Wives, Be Submissive to Your Husbands

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Cheon Seong Gyeong 2202

Filial sons and daughters should have more worries than their parents. To become children of filial piety, they must display greater concern than their parents, and they must do so in every regard. (155-253, 1965.10.31)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1188

As viewed from God’s original ideal of creation, the eldest son should come from God’s side and, of course, the second son should also come from God’s side. Due to the Fall, the position of the first son was taken by Satan, and the position of the second son went to God. This has to be made right. Thus, when we consider the story of Esau and Jacob in the Bible, Jacob united with his mother and received her help. He gave Esau the pottage of lentils and bread in exchange for the birthright of the firstborn son. Until today, we could not understand why Bible history is the way it is. With the appearance of the Unification Church, its meaning was clarified for the first time. (134-304, 1985.8.16)

FAMILY

THE BASIC FORM OF LIFE

Ethics of Married Life

LOVE IN MARRIAGE is not unfettered emotion; it survives and thrives through the discipline of married life. The path of marriage holds special challenges to a couple committed to a lifetime together. It serves as a crucible for refining character and a school for perfecting love.
Scriptures spell out some of the traditional ethical rules that have informed marriages through the ages. They spell out different but complementary roles in the household. Husbands should honor their wives and wives should obey their husbands. Both spouses should be faithful, sharing everything together and never contemplating divorce. While occasionally these traditional roles have been made to justify a double standard, when rightly understood they describe reciprocal and mutual responsibilities. (See Chapter 20: Women’s Rights for a discussion of equality between the sexes in the larger society.) Father Moon teaches that the ideal of marriage is when the spouses live for the sake of each other, the husband respecting his wife as God’s daughter and the wife respecting her husband as God’s son. Love is the ultimate basis of the equality of husband and wife.

1. The Core Ethic of Conjugal Love: Spouses Are Subject to Each Other

Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.
    Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, the he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.  
    Ephesians 5.21-33 Continue reading “Wives, Be Submissive to Your Husbands”

The Internation Holy Blessin Ceremony Is the Ceremony of Resurrection

Strengthening Families and Communities Forum:
#111-Jamal Johnson; Having Sex Outside of Marriage Is Bad for Society

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2080

The question is, as brave soldiers who are fighting history’s final battle to determine the ultimate victory or defeat, how strong and bold can we be in the face of the coming fierce war? How much can we overcome? Can we be hopeful, brave fighters who can find new resolve even at the point where life and death intersect? We can digest communism if we have the desire to live to fight again, even on the road to death. We need to have the personal conviction that if we cannot win right now, we will fight again after we revive. (61-35, 1972.8.20)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1401

Once the Blessing of 360 Million Couples is complete, I will no longer conduct any more Blessing ceremonies. From that time on, parents will bless their own children. This will be known as the era of the liberation of the realm of the fourth Adam. There will be no indemnity. In the first and second realms respectively, Adam failed in the Old Testament and New Testament Ages. Even in the Completed Testament Age, we have been persecuted. On entering the era of the liberated realm of the fourth Adam, however, the world will become the one originally envisaged before the Fall. That realm of Adam refers to the whole universe, in which people will form families wherein unfallen parents standing in the position of true parents bless their children, bequeathing the ideal of the family and all internal and external ideals created by God. Thus, the world cannot help but become one. (290-167, 1998.2.18)

FAMILY

THE BASIC FORM OF LIFE

Conjugal Love

4. Marriage Is a Sacred Partnership, Aligning Two Human Beings with the Divine Image

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

God is the root of love, root of life, root of lineage, and the root of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and in heaven. At the marriage of Adam and Eve, God would enter into their hearts and experience with them the love of their conjugal union. Then God would be the vertical True Parent, and Adam and Eve the horizontal True Parents. Because each of us would be born with the blood and flesh of these two sets of parents, our minds would be aligned with the vertical and our bodies with the horizontal. 
    This would form the realm of the harmonious oneness of God and human beings in love. In that realm, people who perfect their love both in mind and body would become God’s sons and daughters. We would enter into a parent-child relationship with God, become God’s princes and princesses, and inherit the entirety of His world. Then, when we perfect husband-wife unity centering on true love, we would form a family that lives in attendance to God. Our family would be the base of peace and of God’s ideal. As man and woman, each being a half of the whole, we would come together to form one body; and as God’s partners we would perfect the ideal of divine love. (254:106, February 1, 1994) Continue reading “The Internation Holy Blessin Ceremony Is the Ceremony of Resurrection”

