Authors
1. It is dangerous to fall into a routine life of faith. Such a life of faith becomes a condition for Satan, who is always busy trying to find reasons to accuse us. As people walk the path of restoration, Satan does not want to yield even one person.
He continually searches for any opportunity to invade people by any means or method. In this sense, strict religious precepts are beneficial. When individuals fulfill indemnity conditions, Satan can be separated from them on the individual level.
However, Satan may again invade on the family level, the tribal level, or the national level. If you lead a worldly life guided by habit, you will tend to get easily caught up in a conventional lifestyle that is not a true way of life.
It is better for you to unceasingly practice true love and sacrifice yourself for others, for only then can you overcome Satan. Accordingly, although it may be difficult when you practice the way of righteousness for the public good, you can experience tremendous fulfillment. We all need to lead such lives.
(167-100, 1987.06.30)
Reasons for living a life of faith
2. We human beings have a conscience and a physical body. The more we are pulled by the body, the more the body dominates us and the more its desires control our life, the less powerful our center will be.
If we follow the desires of the body, we will be pulled down to the point where the sphere of our conscience dwindles to zero. However, if we control the desires of the body, we can grow in our vertical faith.
We have not yet grown spiritually to reach the standard of perfection before God. To reach that level, we need to do our utmost to offer conditions of devotion greater than any worldly love. Only when we invest greater love for God than our love for the world can we reach the completion level of the growth stage?
Then by fulfilling our portion of responsibility centering on the realm of oneness, we can pass beyond the jurisdiction of the indirect dominion into God's direct dominion, the realm of perfection. This view is based on the Principle.
(271-281, 1995.08.28)
3. The purer the religion, the stricter it is toward the body. For example, among Christians, Catholic priests and nuns lead celibate lives. This means they are expected to sacrifice themselves to serve others more.
Christians encourage each other with ideas such as, “Seek to become the cornerstone, not just a brick in the upper wall,” or “Become a pillar that holds up walls, not an ornamental facade on the gate.” The Bible's teachings all go against the desires of the body.
We cannot let our fallen mind and body do whatever they want to. This is why we do the opposite of what delights the body. It is because only then can the desires of the body be mastered. The highest and purest religion is the one that is best at leading believers away from bodily desires. (18-068, 1967.05.21)
4. The path of faith we follow does not allow us to insist on our opinions or concepts. Absolute faith has no concept of “I,” “me” or “mine.” When we say our faith is absolute, it means there should be nothing that holds us back. To become one with God we will need to put aside any insistence on our view.
This means we unite completely with the desires of our subject partner, God. Complete unity means we have no shred of desire to impose ourselves. In the path of faith, if circumstances allow us to egocentrically assert ourselves, it is not the kingdom of heaven.
No matter how devout our faith is, if we are in the position to pursue our hopes and desires as we please, it cannot be the kingdom of heaven. Like me, you need to think seriously about this fundamental issue. (046-082, 1971.07.25)
5. When someone faces insoluble personal problems, he or she needs to seek help from a senior, someone who is spiritually higher. The person should honestly report the situation and explain, “I do not exist for myself or live on my own; I exist for those who follow the One.”
Then, if that spiritually higher person instructs him or her to go left, he or she should go left; and if that senior person says to go right, he or she should go right. Whether the spiritually higher person wants the person to go up or down, that person should do as asked. If he or she can say, “I am here at the command of my leader, not for my own sake,” he or she will overcome all difficulties.
That is to say, we need companions in our life of faith. People without companions are lonely people. Those who have companions can support and protect each other.
They can find ways to overcome the challenges that arise in their life. Those with no companions have to resolve by themselves any problems that crop up. But this is truly a challenging task; problems assail us from every direction, and we become unable to make it on our own. (42-251, 1971.03.21)
6. Because the lives of fallen human beings began with Satan unless we deny ourselves, we cannot be linked to God's life. Accordingly, there is no other way except to lay down our life. At what point can there be unity between our life and God's life?
