In Jin Moon
July 22, 2012
Good morning. Wow! You certainly know how to blow away your senior pastor this morning! Thank you. It’s really good to be back. We just came back from Korea a couple of days ago, and I had the great privilege of spending Friday afternoon with the Lovin’ Life camp. I want to thank them for allowing me to feel like an 18 -- year -- old for about an hour. They were so gracious and cute.
It’s always an interesting experience for me to see the young kids because even though I’m in a body that belongs to a 40 -- some -- years -- old woman, I still feel young at heart; I feel as if I’m 15 or 16. I realize that they are looking at me as a senior pastor, even as I feel quite junior in my spirit. It’s such a wonderful thing to see all these beautiful children— all different colors and shapes, and so much promise of things to come.
When I look at them, I see the future not just of our movement but of the world. And I feel that if we keep on this course of doing outstanding work in building great families and communities then truly the next millennium is going to be— and it’s not lip service— a world of peace, love, and harmony.
I got to spend a little time with lovely children on Friday, but we also know what happened in Colorado. This young man, 24 -- year -- old James Holmes, decided to take it upon himself to play the Joker on the opening night of the new Batman movie, and he took away the lives of 12 people and wounded 58 others.
When I hear things like this on the news, I cannot help but wonder what kind of a role model a person like James Holmes had in life. I if only he could have had a wonderful role model like the ones we have in True Parents, I wonder how different his life would have been. M any psychologists and sociologists over the years have studied human behavior, human character, and the way character develops, and they’ve pretty much concluded that the most important type of learning is observational learning. It’s not what we’re told; it’s not what is said to us. It’s what we perceive or what we observe in the course of our lives that gives us the model for the kind of people we want to be.
I think that is the reason why our Heavenly Parent wanted to send us a wonderful role model in the form of our True Parents. We’ve had wonderful men and women throughout history providing a good role model for many of us, but very few times in history have we had a couple, a beautiful man and a beautiful woman as beautiful partners, showing us what a loving couple or a loving parent is all about, giving us a glimpse into what our Heavenly Parent is like.
I ask myself, “What is it about True Parents that makes them so loving, so encouraging, so empowering, and inspiring? What is it about their relationship?” We observe them as the children of God, yearning to inherit the true love of God and to be like God through the example of our True Parents. Then we realize that we’ve been given an incredible gift in our lifetime, the gift of a supreme role model that we can look at, aspire to, follow, be guided by, and be inspired by.
The Desire to Be Remembered
Every time something like this takes place – like the Columbine school shootings or shootings on different college campuses – I see misguided youths wanting to let the world know they exist by demonstrating their answer to the question, “I n this sea of human beings, how do you stand out as somebody to be remembered?” For this young man in particular— he was in the process of leaving his Ph.D. program in neuroscience at Colorado University— something must have happened in his course of study that made him realize that perhaps his dream of getting a Ph.D., then getting a fine job at a university and becoming a renowned academic or a scholar, was coming to a close.
I’m sure he was fighting with himself, trying to see, “How can I leave my mark? How can I leave my legacy? How can I be remembered?” Sometimes when we’re going through the zest of life or through desperate measures, we don’t always opt toward the most positive way to go out with a bang. Sometimes young people want to go out with a bang by destroying other people. “If I cannot have it myself,” they seem to think, “then I might as well make it so that the other person cannot have it as well.” When we are miserable, we may decide to make sure we inflict misery on others.
This is the reason why our True Parents’ teaching of living for the sake of others is a marvelous philosophy that we need to keep in mind whenever something like this takes place. If we happen to find ourselves in such a difficult or miserable or suffering state that we are tempted, just like James Holmes, to say, “You know what? I’m miserable, I’m not going to be successful in life, I’m not going to have the love of my life, I’m not going to have and become that big powerful person at this moment, so I might as well go out with a bang and take everybody with me.”
Instead of thinking like that, however, if we follow our True Parents’ encouragement and challenge, we will think about the other— we will learn how to be happy for others, even though we may be in a difficult situation. We may be going through a period of misery, but that’s when we need especially to focus on, “How can I learn how to be happy for others? How can I learn how to wish well on others? How can I learn how to love others despite my own suffering?”
