The Family Is the Base of Happiness

1. We cannot live apart from the heart. Even if you were the president of a country or possessed unsurpassed authority over the world, if you did not have a place to express your heartfelt joy, what good would it do you?

You would not feel life's deep joy from those whom you command your cabinet members or followers. But in your family, this is something you can feel. When you return home from work, you should be able to feel this from your spouse and your children.

You need to be able to share it with pride in the company of others. It is the same with God. Even if He were to restore the entire world, without a family God cannot feel joy. So we do ultimately need to have a family. (25-086, 1969.09.30)

The family is the foundation for joy

2. The family is a good place. It is good because our mother and father, our older brothers and sisters, and our younger siblings are there. Everyone, without exception, feels nostalgic for their hometown and ultimately longs for their original homeland. People tend to think of their hometown more than their nation.

Even though we may live somewhere in the Republic of Korea, we long for our hometown. Our hometown opens and elevates our hearts Love binds us to our hometown in multiple dimensions and all four directions.

That is, we are bound to our father and mother above us, to our spouse on the right or left, and our sons and daughters below us. Our utmost desire is for happiness centered on love, so we cannot help but long for our original hometown. Then where is God's original hometown?

The basis of His original hometown is the recognition by His son and daughter that He is their Father. That is, it is the place where His only son and only daughter, who possess His love exclusively, dwell. It is the place where that son and daughter marry to form a perfect family. (23-151, 1969.05.18)

3. In the Unification Principle and the Book of Genesis, it is written that everything was created for the sake of human beings. The ideal world we long for exists for the sake of human beings.

Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is the world in which we live for the sake of others, knowing how to love people. The kingdom of heaven does not exist apart from us. The world in which we know how to serve and love others is the kingdom of heaven. Where is that place?

When we think of this question concerning our life experience, we see that it is in the family, where we love others and where we are uplifted. When parents look at their child, even one who is immature and mischievous, with a zero score on a scale from one to ten, and nothing to be proud of, they still love him or her more than anyone else.

The family is where love is abundant. It is the place where you are elevated to manifest your infinite value. It is the place where happiness dwells.
(25-283, 1969.10.05)

4. The family is the eternally unchanging origin and foundation. It cannot be changed even by parents, much less by siblings or national policies. Nothing in the world can change it, not even God. Therefore, about the family, the term revolution is eternally unnecessary.

If the family is a place of love, there is no need for revolution. About love between man and woman, our grandfathers and grandmothers in their youth experienced the same heart of yearning that young people feel today. Our hearts are the same; the feelings of youth are the same.

However, the framework of the family is changing and this is creating all sorts of structures and shapes. A loving heart is a loving heart, but the shape of the family is changing. This eventually will bring ruin upon humanity. The family that stands on a solid foundation cannot be swayed by any ideology or thought.

On the contrary, such a family transcends and governs every ideology and teaching. Once we establish the family with this standard it will never change, not after ten years, one hundred years, a thousand years, even for eternity. It will instill order in a people and a nation. (25-087, 1969.09.30)

5. Neither your nation nor the world is the base for your happiness. Your family is. Therefore, your ultimate ideal should not be the world; it is your family. Ideal individuals have to dwell in the family. Your ideal itself has to dwell in the family as well. If such a family were to exist, the father of that family would be an ideal father and the mother an ideal mother.

The sons would be ideal, and the daughters would be ideal. Then each one of them would be the base of an ideal family. Thus, we are all meant to realize ideal families. (104-060, 1979.03.28)

6. What could be considered a happy environment? A happy environment exists when people are positioned to receive love from their parents, experience the love of their siblings, share conjugal love with their spouses, and love their children. People can bring about the advancement of a nation and the world only when they know all these kinds of love.

Thus, the foundation of happiness is love, centered on harmonious parents, couples, and children in a perfected family. (39-238, 1971.01.15)

7. We need a home. Without the home as the base of perfect happiness, the nation, and world cannot fulfill its purpose. We have to become parents, spouses, and siblings centered on the home God would desire to see. Happiness and discontent both begin in homes and spread out to the nation and world.

The home is the beginning point and settlement point that God desires. However, we have not been able to realize the home of God's ideal. Instead, the home is sometimes a place of bad feelings and unhappiness.