This occurs at the point we are willing to give up our fallen life that is, where we willingly go to the end, even to the extent of sacrificing our life. This is why the path of faith is the path of living for the Will, the path of uniting with the Will even risking our life. (038-079, 1971.01.01)
7. When I hear you laugh while you're talking in your room, I can immediately sense whether your laughter brings something positive or negative to God. I can feel it. You, too, need to cultivate good habits and develop your spiritual senses. Nothing in your surroundings is meaningless.
Everything can be used as educational material, as a textbook for self-development. We need to have such an outlook on life. Then even when you are alone, you will not just act as you please.
If you live with such an outlook on life, you will not mistreat anyone, whether an acquaintance or a stranger. You cannot treat a person casually simply because he or she is a stranger you meet for the first time. You do not know who that person is.
Therefore, in our lives, we need to develop our spiritual senses by relating with our environment centered on the standard of heart. People who never fail to find meaningful value, and delight in any situation or incident, are no longer practicing a merely conceptual faith. Such people practice real faith. Their life of faith is to live together with God. (040-285, 1971.02.07)
8. A life of faith must be fervent. Its fervor must exceed a hungry person's craving for food or the desperate heart of a lost child looking for his or her mother. This is because a life of faith pursues the goal of faith, which is not visible to the eyes. Is God's Will visible?
God's Will remains invisible until it is realized through human beings. In the world around us, people plan, design, budget for, and then execute a project, but God's Will is neither visible nor tangible. It is difficult to seek the invisible world and substantiate its objectives in reality.
Your eyes can see only what is visible. You cannot feel, see, or hear what cannot be physically seen, felt, or heard. Your five senses necessarily enable you to feel, hear, and touch only what is perceptible in the physical realm. (61-143, 1972.08.28)
9. What is the path of faith? If a person can sense something from the invisible world more strongly than from the visible world, that person will never be exhausted.
The external world seeks the visible and revolves around it, but the path of faith pursues what is invisible. Therefore, when you are so caught up in the external world that you lose sight of your spiritual goal and purpose, you will feel drained of energy in your life of faith. (61-143, 1972.08.28)
Regaining the parent-child relationship with God
10. What should be the goal of Unification Church members in their life of faith? Their goal should be to walk the path of the cross, in the shoes of a servant, with the heart of a parent.
We are unworthy to be considered even as servants. We have the body of a murderer who killed the Father. So we must walk the path to indemnify this. Jesus was innocent, yet he walked that path. Therefore, we sinners who killed the Father should walk this path a hundred times, even a thousand times.
(13-055, 1963.10.16)
11. You desperately appealed to God with a sorrowful heart, yet you could not find Him. It is due to the Fall that you could not find God. It is due to the Fall that human beings cannot establish a parent-child relationship with God or a relationship of love with Him based on the heavenly norm.
Therefore, we need to understand the causes and circumstances of the Fall and reveal the identity of Satan. Only then can be human beings be restored to our original position. We do not need a lip-service parent-child relationship or even one just based on a covenant.
We need to recover a living parent-child relationship with God. Even if our bones and flesh melt, and we have to endure excruciating pain, it is only when we invest all our heart and mind in His Will and bring victory that this can happen.
(2-235, 1957.06.02)
12. Imagine the glory of God's creations, which He made with His own hands and which were substantiated by His Word. Yet today heaven and earth do not reflect God's glory. This is woeful and infuriating; it does not reflect God's motivation and purpose for creating.
His creation was defiled and God's intention and purpose of creation were violated due to something unexpected – the Fall of the first human beings. The Fall became the source of suffering, grief, and misfortune. It is the source of everything human beings detest. An adversary wielding a knife is not our true enemy.
The Fall is the real enemy of humankind, the enemy of all things, and the enemy of the Creator. What is the origin of this enemy? It originated millennia ago with the first human ancestors.
Therefore, if we are to dig out the root of evil and sin, we must desperately battle this enemy, and eradicate the origin of the Fall by blasting it out of existence. Only then will the enemy be unable to relate with human beings on Earth? As long as he remains, evil will still be rampant in the world.
