moved, he would cry out with full joy and happiness! If man had such a powerful and abundant love, which we could call the highest love, he could have dominion even over the heart of the Absolute.
Happiness can only be gained by receiving good things from the object. There can be no happiness divorced from emotion and feeling. We feel happiness when we have some good objects that return positive elements to us. These elements give us a foundation upon which we can relate the emotion in every direction. A man feels loneliness if there is no element of response from the object.
Sun Myung Moon
In solitude, there can be no satisfaction or hope. If the relationship of parents, father and son, had begun with the perfect love of God and had been fulfilled among people horizontally, then the perfect absolute love would have been manifested in human society.
Man should have been connected not only vertically with God, centering on God's absolute love, but also horizontally with all people. The vertical love would then have been expanded to the children and descendants, centered on true parents. In other words, Adam and Eve should have loved their children in the position of God, just as God had loved them, so that finally God's love would be passed on to the descendants through Adam and Eve.
The love of children should not just remain as children's love; it must be returned to its origin, the True Parents, thereby giving them joy and happiness. This is the base of four positions, as we say in the Unification Church.
So why does God need man?
To make him an object for His love! There is no other reason why He wants to have a man. Does God lack power? material? knowledge? No! He does not want any of those things in the least; he already has all those things. There is no one who can stand higher than God, as He is the Absolute.
He Himself created all things, so He does not want anything at all in the existing world. The only reason God created man is that He wanted to experience a stimulating response from man; that is, He needed a substantial object that could return the emotion of love. In God there is, of course, much beauty and joy; the highest and strongest beauty and joy there is, but He wanted to have an object in which He could manifest His own image and internal character externally.
He would enjoy seeing His nature manifested externally much more than having it remain inside. He wanted to experience the ideal state of love, the highest dimension of love, which could only be brought about by the stimulating response from his object, man.
We can compare the way parents feel compassion and love for their children more deeply and strongly when the children are far away. The farther they are away from their parent, the deeper the parents' love; the parents become so anxious to see their children.
This is when true love really springs up from the parents' hearts. So we see that only in the realm of love can distance be transcended. How is it possible for God, an infinite being, to communicate with the boundless, limitless universe? It is not from mere power; only love can reach all things existing. Power can't transcend all things; it has its limitations.
The infinite, eternal world cannot be governed wholly by power, authority, or knowledge, but by love only. Considering this, we come to realize that God created man because He wanted to receive an objective response of love from Man.
Sun Myung Moon
Then how is God's love manifested?
God's love is first manifested as parents' love, not as ordinary love. Part of the expression of parents' love is that it is handed down through the lineage; therefore, God cannot help but be a father throughout the whole of history. All men must love their children with perfect parents' love, as well as perfect mutual love.
Happiness should have started with man in the beginning, not in the future world.
History should have provided and been accompanied by happiness itself, not the search for happiness. It is a miserable thing that man, due to the fall of Adam and Eve, had to seek happiness, hoping and dreaming for the world to come.
Having been drawn into the fate of the fallen world, man must achieve the standard of truth and be reborn in truth so that finally man will be restored through recovering the original ideal standard of happiness.
What does complete restoration mean?
It means the end of an era. So now, what is the end of this era? It will be when, after a time, we recover the original standard of the ideal, perfect love.
This will be the day when God fulfills himself completely, one hundred percent, and when man as well is completely fulfilled. To recover the original standard, God has come to man with hope. If God lost this standard, God’s will could never be fulfilled, and unless man reaches this standard, he can never recover the intrinsic standard of true love.
If it were impossible to achieve, man would remain in this miserable world forever; but if it is possible, man can be happy someday, even though his past has been so unhappy and miserable. Very fortunately, we have God, the Absolute, whom we call Our Father.
Even though man fell from the beginning, man was born as God's children; therefore, God has trodden the long path of historical restoration to resurrect man from the dead. We believe in God, who will definitely restore all mankind.
Sun Myung Moon
So how does God complete the restoration?
He will restore it all with love. Life comes from love, and hope comes from life; we are living in hope. What would be the most important of these? Love must come first, because life came from love.
For what reason did God create Adam and Eve?
He created them not just to see the lives of his son and daughter, but to share love with his son and daughter. So life is created through the essentiality of God, which is love. God did not try to create love merely through creating life. Life began when love grew forth out of the heart of God.
The result of life must be united with love, for life comes from love itself. The end must come through love, just as the beginning came through love. If a man loses love, he loses all meaning and happiness in life.
So what is love?
Love is not concerned for oneself alone; love is manifested through the relationship of subject and object. Therefore, perfect love comes about when the subject exists for its object one hundred percent. Perfect love begins when the subject is completely for the object; we cannot find true love in any other situation.
Nobody can deny this, because man was originally born for the sake of this perfect love. Between husband and wife, true mutual love can come about when they freely give themselves to each other; no love can be manifested in a situation where they have to ask love from one another. Forced love may be temporary, but it can never be an eternal love. Thus, we begin to realize that man is born for this ideal of love.
Sun Myung Moon
Why is doing things for others considered to be so good?
People teach children in the family or in school to do good for others; they don't teach children to hurt or damage other people; they always emphasize helping others. The better the man, the more good things he does. What becomes of the people who sacrifice themselves for others' sake? They become the subjects who can command true love.