Marriage Is Not Mainly for the Man or for the Woman

Strengthening Families and Communities Forum:
#111-Jamal Johnson; Having Sex Outside of Marriage Is Bad for Society

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2066

Originally, when I went to America, I told them that, in the age of tong ban breakthrough activities, they should center on the teachers and talk to each high school, middle school and even elementary school teacher one by one. All of that is part of the strategy to connect to the parents of the students. That’s why we’ve made the VOC organization and the Citizens Federation and other such organizations. You should have put these into operation. By not doing this, the communists have run wild doing what they wanted, and left behind scenes of death everywhere. Didn’t I fight alone against all this? (207-169, 1990.11.9)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1803

   It is said you will reap what you sow. Since Adam and Eve fell while they were in their youth in the Garden of Eden, families have been completely destroyed until there is not a single family in the world that God could claim as His own. These are the Last Days. That is indeed the reality today.
    Do the American people have a view of the world? They have no worldview. Do they have a view of the nation? No. Not to mention a view of society, they do not have a view of the tribe, people or family. They deny their mothers and fathers. That is individualism – returning to the position of the archangel, the devil. Man denies woman and woman denies man. Since the Last Days have come, Satan must expose himself in the end.
    Thus, Satan destroyed the family completely. There is no way for Satan or God to solve the problems of juvenile delinquency and family breakdown. If God could, He would have done so at the time of Adam’s family in the Garden of Eden.
    Can God, who was not able to interfere in the Garden of Eden, do anything about this perishing world? Who must bear the responsibility for this? As the false parents, who were made to fall in ignorance ruined things in this way, the True Parents must completely understand everything, God’s secrets and Satan’s secrets, and expose Satan’s secrets before God, saying, “You thug, you turned out to be a murderer!” Wouldn’t even a murderer in hiding slip away from the human world forever, when the proof of his crime is revealed, his crimes declared for what they are, and he is pronounced guilty? It is the same; the reality today is exactly the same as this situation. (302-224, 1999.6.14)

FAMILY

THE BASIC FORM OF LIFE

Conjugal Love

4. Marriage Is a Sacred Partnership, Aligning Two Human Beings with the Divine Image

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Marriage blends men and women into the semblance of the divine unity, so that human beings might fully become the image of God. God created human beings and all things for the purpose of consummating His love. Where do you consummate that love? It is while you live on earth, in the relationship between husband and wife, in the family. That is why your wedding day is the most joyful day in your lives. (123:217, January 2, 1983) Continue reading “Marriage Is Not Mainly for the Man or for the Woman”

We Marry to Resemble God

Strengthening Families and Communities Forum:
#111-Jamal Johnson; Having Sex Outside of Marriage Is Bad for Society

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1187

The Ceremony of the Settlement of the Eight Stages signifies that the historical course of vertical indemnity and the course of horizontal indemnity that went through the stages of individual, family, people, nation, and the world. That is the vertical and horizontal courses consisting of eight stages are completed. Due to this, the right of eldest son has been restored, and the course of indemnity for all humanity is abolished. That is what I have done by holding this ceremony. The right of the eldest son is restored; the Parents are embracing all humankind. Thus, an end is brought to the history of war and struggle that was necessary in order for the right of the eldest son to be restored in the realm of parental love. The time has come when indemnity is not needed and we can reach harmony in love. In order to achieve this, I had to hold the Ceremony of the Settlement of the Eight Stages. By holding this ceremony, the Parents forgave both the elder and the younger son, so that next we can enter the age of the realm of forgiveness for the fallen parents. (193-173, 1989.10.3)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2761

Where are we ultimately destined to go? We will go to the spirit world. What does that mean? Usually it is taken to mean the world after death, but this is not accurate. Why should it not be regarded as the world after death? It is because the spirit world is directly related with love. Since that world is related with love, it is not actually the world after death. The spirit world begins based on true love. Thus, when we stand within the realm of true love, that very place is the spirit world. The spiritual and physical worlds – these two worlds – become one in love. That’s why love is so magnificent. (144-199, 1986.4.24)