This is what the philosophy of living for the sake of others teaches us how to do. Through the guidance and example of our True Parents, we realize that our life here on earth is an opportunity to leave something beautiful behind. We realize that our end goal is not just to settle down with a fine wife or a fine husband— even though that would be a lovely thing to do. We realize that the goal in life is to become a parent, to experience God’s parental heart, to understand what God must have been feeling when he and she created Adam and Eve, and finally to experience what God must have been feeling when he and she first gazed into the face of their beautiful son and daughter. We are intended to experience what God must have been feeling as a parent when he and she looked upon their children and wanted the world for them. This is what we are meant to experience in our lifetime, and we are given a certain allotted time— our one life.
Looking to God
When we are young we think life lasts forever. But when we really think about it, our one life is quite brief. It’s not that long, you know. One of the foremost ministers, Billy Graham, used to say that one of the first things that hit him whenever he found himself at a pulpit looking into the audience of men and women who had gathered to hear him speak is the brevity of life. He realized that he could be standing at the pulpit one morning, at one moment, and he could be gone the next. Such a realization reinforces the desire to make this time count and to make our life count, by being the kind of a family that can raise beautiful children so the children we leave behind are much more beautiful and better positioned to do well in life than the children we found ourselves to be when we first came into this world.
As we go forward in our movement and we are thinking about how to practice the life of living for the sake of others, one of the things that the Bible teaches us comes to mind. The Bible says in Luke 21:28 “Lift your head up high. Lift your head up high because the redemption draws near.” “Lift your head up high because the redemption draws near.”
What this passage is saying to all of us, all of God’s children, is, “Look to God, children.” Whenever we are in a sea of difficulty and problems, in a sea of our circumstantial situations, instead of looking at ourselves or looking just down at our problems, we are to lift our head up high and look to God.
God is asking us as the children of our Heavenly Parent, number one, to look at ourselves and our situation from God’s perspective. If James Holmes had taken the time out to look at his situation not just from his own perspective but from perhaps a bird’s -- eye perspective, or even better yet, from God’s perspective, he could not have done what he did. He was wrapped up in his own situational pain; he wanted to be remembered in this endless sea of mindless faces; he felt lost, unappreciated, and unheard; and he wanted to be seen.
The Joker from Batman the Dark Knight
He thought perhaps that the way he can finally be heard and seen is to go out with a bang the way he did— to take other lives with him by playing God, by playing the Joker, if you will. I think that in his intellectual understanding of his own life, he was thinking that somehow he was the character of Joker in the Batman series.
But anybody who has read Shakespeare is well aware that sometimes the character of the fool or the joker is the only one who knows or understands the truth. By acting silly, crazy, or insane, the fool hopes to provoke a man or a woman to think about the important matters at hand. The fool’s job is to provoke people’s way of thinking in the king’s court. So some of the things that perhaps the king is not aware of, the fool usually knows, but he parades the truth in such a playful, zany, or crazy way that he’s not going to get his head chopped off by the king even as he makes people think.
I imagine that James Holmes in his own delusional mind was thinking, “I want to play the Joker, I want to play the fool. I want to teach the truth of life— that life is tough, it’s miserable, and I want to provoke a response in the people to think about their lives, to think about what life is all about.” Perhaps he thought he was a messianic figure of some sort.
If he, instead of being engulfed in his own perspective of himself vis-à-vis the world, were in a situation, an opportune setting, in which he could take himself out of himself and see himself from God’s perspective, he would have known that he is God’s eternal son. He would have known that God has given him the gift of dignity, that God wants for this son an empowered and an inspired life, and that God wants this son to do his best, finding his passion, utilizing his talents, and giving back to his community so that he will be remembered for something that he created in his lifetime— hopefully a beautiful family that he has left behind. Had he thought about his moment of difficulty from God’s perspective, then the end result would have been very different than the one we heard about on CNN.
Seeing from God’s Perspective
The Bible in Luke 21:28 is reminding us of just that. Regardless of what circumstances or what difficulty we all find ourselves in from time to time, we need to learn how to look to God. We need to look to God and realize that God’s perspective might be slightly different from our own. We might be looking at the glass thinking that it’s half empty, but God might be looking at the glass and seeing that it’s half full.
When we look at the different avenues of New York City from the perspective of an art student wanting to make a painting showing perspective, we realize that we, from our vision, have a certain perspective on how we’re going to draw those buildings. But if we look from a different perspective— for instance, if we were on a plane or if we’re arriving on a helicopter and we were looking at the city from top down, we realize that our perspective on the same location is going to look very different.