The person who sacrifices himself for his family becomes the one who leads his family; likewise, the people who act for the sake of their country become the leaders of that country; the person who acts for his comrades leads and inspires the love of his comrades. Now, what does religion teach?
Religion must teach the people to sacrifice themselves for others, since religions have had the important mission of accomplishing the ideal of God's love and showing the people the love of God. The teachings and doctrines of religions centered on the self are incapable of conquering the world.
Religion should teach people how to love others and how to sacrifice themselves for mankind. For this reason, the master of the Unification Church is teaching all its members to sacrifice for the people of the world.
The entire Unification Church knows that it should sacrifice itself for something greater than itself. Any organization that is willing to love its people and country with this spirit of sacrifice will never perish from the earth. Such an organization would establish a pattern of leadership for all the people of the world.
Nowadays, the direction in which the Unification Church is heading is to embrace the people of Korea to create a new country that will sacrifice itself for the good of mankind. It is our major goal to establish a peaceful world centered on this true love, so our Unification Church is striving for that ideal.
The thought of the Unification Church says that we must do our best and sacrifice wholly for all the people of the world to accomplish our final goal, which is the construction of the New World. That is what our Unification Church is seeking.
If we do so, we will never perish from the earth. Why? Because God loves us so much, who would dare to strike us? If God disliked us, Satan and all evil people could strike us, but if God really loves us, who would dare to come out against us? If they did, they would surely be defeated and never forgiven.
Sun Myung Moon
Now, how did God, the Absolute Good, come to conflict with Satan?
They are fighting for the sake of love. Those who work for something greater than themselves, who sacrifice themselves for others, will be under the dominion of God; but those who, on the other hand, do not serve others but only seek their own benefit through others' sacrifice, will be under the domination of Satan, both in the physical and spiritual worlds. Because man was born originally for the sake of others, he has to live for and serve others.
If he really serves others, then inevitably he will be the center of love and the inheritor of God's love. If a man loved a certain country more than anyone else and fought for that country and now lives for that country, then naturally, he will be, to a large extent, the leader of its people.
If he goes on with the same spirit, then eventually he could lead the world and finally reach God. Therefore, the people who sacrifice themselves for others will prosper, and the people who live just for their own sakes will perish in the end. That is the fundamental law of heaven and earth.
Then who will be the man to complete the restoration? He will be the man who is the most anxious for others, even to the degree of madness, and is, in fact, living for others in all that he does. God has been living for others, for all mankind, throughout the whole of history, because He is the flawless, good being.
God cannot but suffer and work for mankind until his object reaches the absolute standard. So God is still suffering and working for man to restore the whole world.
Now, from where does the complete restoration come? It is not from serving ourselves but from denying ourselves completely. This is why Jesus said, "For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." (Matt. 17:25).
Also, he said, "Oh my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; but let it be, not as I will, but as thou wilt." (Matt. 26:42), and he even went to die on the cross.
Sun Myung Moon
These words of Jesus came from his having denied himself completely. He prayed for the sake of his enemies, saying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). Thus, the tradition that Jesus established during his life could not help but dominate man's entire history since then. The will of heaven can only be fulfilled by one who is completely of one heart with Jesus.
If we think about the quality of love, we come to understand that the more one loves and sacrifices for others, the higher the quality of their love. So if a person sacrifices himself for his family, then sacrifices his family for his nation, then his family will be the leading family of the country, and he the leading patriot.
Furthermore, if one is willing to sacrifice their family for their tribe and then their tribe for the nation, then that tribe will be the outstanding one. Thus, we must realize the slogan of the restoration: "I am for you; we are for the family; the family is for the nation; the nation is for the world; the world is for God; and God is for man."
Only through this spirit can we establish the world of peace. From this, at last, all will be fulfilled. No sages or saints ever lived for their own sake. Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity; Buddha, the founder of Buddhism; Confucius, the founder of Confucianism; and Mohammed, the founder of Islam—none of them ever once lived for themselves; all have lived for God, the absolute Subject, and for mankind.
Every religion in the world has tried to discover the absolute God, from whom all things, all creation, are derived. Alone among all the religions, Christianity has insisted from the beginning that all things ultimately come from God. The differences between all religions come from different ideas about the deity, nature, and heart of God.
From this, we do not hesitate to say that Christianity is truly a universal religion, since its founder, Jesus, discussed the love of the true son, the love of the true husband and wife, and the love of the true parents, saying, "I am the only begotten son of God... I am the bridegroom, and you are the bride... I am the father of all mankind... "No matter how powerful somebody may be in this world, he has to strive for the absolute standard of value, which requires us to be for others. He can be successful and triumphant only by achieving this goal.
The master who is leading the Unification Church has determined to sacrifice all its members to save the Republic of Korea and then sacrifice the restored Korea to save the world. On the day the world is restored, Korea will be the center of all nations in the world.
Even if some other countries try to oppress Korea, it will still be the leader of the world. We cannot reach the path of complete restoration without this spirit.
Therefore, I strongly encourage all members who are truly eager to serve the public good. I'd like to open the way for their development and improvement. This is what I think, and what Heaven thinks, about the complete restoration. I pray that all of you will follow this path day and night.
Sun Myung Moon