No one knew that the home, which was to be the base of the greatest happiness, could become the base of despair and distrust God has been working until now to reverse this through indemnity. Unhappiness in the family began from the time of Cain in Adam's family. (24-306, 1969.09.07)

8. When we have something good, we like to boast about it and advertise it. Wanting to advertise something means that we want to draw other people into a relationship with it. What is it that we like most? First, we like our parents most, then we like ourselves, and then we like our children.

This is what we have seen in history. Then through what are all these integrated? The family is the base that connects us to each other's lives. Based on the environment that connects our lives, the family is the basis upon which relationships of love can bloom. (36-290, 1970.12.13)

9. The family should be a place where we model all relationships on every level. All people without exception determine their life path within their families. They are born in a family, go out from their family to all directions, and return to their family from all directions — north, south, east, and west — and encounter ups and downs in their family.

This understanding tells us that a person who cannot experience happiness in the family should not expect to find happiness on the national level. Even if he were to recover his nation, where would he live in that nation?

He would be unhappy, with nowhere to go. Only in the family can we find our parents, our spouse, and our children. (188-256, 1989.03.01)

10. Some people may say that they are satisfied with their work and need nothing more, but that is not true. There may be some fulfillment there, but the workplace connects people through material things. Politics is where people pursue their rights and interests.

Even in religion, people seek God in different ways, from all directions. Though they may be able to find God, they will not find love. True love can be found only in the family. Someone may be successful in his company, earning vast sums of money and being recognized by many, but if he does not have a loving family, he is an unhappy man.

Even if someone goes into the field of politics and becomes a member of parliament and even the president of his nation, if he has no loving home to which he can return, he will be an unhappy man. Even if someone becomes a famous pastor and a great spiritual leader who is genuinely loved by the members under his or her wing, that love is not enough.

We look for a deeper and more central place of love than that; that place is none other than the family. (184-055, 1988.11.13)

11. Even if someone has unified the entire world, he or she will be unhappy if there is disunity within the family. The realization of the ideal of love has to begin in the family; the family is the haven of happiness. Thus, the kingdom of heaven begins in the family.

Jesus, who came to this earth to realize the kingdom of heaven, spoke of the day when a bride would be prepared for him. He based this statement on the standard of the family. The family is interconnected in love and is united through love. Love does not change, so it can unite everyone. That is why the love of grandparents, of parents, and husband and wife can be one.

In love, all can unite because the nature of love includes unity. Further, love's motive is to create life. The lives and ideals of a grandfather and grandmother are connected in love, which they bequeath to their parents. In other words, they bequeath everything to their children.

Our parents are the children of our grandparents, and we are the children of our parents. The environment that revolves around such love is the kingdom of heaven. (48-010, 1971.08.31)

12. When we say someone is happy, on what basis do we say this? We cannot call someone happy just because he or she has the external ability, power, or prestige. Can we say that someone is happy because he or she has great wealth and envies no one? No, we cannot.

Can someone be called happy because he or she has worldly knowledge, or is influential enough to move the world? These things alone do not make a person happy. All the people on this earth generally feel, experience, and recognize that the family is the base for happiness.

Yet, they do not have families that meet the standard of true happiness. That is why the issue is the family. In the family, there must be parents. In the world, a child without parents is called an orphan, and we always feel sorry for orphans. If there are parents in the family, it means there is also a husband and wife.

It is pitiable to have no parents, but it is also pitiable to have lost a beloved spouse. No matter how much husband and wife love each other, there is no greater sadness than when one of them is bereaved. Moreover, having no children is a great cause of unhappiness for a married couple. (23-011, 1969.05.11)

13. Suppose that someone was unable to acquire a position that brought authority, power, or recognition, and had nothing to be proud of. However, suppose that person had a family with true parents, a true spouse, and true children, a peaceful family that was the envy of his community.

Such a happy family should share its genuine happiness even beyond the tribe; it should impact society, the people, and even the nation. There is no question that such a family would be admired by the people and the entire nation. If such a family emerged on earth, representing both the people and the nation, undoubtedly, the world would honor that family. (23-012, 1969.05.11)

14. We should be willing to make sacrifices to recover the family. If the father's self-sacrifice saved his family, the children would say, “Father, you have worked so hard!” If his sacrifice moved his wife to the very marrow of her bones, she would say, “Oh, my love! I am so grateful to you!”