Likewise, when we learn to look from God’s perspective and not be defined by our own perspective all the time, we realize that God has a purpose for all of us. There’s a reason why we are here; no matter how difficult life may be, we have a reason why we need to treat our life with gratitude, respect, and care, so we can create something beautiful and leave something beautiful behind.
When I spent time at UTS with the Lovin’ Life camp, I realized, “Gee, these kids are so different because not only are they the handiwork of God, but also they understand— or they’re coming to understand— that they are eternal sons and daughters of God and there is a purpose for why they are here. They have a reason to exist, and they understand the meaning behind all the things that have taken place in terms of their parents having gone through all those sacrificial years in the wilderness.
So even though the Lovin’ Life campers, like so many of us, may at different moments of our lives have looked at our parents as, “Wow, what a bunch of losers.” (To an audience member) Why are you laughing? You are laughing because you’ve thought it, and I am laughing because I’ve thought it, too. I’ve thought, “What losers my parents are. All they care about is the providence. All they care about is mission. What about money, power, and knowledge? What about all these things?”
Superheroes for God
Why does my father wear the same 1970s polyester shirt day in and day out, decade after decade? In terms of fashion, he’s a fashion victim. In terms of fashion, he’s a fashion loser. But looking at it from God’s perspective, I realized, “Oh my goodness, I thought he was a fashion victim caught in a 1970s polyester shirt, but he’s the messiah, or the Lord of the Second Advent that we’ve been waiting for. Oh my goodness!”
Some of us have thought, “My parents are losers because they can’t make ends meet. How many times have we stood in line for food stamps? How many times have we suffered because we couldn’t pay for gas for the car?” And more of us may have thought, “How many times did I wish I could have been born to a different family? “ But looking at it from God’s perspective, we realize, “Oh my goodness, my loser parents are actually awesome heroes of history. They have done what the 12 disciples of Jesus could not do. The 12 disciples of Jesus did not stand by the Son of God when he was crucified on the cross, but my parents have stood steadfastly by the messiah.”
“Maybe our parents are not that beautiful or not that handsome. Maybe they don’t have bodies like Mr. Universe or Miss Universe. Maybe they look kind of plain. Maybe they look old; maybe they look tired.
But oh my God, looking from God’s perspective, they are like Batman and Superman and the Japanese Anpanman. And they are here fighting the Monster Vikings. They did what the disciples of Jesus could not do.
“They stood by our True Parents through the time of the wilderness for 40 or 50 years. They stuck to our True Parents the way a leech sticks to your leg. They just wouldn’t let go and they never gave up. And regardless of what our True Parents are going through, because they stuck to True Parents all those years and they never left True Parents, our True Parents are still with us today. We realize what we thought were losers were actually amazing men and women heroes of history.”
When we look at our parents from God’s perspective we realize what an incredible time we’re living in, absolutely incredible. When we’re young and we’re looking toward the future, thinking about our careers, we find ourselves in different settings where we feel stuck and bogged down. But when Luke 21:28 asks us to lift up our heads because redemption draws near, it is asking us to look to God— and in looking to God, it is asking us not to get bogged down, not to get stuck. It’s up to us not to get stuck. We’re only stuck if we allow ourselves to be stuck. We are only bogged down if we allow ourselves to be bogged down.
“The Most Useless Place Is the Waiting Place”
There’s a fantastic book by Dr. Seuss that is one of my favorite readings at times when my life gets really complicated and convoluted. Of course I love reading different novels, different theological works, and philosophical works, but there’s something that’s simply elegant about Dr. Seuss’s series. His book called Oh, the Places You’ll Go is a fantastic book of encouragement and empowerment.
He’s basically saying, “Think about all the things that you’re going to do. Think about all the places you’ll go. Think about the different planets, different dreams, different places in dreams that you’ve thought about. Think about everything that you’ve wanted to create for yourself in your life.” It’s a book about tapping into the inner child of all of us and reminding us, “Yes, we are divine beings, divine sons and daughters of God, and all we need to do is to decide that we’re going to go. ‘Oh, the places we’ll go.’”
When you read the book you realize that he is talking about different scenarios of life. There will be moments you’re alone, when you just need to keep on going and be inspired and empowered. Sometimes you’ll get stuck, but you just need to keep on going, you need to get in focus, and “Oh, the places you’ll go.”
He says there’s one really sad place, and the sad place in the book is called a waiting place. A waiting place in the book is where everybody sits and waits. Everybody sits waiting for that dream, waiting for that gift, waiting for that love, waiting for that happiness. And Dr. Seuss says this is a sad, sad place.
