#119-Kelly Kohls-We Have a Parent Problem
Strengthening Families and Communities Forum
Cheon Seong Gyeong 1132
When Adam was chased out of Eden, was he expelled before or after having children? We did not see this, but if they had sons and daughters, would God have been able to chase them out? There would have been many more tears. The grandchildren would have clung to God and cried, “Grandfather, grandmother,why are you chasing us out like this?” and held on and screamed…If those four people had just grabbed God’s arms and cried, He would have had to cut them off, wouldn’t He? I do not know about sinful Adam and Eve, but their sinless children would have realized the fact that God could not chase them out. God understood this, so He expelled Adam and Eve before they had children. After He had done this, they married at their own discretion; they stayed together and gave birth to their offspring. When God cast them out, did He instruct them to marry and have sons and daughters or did He not say such a thing? Try to answer that. Anyway, they bore children after they were expelled. (218-230, 1991.8.19)
Cheon Seong Gyeong 1112
Hy did God give human beings a portion of responsibility? As He is omniscient and omnipotent, He endowed humanity with those same qualities of creativity. Moreover, as He is also the Subject of eternal and unchanging love, He could not help but vest in human beings a portion of responsibility so as to allow them to rise to a position representing that Subject of love, God Himself.
This became the prerequisite for God’s blessings,comparable to a key that can lead us into the dominion of love over everything, He had no course other than to bequeath this key to us. However, we must understand that problems arose over the fulfillment of human responsibility and that human beings fell. (20-209, 1968.6.9)
Peace
Inner Peace
Peace begins with peaceful individuals. people who attain inner peace radiate peace to others. they possess inner strength, clarity and compassion with which to treat others peacefully, even in the face of hostility. by cultivating what Father Moon calls unity of mind and body, people can become vessels fit to receive God’s abundant love, with which to share with others.
Cultivating inner peace must be the starting-point for all peacemaking efforts in the outer world. no political or economic program can produce a just and equitable peace if the people it seeks to help are full of hatred and violence in their hearts.
Just as a deep lake is clear and still, even so, on hearing the teachings and realizing them, the wise become exceedingly peaceful.
Dhammapada 82 (Buddhism)
Men do not mirror themselves in running water—they mirror themselves in still water. Only what is still can still the stillness of other things.
Chuang Tzu 5 (Taoism)
As rivers flow into the ocean but cannot make the vast ocean overflow, so flow the streams of the sense-world into the sea of peace that is the sage.
Bhagavad-Gita 2.70 (Hinduism)
If a person’s heart is peaceful, his body will be at ease, and if a person’s heart is malicious, the body will be malevolent.
Hadith (Islam)
The Lord lives in the heart of every creature. He turns them round and round upon the wheel of his Maya. Take refuge utterly in Him. By His grace you will find supreme peace, and the state which is beyond all change.
Bhagavad-Gita 18.61-62 (Hinduism)
All this is full. All That is full.
From fullness, fullness comes.
When fullness is taken from fullness,
Fullness still remains.
Om. Peace, peace, peace.5
Isa Upanishad: Peace Chant (Hinduism)
The monk looks for peace within himself, and not in any other place. For when a person is inwardly quiet, there is nowhere a self can be found; where, then, could a non-self be found?
There are no waves in the depths of the sea; it is still, unbroken. It is the same with the monk. He is still, without any quiver of desire, without a remnant on which to build pride and desire.
Sutta Nipata 919-20 (Buddhism)
What causes wars, and what causes fighting among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
James 4.1-3
Whence come wars, and fighting, and factions? Where but from the body and the lusts of the body? For wars are occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be acquired for the sake and in the service of the body.
Socrates, in Plato, Phaedo (Hellenism)
Once the good are perfectly good, there can be no war between them. This much is true, how- ever, that while a good man is still on the way to perfection, one part of him can be at war with another of his parts; because of this rebellious element, two good men can be at war with each other. The fact is that in everyone “the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.”
(Gal. 5.17)
Thus, the spiritual longing of one good man can be at war with the fleshly passion of another just as fleshly passion in one man can resist spiritual tendencies in another. And the war here is much like that between good and wicked men. So, too, a good deal like the war of the wicked against the wicked is the rivalry of fleshly desires in two good men, and this will continue until grace wins the ultimate victory of soundness over sickness in both of them.
Saint Augustine, City of God 15.5 (Christianity)
Wage jihad against the desires of your selves,
and your hearts will be occupied by wisdom.
The best jihad is to ensure that one does not
even consider transgressing against others.
Hadith (Islam)
Only when a man invites insult will others insult him. Only when a family invites destruction will others destroy it. Only when a state invites invasion will others invade it.
The T’ai Chia says,
When Heaven sends down calamities,
There is hope of weathering them;
When man brings them upon himself,
There is no hope of escape.
Mencius IV.A.8 (Confucianism)
Mental violence has no potency and injures only the person whose thoughts are violent. It is otherwise with mental non-violence. It has potency which the world does not yet know.
Mohandas K. Gandhi (Hinduism)