It Is More Blessed to Give than to Receive

Book Review: Standing Up to Goliath: Battling State and National Teachers’ Unions for the Heart and Soul of Our Kids and Country by Rebecca Friedrichs

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2044

Until now, each administrative authority in the Republic of Korea has never had the experience of carrying out its political or educational directives centered on tong and ban. It has never carried out education on a national level. It has been unable to advocate its ideology. It has only been able to gather together the city mayors or the county officials, and maybe one or two other people from the local neighborhoods. The main target for ideological education has not been the leaders of tong and ban. Therefore, there are no roots. It means that no roots were put down here. That’s the point; there are no roots. It’s just like a floating weed. (165-224, 1987.5.27)

Richard: This is the very same Rheama that I got on July 20th, 2019, and again on Dec. 31st, 2019. July 20th was when Stacey and I determined to initiate Home Church in our West Virginia neighborhood. Butt who are the leaders of the tong and ban. A tong, in Korea, is about 100 homes. A ban is about a dozen homes. So these are small groups of neighbors who collaborate together. Yet this is lacking in our neighborhood (and in most neighborhoods). We need to solve this issue. Those who hear the voice of God need to step up and work to know, love and serve their neighbors, as well as well as help them learn what God’s Will is for their lives.

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1474

God created humankind for the sake of love. Why were human beings created? They were created because of love. The reason human beings are different from other forms of creation is that they were created as God’s sons and daughters. They were created as object partners who can receive love directly from Him. Such is the privilege of humankind. (132-245, 1984.6.20)

Giving and Receiving

The wisdom of giving is the topic of passages in this section. When we give to one another freely and without conditions, sharing our blessings with others and bearing each other’s burdens, the giving multiplies. We receive far more than we gave. even when there is no immediate prospect of return, heaven keeps accounts of giving, and in the end blessing will return to the giver, multiplied manyfold. We must give first; to expect to receive without having given is to violate the universal law. (see chapter 2: Duality) conversely, giving with strings attached—in order to receive, to curry favor or to make a name for oneself—is condemnable.
Father Moon’s extensive teachings about giving provide a philosophical basis for this universal moral wisdom. Giving is rooted in the nature of the creator, who invested himself utterly to create all things in heaven and earth. he goes on to explain several reasons for giving’s paradoxical power to yield increase the more it is spent: first, because in giving we pattern our lives after the creator; second, through the concept of give-and-take action as seen in the cycles of the natural world; and third, in the investment of parents in their children, with its joyful yield over the years—growth, prosperity and grandchildren. To encourage us to give without any conditions, he counsels us to “give and give and forget what you have given.”

1. The Way of Giving and Its Rewards
It is more blessed to give than to receive.
    Acts 20.35
 
You will not attain piety until you expend of what you love; and whatever thing you expend, God knows of it.
    Qur’an 3.92
 
He who gives liberally goes straight to the gods;on the high ridge of heaven he stands exalted.
    Rig Veda 1.125.5 (Hinduism)

Give not with the thought to gain, and be patient unto thy Lord.
    Qur’an 74.6-7
 
One must pour cold water on the ground before he can tread on soft soil.
    Yoruba Proverb (African Traditional Religions)
 
One man gives freely, yet grows all the richer;another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.
A liberal man will be enriched,
and one who waters will himself be watered.
    Proverbs 11.24-25
Verily, misers go not to the celestial realms. Fools do not indeed praise liberality. The wise man rejoices in giving and thereby becomes happy thereafter.
    Dhammapada 177 (Buddhism)
 
The accumulation of wealth is the way to scatter the people, and the letting it be scattered among them is the way to collect the people.
    Great Learning 10.9 (Confucianism)
 
He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work.
    2 Corinthians 9.6-8
 
The Buddha said, “When you see someone practicing the Way of giving, aid him joyously, and you will obtain vast and great blessings.” A novice asked, “Is there an end to those blessings?” The Buddha said, “Consider the flame of a single lamp. Though a hundred thousand people come and light their own lamps from it so that they can cook their food and ward off the darkness, the first lamp remains the same as before. Blessings are like this, too.”
    Sutra of Forty-two Sections 10 (Buddhism)
 
 

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