Believers ought not to battle over the results of the Fall; rather their priority ought to be finding the Fall's originator. We need to identify the enemy's den and how he caused the Fall.
The problem of the Fall needs to be resolved fundamentally between the three parties: God, human beings, and Satan. Unless this is done, we will remain at a loss over how to resolve human suffering. (11-333, 1962.04.17)
13. Human beings should be able to call God “my Father” from the position of His true sons and daughters. This is the hope of humankind, the hope of all creation,n and the hope of God.
Therefore, we are destined to work for the restoration of this relationship, so we may live on earth as true sons and daughters of God. As of now, our only wish is to build our relationship with God as our parent, based on true love.
(3-029, 1957.09.15)
14. Amid the joys and sorrows that represent heaven and hell, I took my first steps to question and search for the origin of the universe. I discovered that its core is the parent-child relationship.
Therefore, the foundation of restoration is the parent-child relationship. This relationship must be completely restored. Accordingly, the history of God's providence is of the restoration of the original relationship between the Father and His sons and daughters. (19-016, 1967.11.02)
15. To stand before our absolute Father as His true sons and daughters, we need to overcome the world of doubt, the world of death, the world of sin, and the world of fear.
Once we understand what the essence of the life of faith that Heaven expects of us is all about, we can do no less than reach that standard and, having reached it, stand before Heaven. Unless we do so, we cannot become our Father's true sons and daughters.
When you are armed with such faith, you will be able to establish an eternal bond with God, enjoy eternal goodness and eternal life, and be eternally freed from pain. And you will be able to live eternally within the heavenly realm. This is something to remember. (3-022, 1957.09.08)
16. People separated from their parents or their husband or wife feel sorrow. Furthermore, They are unhappy if they don't have a nation that can protect them and their families. These situations draw people together in close relationships. People sometimes feel sadness even in their ordinary relationships.
If they are unable to create bonds based on an eternal worldview, wouldn't they also feel empty? Even if people acquire everything they need and want in their life on earth, they are still bound to seek an eternal relationship with Heaven.
(3-052, 1957.09.22)
17. We who follow the path of faith should aim for that which is unchanging. We must restore unchanging relationships. We need to realize that such bonds are made not separately from our daily lives but from within the sphere of our lives, with everything connected in oneness.
We need to know this and live our lives while actively relating to God. Only through relating with God in our lives can we reclaim our true value and allow God to dwell in our hearts, attaining oneness with Him.
In other words, when you experience God's substantial presence, which allows you to live in such a way, you will realize that this has unlimited value. When you create an environment in which universal values can be actualized, the value of both individuals and the whole will start to grow centering on you.
(3-052, 1957.09.22)
18. Unificationists' view of faith differs from that of any other religion. Up to this point, Christians have had a vague faith based on the Savior Jesus and the Bible. However, our life of faith is based on the word “Parent,” meaning God, and is focused on cultivating the parent-child relationship with God.
Parents and children have an inseparable relationship. That is true from the moment we are born and throughout our lives until we die. Therefore, we cannot live or engage in any activity apart from our parents.
This is especially so for the Parents who are the center of the history of the universe. They are not just ordinary parents who come to earth for their family members; they come having achieved an absolute bond with God.
This is why unless you are connected to God and True Parents and unite fully with them, you cannot accomplish your responsibility or fulfill your purpose. The most important thing is that the three – God, True Parents, and You – must always be in total oneness. (24-131, 1969.07.20)
19. What do all people and all things of creation lament over? It is that we cannot participate as members of the heavenly family. This is the lament of the cosmos.
The purpose of our life of faith is nothing less than to find God and call Him Father. God has carried out the providence of restoration for six thousand years to welcome the day when all people will rejoice as brothers and sisters and recognize Him as their Father. (7-265, 1959.09.27)
Spiritual maturity
20. Why did Jesus claim to be the begotten Son of God? The reason he made a statement that was so hard for the people of his day to believe was that he wanted to give them the benefits of instantly leaping forward in faith through having believed in him.