This is the way true people are. The individual sacrifices for the family. In a family, the mother makes sacrifices for her husband and children, and the children in return offer devotion to their parents and love their siblings. A family that is united in this way is happy.

A family where the members strive to serve one another, giving fully of themselves, will experience God in their midst. The family that can embrace God will eternally remain an ideal family. The family is the training center for life in the kingdom of heaven. (61-215, 1972.08.31)

15. The kingdom of heaven is the world in which we love all elderly people as we do our parents, we love all humankind as our brothers and sisters, and we love those of our age as we do our spouse.

The kingdom of heaven is the world where we live based on this universal view of people, expressed in the different realms of heart that we experience in the family.

A social structure that expands based on families made up of such people is like the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is a global extension of our family, filled with our brothers and sisters. (151-085, 1962.10.07)

16. What is the kingdom of heaven? It is the place where we can love the people of the world as we love our family members. People who can do that are the citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Grandfather and grandmother, father and mother, couples, siblings, and children make up four generations.

They are a textbook in the form of a family, a textbook through which we can experience the true love of the universe as citizens of the heavenly kingdom. The family teaches us as if it were a textbook.

People who live this way experience no national barriers, even after they go to the spirit world. Wherever they go, wherever they are, the road opens up for them. (129-098, 1983.10.01)

17. The kingdom of heaven is where husband and wife go after attaining complete oneness through God's love, and is where the children who are born to such a couple go. It is where we go with the family, tribe, and people who have attained oneness with God at the center.

Therefore, Jesus, who did not have a family while he was on the earth, could not enter the kingdom of heaven; he dwells in paradise. Only husbands and wives who have been brought together based on God's love can enter the kingdom of heaven.

It is a world where the principle of relationship as husband and wife applies. That is why only families can enter the kingdom of heaven, and each family should bring its tribe and nation along with it. (018-331, 1967.08.13)

18. Your family is in the position to represent the sovereignty of the heavenly kingdom. Parents represent the sovereignty, children represent the citizens, and material possessions represent the land of that nation.

Consequently, being devoted to your parents is the same as being patriotic to your nation and also leads you to fulfill the way of a saint on the world level.
(35-306, 1970.10.30)

19. The four-position foundation is formed when the three types of love-parental love, conjugal love, and filial love — are realized. God will surely appear in the place where this four-position foundation has been fulfilled.

God dwells in the place where the love of the four-position foundation is secured. It is there that we live and attend God for eternity. That place is the foundation for the kingdom of heaven. (47-224, 1971.08.28)

20. When people are perfected as the object partners of God, the incorporeal God's ideal of love is substantiated. When people completely unite in mind and body and mature in character with God as their center, they become eternal object partners of God's life, love, and ideal.

Once Adam and Eve become ideal individuals as God's children, they will form an ideal family, then an ideal society, nation, and world, and realize the kingdom of heaven of harmony and unity. In their lives, they will experience ideal happiness and bliss in resonance with absolute love. (135-011, 1985.08.20)

21. Life in the kingdom of heaven begins in the family, not elsewhere. The kingdom of heaven is a multidimensional extension of the family, not something separate from the family realm.

When you embrace your husband or wife; therefore, you should think that you are harmonizing with all the men or women of the world. In this way, you make the condition in your family of having loved all humanity. (30-083, 1970.03.17)

22. The extension of the ideal family is the ideal nation, and the extension of the ideal nation is the ideal world. The extension of the ideal world is the ideal cosmos.

When that is realized, since the heavenly kingdom is the extension of the family model, people who have experienced the way of true love in the family are set to be welcomed anywhere they go in the world. They will be able to travel freely in the heavenly world. (239-096, 1992.11.24)

23. The family is a training camp that equips people to enter the kingdom of heaven. It is a training ground. The world is inhabited by people just like our grandfathers and grandmothers. If we expand the family, we have the world. The population of this world is composed of people of the age of your mother and father, the age of your spouse, and the age of your children.