FAMILY

THE BASIC FORM OF LIFE

Conjugal Love

4. Marriage Is a Sacred Partnership, Aligning Two Human Beings with the Divine Image

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

We can solve the fundamental problems of family life by strengthening marriage. Although some religious people regard marriage as sinful, we proclaim it the holiest of states.
    God instituted marriage as the only proper way for a man and a woman to love each other. Furthermore, when a man and a woman become one in marriage, whom do they come to resemble? They resemble God. Indeed, it is only when a man and woman unite in matrimony that they can fully resemble God, who created us in His image male and female. Only then can God dwell with us. (70:76, February 8, 1974)

If you only love as a single person, and do not embark on the path of loving as a husband and wife, your life will end in ruin. Love among single people inevitably breaks apart. It is a lifestyle that damages society and even the world. (111:257, February 22, 1981)

Commonly people think that love is what a man and a woman enjoy together. Yet that kind of love has no root in the past or outlook toward the future; it is merely a phenomenon with no direction. It is selfish love. Selfish love cannot be the source of peace, the basis of unity or the basis for freedom. How can there be peace, unity or freedom where people love each other one day and separate the next? There is no happiness there, only regret; no freedom there, only more obstacles; no unity there, only loneliness. That kind of love leads only to destruction.
    I want you to understand that Satan employs such love as a weapon to destroy the ideals of human life. Using this kind of love as a weapon, Satan is robbing us of true freedom, true peace and true unity. From this perspective, the satanic expression of love is truly God’s adversary. It is a most dreadful sin, a most hated enemy. (104:141, April 29, 1979)

Why do we marry? It is to resemble God. God is the harmonious being of dual characteristics. Man and woman are the divided manifestations of God’s dual characteristics. They have to unite as one body, becoming like a seed, in order to enter God’s original dwelling place.
    To yield good seed, you have to go the way of love. This means that you must be born in love, set love as your goal while growing, make love your aim in life, and walk the path of love. Then you will return to love. (138:99, January 19, 1986)

Why do you have to marry? It is because God exists with dual characteristics. A man and a woman each reflect one of these aspects of divinity. Therefore, they must come together and unite to manifest the fullness of God’s image. That is why marriage is the essential condition for your complete growth in the ideal of human love.

Marriage Is a Sacred Partnership

Strengthening Families and Communities Forum:
#111-Jamal Johnson; Having Sex Outside of Marriage Is Bad for Society

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2084

Using South Korean military power to force North Korea to submit is not the way. We should have an ideological foundation that is stronger than theirs. We should have the ability to naturally inspire the North to surrender and have the philosophy of loving our nation more than they love theirs – and of loving God more than they love communism. Otherwise, we will not be able to win the heart of North Korea. Based on our character, we should impress them with our character, our outlook on life, our lifestyle, and personal history. Unless we can surpass them, we can’t win over those armed with the ideology of communism. We cannot restore a Cain nation without a persuasive environment. Furthermore, if the Cain nation can’t be restored, then the restored nation that could become the worldly nation centering on the heavenly nation, will not be established. (46-123, 1971.8.13)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1241

    The literal meaning of the word “blessing” is “praying for blessings.” If you break down the word chookbok (blessing), chook means to pray or wish for something. When you are praying for blessings, what is it that is most precious? It is none other than the blessing of love. The Unification Church uses the word blessing with this meaning. The blessing of love is the greatest, because the fundamental origin of life begins with man and woman coming together in a holy wedding. It represents the most precious commitment of the universe. When praying for blessing, the best blessing you can ask for is the blessing of love, and so the Unification Church refers to marriage as the Blessing.
    The people who come to our church for the first time must understand this. When we say we have received the Blessing in the Unification Church, we don’t mean we have received just any blessing. When we speak of the Blessing, what we actually mean is we have been joined in holy matrimony by True Parents in the presence of God. (83-226, 1976.2.8)

FAMILY

THE BASIC FORM OF LIFE

Conjugal Love

4. Marriage Is a Sacred Partnership, Aligning Two Human Beings with the Divine Image

II am He, you are She;
I am Song, you are Verse,
I am Heaven, you are Earth.
We two shall here together dwell,
becoming parents of children.
    Atharva Veda 14.2.71 (Hinduism)

Representing heaven and earth, I have created husband and wife. This is the beginning of the world.
    Mikagura-uta (Tenrikyo)

From the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.
    Mark 10.6-9 Continue reading “Marriage Is a Sacred Partnership”