If the people had boundless faith in Jesus, their cries would have reached Heaven and their faith would have grown with great strides. The higher the level of your faith in the center of the heavenly kingdom, the greater the works the spirit world can do through you.
If you possess boundless faith, then according to the quality of your character, you will be able to immediately feel the realities of the world beyond your physical senses and the physical universe to a degree you cannot imagine.
Unfortunately, human beings lost this wonderful ability. If a believer has the ambition to ceaselessly advance toward the infinite world, he or she will have to face a cosmic battle. He or she will have to vanquish the forces that insist that human beings remain within a hemmed-in realm of faith. (3-021, 1957.09.08)
21. Human beings were originally meant to reach perfection in both spirit and flesh. As long as Jesus remains only in the position of our spiritual parent, he can give us only spiritual salvation, which is one-half of salvation.
Accordingly, there is a need for the returning Lord to come to earth to give us physical salvation, in the flesh. Then the returning Lord is to unite the spirits of all who believed in Jesus together with Christians on earth and offer them all before God to inaugurate the Third Israel.
Just as baptism enabled believers to become citizens of the Second Israel, believers need to go through the gate of the Blessing to become citizens of the Third Israel. (19-096, 1967.12.31)
22. Wrongful love led Adam and Eve to the Fall. To reverse this through indemnity, human beings need to go through the gate of the Blessing and be joined as brides and grooms in God's love. Otherwise, they cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.
The responsibility to establish the Blessing was something that not even Jesus was able to fulfill. It is therefore the responsibility of the returning Lord, the Savior, to complete this task.
Unless the Lord returns and takes up this task, and unless he controls the root of everything on earth, there is no way that he will be able to straighten out the entanglements on earth. The entire responsibility for giving the Blessing is his to fulfill. (19-096, 1967.12.31)
23. Because he was crucified, Jesus could not become the True Parent with a physical body. Although God's lineage was spiritually established, the manifestation of True Parents, who have both spirit and body, could not be realized.
The spiritual True Parent, Jesus, is limited to the spirit world, making only spiritual salvation possible. He did not accomplish physical salvation, namely, redemption for the sins committed in the flesh. Accordingly, Christianity has only had a spiritual father and a spiritual mother – Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, when the True Parents come, we will need to be born anew through them, conditionally or symbolically reentering the womb of the Mother. For that sake, we have been groping our way forward on this course. (055-117, 1972.04.01)
24. Between the spirit self and the physical self, the spirit self is the more important. The physical self has a lifespan of seventy to eighty years in the limited physical realm, after which it decomposes.
However, the spirit self transcends time and space. When you understand the historical responsibility that human beings are meant to fulfill, you must fulfill it. No matter how much you enjoy your life while living in the flesh, your body is destined to perish. Fleshly life is inevitably going to end. (20-326, 1968.07.14)
25. John the Baptist did not attend Jesus on the family level. Therefore, Jesus had to indemnify this on John's behalf. Likewise, because the Christian cultural sphere did not attend the returning Lord, I, in the position of John the Baptist, had to establish the Unification Church in place of Christianity.
Hence, at the time of the Second Advent, the Unification Church is similar to Judaism on the global level. The United States, which is in the position of Israel, and the free world, should have become one with the Unification Church, but they are opposing it, as is Korea.
Until such unity transpires, the Unification Church has no nation and can only carry out the providence of spiritual salvation, just as God carried out the providence of spiritual salvation through Jesus in the New Testament Age. If in the Last Days, Christianity, which has a global spiritual foundation, totally unites me, then establishing the physical foundation will be no problem at all.
(246-142, 1993.04.07)
26. We first need to free ourselves from Satan's world. We should also develop emotions different from those of worldly people. That is, we must deeply experience God's love spiritually and hate what Satan loves.
We must also sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the entire world. If centering on me, you are victorious on the individual, family, tribal, national, and global levels, we can recover spiritual Israel and the chosen people and establish them as Third Israel. When this happens, God can save humanity spiritually and physically through us. (052-042, 1971.12.12)
27. Which is more important: spiritual standards or physical standards? We should not place physical standards in the primary position. Though the flesh exists for the spirit and the spirit for the flesh, do not cling to the ways of the secular world.