Therefore, people who expand in all directions the training that they received in their families, and live within a realm of love that serves people in all directions, will enter the kingdom of heaven. The family is the training ground that makes it possible for people to go straight to the kingdom of heaven. (143-072, 1986.03.15)

24. The family is the place where we can feel the joy of creation on behalf of the invisible God. When we look at the world, we find people who are like our children, people who are like us, people who are like our father and mother, and people who are like our grandfathers and grandmothers.

Imagine that you had a yardstick to measure children, another to measure spouses, another to measure parents, and another to measure grandparents. Putting all of these together, you could form the body of one family. When you extend the family, you have the world.

Look at your family's situation. If you make all of them — children, spouses, parents, and grandparents — the subject partners, and make the world their object partner, the two will go round and round as plus and minus.

People who live on earth interacting in this way enter the kingdom of heaven. This world becomes the training ground that opens the way for you to go to heaven. (254-246, 1994.02.13)

25. The family is the training ground that prepares you to conquer the ideal nation and the ideal world with love. Moreover, it is the training ground that prepares you to conquer the heavenly kingdom and even God Himself.

There, if you cast a net of love and pull it in with all your strength, the world will be pulled to you, the spirit world will be pulled to you, and even God will be pulled to you. In the end, an ideal family is where we fish to catch the universe with love. (106-026, 1979.11.04)

26. God is the vertical Parent. He will never be apart from you, for all eternity. The reason we have to attend to our parents is to receive training in attending God, who is the vertical True Parent in the eternal world. The heavenly kingdom is the world of love.

The world of love exists with the air of love, and the family is the place that trains you to adapt to that environment. True love contains the concept of giving. It does not mean that you can act as you please for yourself. If you think you can relax and be comfortable in your home, you are mistaken. It is a difficult path to follow. (183-336, 1988.11.09)

27. People who go the way of filial piety — attending their grandparents and parents in the family — and apply these lessons to the world, will find that they can relate to everyone, anywhere.

Even if they go to the spirit world and meet people who have lived in past ages, they will be welcomed. Right there, equality, harmony, and unity emerge from the north, south, east, and west. When this center of equality, harmony, and unity appears, freedom emerges.

Freedom means being with God. Once you reach that level, all things of creation will welcome you. That is freedom in the truest sense. (216-302, 1991.04.14)

28. Our journey through life consists of becoming a son or daughter, a brother or sister, and a husband or wife who can receive and practice God's love. It is a journey to become a husband or wife and love our sons and daughters from the position of second creators, just as God loved Adam and Eve.

The beginning is love, the process is love and the end is also love. As the perfect product, after being manufactured according to the specifications of love, we go to the kingdom of heaven. When we actualize the kingdom of heaven, we do not do so as individuals but as whole families. (226-308, 1992.02.09)

29. In a family, there are grandfathers and grandmothers, father and mother, and also sons and daughters. It is the same in the world. If you are trained to love people in the world who are the same age as your grandfather and grandmother, your father and mother, and your children, more than you love your family members, you will become a perfect being who can relate at any time to the multitudes in the heavenly world. (236-150, 1992.11.04)

30. Is yours a family in which the father and mother, the couple and the children are united in unchanging love? Is your family a treasure that the universe cannot continue without, a family everyone aspires to emulate?

If we expand such a family horizontally, we create a tribe that God can love and cannot release. Yet even if we expand that foundation to a people and a nation, that nation is not enough. We need the world, and even that is still not enough.

We cannot reach perfection unless we reach the stage of governing by the authority of the love that connects and unites the spirit world with the earthly world. If we do not reach that stage, there is no way for humanity to be liberated.
(141-117, 1986.02.19)

31. Love is the reason God created man and woman as the ideal of His creation. That is why people who have lived centered on love enter the kingdom of heaven. If you compare the kingdom of heaven to a barn where the harvest is stored, the family is the harvest.

A man and a woman who have become husband and wife centered on love enter the kingdom of heaven with their family. When you perfect your home on earth by creating such a family, your entire hometown will welcome you.

You will be a model son or daughter and model grandson and granddaughter whom God can embrace and love. When you put these teachings into practice in your family, you will stand in a position from which you can go straight to the heavenly kingdom. (213-202, 1991.01.20)