Category: Old Testament

Join us for the Urban Life Training Chapter Workshop, online or in-person on July 3rd 2020. Learn materials that teach about the physical, intellectual, emotional and long term benefits of sexual abstinence before marriage. Learn about setting up a Chapter of Urban Life Training to teach this material to middle and high school youth: https://www.urbanlifetraining.org/index.php/109-training/351-urban-life-training-chapter-workshop .

Acts 9

¹¹ The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the house of Judas on Straight Street. When you get there, you will find a man named Saul from the city of Tarsus. Saul is praying, ¹² and he has seen a vision. He saw a man named Ananias coming to him and putting his hands on him, so that he could see again.”

Ezra 8

²¹ Beside the Ahava River,^[i] I^[j] asked the people to go without eating^[k] and to pray. We humbled ourselves and asked God to bring us and our children safely to Jerusalem with all of our possessions. ²² I was ashamed to ask the king to send soldiers and cavalry to protect us against enemies along the way. After all, we had told the king that our God takes care of everyone who truly worships him, but that he gets very angry and punishes anyone who refuses to obey. ²³ So we went without food and asked God himself to protect us, and he answered our prayers.

Richard: Human responsibility is the most important thing. Here, the people of God take responsibility for themselves, centered on God.

World Scripture and the Teachings of
Sun Myung Moon

Chapter 2

Truth and Universal Law

Duality

3. Duality Operates by Giving and Receiving

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

When a wife dies, or a husband dies, why does the surviving spouse feel sorrow? When a woman’s husband dies, why does she make a big scene by crying “Wah!” at the top of her lungs? She doesn’t just cry; she completely loses her mind. Why does this happen? She and her husband formed a reciprocal realm and, centering on love, entered into the universe’s realm of eternal principle. But the death of the husband caused that reciprocal realm to break apart, and the wife feels a force pushing against her with such force that it makes her skin turn red. That force makes her feel sorrow and pain…
Unmarried girls will go around playing, and sometimes you see a group of girls hanging on to each other, embracing each other and such. The same is true with boys. Wrestling with each other, rolling around on the ground like calves, they make all sorts of noise in the village. But on the day one of those young men marries and takes a wife, will he want one of his handsome friends to come and stand next to him in front of his wife? Would any man want that? No, he will kick his friend away, saying, “Don’t ever come here again! Get out of here! Now!”
It’s not a bad thing for him to tell his friend to go. He is actually telling him, “You should do as I do, and stand in a position where you can welcome the universal principle.” By kicking his friend away, he guides him to the path to perfection. (218:335, August 22, 1991)

Knowing this is the principle, the theory of evolution cannot be sustained. The supposed evolutionary link from amoebas to monkeys to human beings ignores the fact that each of the countless relationships between male and female had to pass through the gate of love and establish a realm of reciprocity.
Take sparrows, for example. During the winter, they know nothing about having relationships, so they play around and all become their own positives. But in the spring, when they start making nests and forming reciprocal realms, they become absolute. Both the male and the female of an established pair will repel a third sparrow that approaches. If a female approaches them, the male will repel it; if a male approaches, the female will repel it. Why is that? They repel the third sparrow because it threatens to break up their reciprocal realm and is an aggressor on the realm of the law of the universe. (218:338, August 22, 1991)

Hegel and especially Engels, philosophers who came up with the law of the dialectic, saw universal law as decreeing conflict and opposition. Unless we successfully resolve the question of the dialectic within the universe, we cannot find the true formula for the ideal world, nor can we establish peace and harmony with hierarchical order in organizations structured with up and down relationships. We must demonstrate the falsity of such principles as “survival of the fittest,” “the strong eat the weak,” and “power causes progress.” Otherwise, people would think that mistreating others is not a sin. (132:142, May 31, 1984)

Some people say the universe is made of energy. It is true that all beings are formed of energy, but what is needed for that energy to exist?
No being is energy itself. There is always a reciprocal standard or common base. Before we acknowledge energy, we must acknowledge the common base. If we acknowledge the common base, we must acknowledge subject and object partners…
“Relative relationship” does not refer to a thesis-antithesis-synthesis relationship, where a standard called “thesis” and something called “antithesis” oppose each other and become unified as one. Instead, it refers to a relationship where the object partner responds to the subject partner. That is, it means that a subject and object partner respond to each other and engage in action centering on a common purpose. When they engage in perfect give-and-take action and achieve a reciprocal realm, energy comes into being, and only then is the center determined. Even if there is a great deal of action, if the action is going in opposite directions, it will eventually destroy the world. (15:53, February 7, 1965)

Richard: Mistreating others is a sin. Development occurs through having a common purpose, not through conflict and violence.