True Freedom in Love Requires Human Responsibility

The recordings of the Dividing Line; Ending the Culture that Causes Sexual Abuse workshop are now available.

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1847

There are many vast lakes in the world. In Alaska alone there are three million lakes more than twenty thousand pyung in area. If fish could be raised within such an area of twenty thousand pyung, it would support two hundred or even three hundred households. So, how many could be fed if there are three million lakes? If each lake is twenty thousand pyung, six hundred million people can be supported. Two times three is six – so six hundred million. That is why if we can make fish farms in lakes in Africa, it would provide a food supply for 650 million people. Then the food shortage would be relieved. Fish is much better for your health than beef or any other meat from land animals. Fish is easily digested and absorbed. Therefore, a time will come when people will not eat meat or beef, even if they are told to do so. (271-39, 1995.8.15)

Richard: A very important issue is solving the problem of hunger (starvation) throughout the world. This topic is close to Rev. Moon’s heart, and it should be something that we are working toward solving.

8500 children die every day from malnutrition worldwide. 165 million children experience stunting (below normal height for age) from malnutrition each year, which contributes to one half of these deaths. These deaths are entirely preventable.

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 first-born 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)

True Love

4. True Love Begins from Faith and Character

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

People seek love with each other—horizontal love, while God’s love is vertical love. If love is to be perfect, the horizontal and the vertical lines must be connected. (238:140, November 22, 1992)

A Man Is Born for the Sake of a Woman, and a Woman is Born for the Sake of a Man

The recordings of the Dividing Line; Ending the Culture that Causes Sexual Abuse workshop are now available.

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1676

How old is the planet earth in this solar system? It has been revolving for billions of years, and yet has it ever been off-course by the merest trifle? It is right on course day after day. In the same way, all creation follows its rhythm. Would the building of nests be the same for American sparrows and Korean sparrows, or would they be different? Answer me: same or different? They would be the same. In terms of evolutionary theory, the nest building of sparrows should develop with time, shouldn’t it? If so, then how is it that they have been building their nests in the same way for thousands and tens of thousands of years? How do they know about building their nests? The swallows build their nests in their own way, as do the sparrows and the orioles. In the latter case, they build their nests on trees. (179-246, 1988.8.12)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1503

Heaven must be established from the family. Since Jesus couldn’t form a family, he could not enter heaven, but instead is in paradise. Paradise is like the waiting room you have to pass through before entering heaven. Hell came into existence because of the Fall. God did not create it from the beginning. (21-199, 1968.11.20)

True Love

3. Love’s Circular Motion

Love works in a circle, for the beloved moves the lover by stamping a likeness, and the lover then goes out to hold the beloved in reality. Who first was the beginning now becomes the end of motion.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica4 (Christianity)

Love Cannot Be True Love if It Is Only for Me

The recordings of the Dividing Line; Ending the Culture that Causes Sexual Abuse workshop are now available.

Cheon Seong Gyeong 588

Do you wish to receive good fortune? Do you wish to live eternally? To do so, you must become public people. In educating your children, don’t love them only as your own. Become parents who love their children as offerings for the sake of the people of the world. When holding your babies to your breasts and nursing them, think of yourselves and your babies as representatives of the entire human race on earth. Nurse your babies with such a heart. Instead of caring only for your children and their appearance, cherish other people’s children with a loving heart as if they were yours. Babies who are suckled by such mothers will certainly grow up to become great people. Such results may not surface right away, but after the first and second generations among your descendants there will be born great figures who can rule the world. This is the formula. (31-167, 1970.5.24)

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)

True Love

2. Compassion and Benevolence

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

True Love Gives, Forgets that it Has Given and Continues to Give

The recordings of the Dividing Line; Ending the Culture that Causes Sexual Abuse workshop are now available.

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2112

If you go forward with strong conviction, your ancestors will put pressure on your mother or any of your relatives to stop them from opposing you. It is like telling them, “Listen to me!” Why is this so? The original tribal foundation within the realm of goodness can be connected to the True Parents on the national level, and this, in turn, can be connected to the global level in which Satan has been pushed out. As a result, Satan and the fallen evil spirits have begun to retreat and your ancestors in the archangelic spirit world can now help you. (184-91, 1988.12.20)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1188

True Love

1. The Nature of True Love

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

If Anyone Says ‘I Love God, and Hates His Brother, He Is a Liar

Cheon Seon Gyeong 323

Love transcends all national borders, for God’s love knows no boundaries. It is transcendent of the five different races of humankind, drawing no distinction among the black, white and yellow races. That is why the love of God is great. When love begins to flow regardless of the environment in which it is flowing, the environment adapts to this flow and develops. God will be pleased only when we adopt the perspective that can make this happen. That is why we must walk the path of love. (164-93, 1987.4.26)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1100

No one living on earth until this time has ever seen God’s Day, True Parents’ Day, True Children’s Day, and Day of All True Things. There are 365 days in a year. You should clearly understand that the most important days among all 365 days are those days that I have just mentioned, which have now appeared in providential history. You should know that these days are the king of all days, and if a year like that existed it would be the king of all years. (92-252, 1977.4.18)

Chapter 13

Love

True Love

True love is the supreme love. It is highly desired, yet rare in the world. These passages can only begin to describe this ideal love, whose various attributes will be treated at length in the following sections.
Most essentially, true love is grounded in divine love. Love or compassion, being the core of ultimate reality, is manifested by the saint who can rise above self-centered attachments and desires. As God created for the sake of his creatures, so true love is totally committed to the welfare of the beloved. As God is absolute, eternal and unchanging, true love never changes and cannot be defeated by the vicissitudes of life. As God is the parent of all humanity and the creator of all things, so a person with true love is impartial and all-embracing. Therefore, true love is displayed to individuals who are deeply united with God and fulfill God’s purpose for their life.
True love is beyond the reach of most people, who are caught up in self-centered pursuits. Yet it is not so far off, for everyone has within him or herself the potential for love. A parent who gives everything for the sake of his or her children has tasted it. Maybe he had habitually lived for his own pleasure, but with the birth of a child his life goes through a total reorientation—from self to the other, from taking to giving. Parental love is close to God’s true love, and hence we call God our Father. This inborn potential is illustrated by the Chinese character for benevolence (仁), which contains elements signifying “two (二) people (人)”; the same elements that are combined to make the character for heaven (天). Thus love is innate in our being, through love God dwells with us, and by loving we resemble God.

1. The Nature of True Love

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13

Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us…

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.

1 John 4.7-12, 18-20

The infinite joy of touching the Godhead is easily attained by those who are free from the burden of evil and established within themselves. They see the Self in every creature and all creation in the Self. With consciousness unified through meditation, they see everything with an equal eye.

I am ever present into those who have realized Me in every creature. Seeing all life as My manifestation, they are never separated from Me. They worship Me in the hearts of all, and all their actions proceed from Me. Wherever they may live, they abide in Me.

When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union.

Bhagavad-Gita 6.28-32 (Hinduism)