You should take a more meaningful position by concentrating your spirit and flesh on the essence of life. This is the path for those who uphold the Unificationist worldview.
As it is, many people care more about the body – about what to eat and where to live – than about living according to a spiritual standard. Everyone is caught by the conditions they create. (20-326, 1968.07.14)
Sharing our lives with True Parents
28. What is the one foundation that can be the starting point for the realization of God's hope and humanity's hope? What is the one foundation that, for believers, marks the starting point of victory?
The origin of God's bitter sorrow is that human beings descended from the false parent, Satan. Therefore, we must become people who can obey our True Parents, based on our sacred relationship with them. This will finally liberate the cosmos and open the gate to the heavenly kingdom. (42-291, 1971.03.27)
29. A true family consists of a true man and a true woman who become true husband and true wife and then true parents of true children. Our core purpose as a man or woman is to become a true parent and as a couple to become true parents.
After becoming true parents, we have sons and daughters and establish a family. This is why in the Unification Church we say, “Let us have faith in True Parents” and “Let us believe in True Parents.”
We needed to say this because we weren't certain that what, we believed, was true. But once we know with certainty, we move beyond the point of mere belief or faith. Formerly we believed because we did not know with certainty; now that we do, we no longer need to simply believe.
Furthermore, until now, we haven't understood why we were born, what it means to become a husband or wife, the significance of children, and what family is all about. But now we no longer need to believe in the True Parents' family because we can know the True Parents' family.
We know True Parents, so we no longer need to just believe in them. Put away the concept, “I believe in True Parents,” and instead think, “I know True Parents.” With that, we can share our lives with True Parents. We can live with them. (287-140, 1997.09.14)
30. The Messiah is the perfected True Parents who had nothing to do with the Fall. When the True Parents appear, they become the axis by which God and human beings can be linked to each other.
God is the spiritual True Parent, and when Adam and Eve reach perfection they become the substantial True Parents on earth. Because of this axis, there is unity. Religions until the present did not have the standard of True Parents; hence there was no way for them to link human beings with God on earth.
Therefore, religions have advocated offering devotion so that believers could establish a standard upon which to build a reciprocal base with Heaven and meet the Lord in spirit.
For this reason, many believers have lived their lives cultivating their spirituality by making repeated conditions of devotion, gradually building their spiritual bridges to encounter Heaven. (268-234, 1995.04.02)
31. Every single human being must follow the path to sever from false love, false life, and false lineage they were born with and to live a new life by being engrafted into true love, true life, and the true lineage.
Religions emerged to help us subjugate the body and forge unity between the mind and body. Therefore, as a religious belief, you must attain the state of mind-body unity while living on earth, become one with your spouse in true love, and give birth to sons and daughters who can go to the kingdom of heaven.
How can people give birth to true sons and daughters who can enter the heavenly kingdom unless they live a life of faith? This is why religions emerged for the subjugation of the body and the unity of the body with the mind.
They are to bring people into unity with the True Parents through an engrafting process. This is how false olive trees are transformed into true olive trees that bear true sons and daughters who, after completing their earthly lives, will proceed to the eternal world, the kingdom of heaven. This is the ideal of creation.
(263-283, 1994.10.15)
32. True Parents advanced from the lowest level of hell up to the height of heaven and are moving forward with true love. When we follow our True Parents' will and become one with them in heart and one with their ideal of life, there will be no distance between us and our True Parents.
Then what they have erected and indemnified vertically will unfold for us horizontally. The standards of the eight stages are required only until redemption is accomplished on the eight levels – that of an individual, a family, a tribe, a people, a nation, the world, the cosmos, and finally the level of God's liberation.
When all that is accomplished horizontally, individuals will be able to freely advance to the family level, our family to the level of the tribe, and our tribe to the level of one person. We start from the individual level, advance to the ends of the earth, and then come back. (295-126, 1998.08.19)
Sun Myung Moon