What God is asking us when God asks us to look to God, is, “Don’t get stuck in what Dr. Seuss says is a sad, sad place. Don’t get stuck being bogged down by the burdens of the world. Don’t sit and just wait for salvation to come. Don’t sit waiting for redemption to come. Don’t look down.” The Bible is saying, “Lift your head.” It’s an active verb. We have to do the active action of lifting our heads to look to God. Don’t get stuck. Don’t wait.
This reminds me of a very good friend of mine who was in a very difficult relationship in his marriage. He loves his wife so much, and they have a wonderful family, but they’ve been through many different things over the years. The husband was basically saying to me, “I love my wife and my wife, I think, loves me. But she’s going through the hell of being addicted. She’s an alcoholic.”
He says, “I’ve been waiting all these years for her to turn around, for her to realize that redemption is near. She needs to look up; she needs to look toward God. And I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting, but she’s not changing.”
Being a Catalyst for Change
God is saying to this husband at this time in Luke 21:28 “Don’t just sit and suffer in silence as the poor, victimized husband, not knowing what to do, just waiting for your wife to change.” God is asking this person to think about how perhaps he can be a catalyst in his wife’s life by deciding to change himself.
He didn’t realize that over the years he had become a helpless codependent, helping her continue in her addiction to alcohol because he chose to continue being a victim instead of choosing to take steps to become be a healthy husband. He didn’t realize that he needed to stop waiting for tomorrow to bring salvation and deliverance. He didn’t realize that instead he needed to decide today the steps that he can take to change the way he behaves, the way he talks, the way he relates to his wife. He didn’t realize that in changing himself he can be a natural catalyst to help his wife want to change.
He needed to decide that he no longer wanted to be a codependent in this relationship. He needed to decide that he was going to put his foot down and not just be guided by his wife right, left, up, and down, and following her addiction just because he wanted to show the world he cared. He eventually realized that caring also comes with tough love, and if he loved his wife he needed to change himself, to catapult himself out of that codependency and into becoming a healthy person working on his life, by taking measures into his own hands. Only by becoming the master of his own destiny, if you will, could he become the very catalyst that would help his wife realize that she needed help.
He was sharing with me, “Though all those years of waiting and waiting for my wife to change, I thought God had left me. I thought God didn’t care about me. But I didn’t realize that God was waiting for me; God was asking me to be the agent of change and do something about our lives.”
So this passage reminds us to look to God, to look at our lives, our circumstances, and our situations from God’s perspective. This passage also reminds us not to get bogged down and stuck in this eternal waiting game in which we feel like God has forgotten about us. At those times, God is not forgetting about us; God is just watching to see what we are going to do.
Act Now
And that leads us to the third thing that this passage reminds me of. This is something I have realized so many times in my life— our desire to love and to be loved. But many times we’re stuck in the waiting game. We let years and years go by, or weeks go by, we’re just struggling in a horrible relationship or a horrible marriage, and we’re wondering whether there’s any hope for us in the future.
This passage in Luke reminds me not just to take God’s perspective, but also to act now instead of getting stuck in the waiting game: Carpe diem— seize the moment. Have the courage to act. And this reminds me of a documentary on obesity that I saw a couple of years back. It was about different people who were fighting a losing battle with obesity. This documentary follows them in real time as they try to overcome their addiction to fattening foods. As you are watching, you realize that the most difficult thing that obese people have in terms of dealing with their problem on a daily basis is the desire to do something today. That is the biggest hurdle for these people.
Every time the moment comes for that crucial decision— “I am not going to bite into a Twinkie any more” – it always leads to, “Maybe I’ll have one bite today, one bite of a Twinkie today, and I’ll start tomorrow.” It’s that one bite of a Twinkie today, every day, that has led to the problem with obesity. Reflecting this to our community, we realize that many times we in a religious community have really good intentions. We know exactly what we need to do. We know exactly what we should not do. We know what we would like to be, and we want to be that today.
But many times we don’t have the courage to act, or have the strength to follow through, to say, “No Twinkie today, starting from today.” “No smoking today. Stop smoking today— not tomorrow— because every time we allow for tomorrow, there’s always another tomorrow.”
In the context of a family we often go through many different things, and sometimes as siblings we want to encourage another sibling, “I if you have a problem, go talk to your parents. Please go talk to your parents.” And just like biting into a Twinkie, the person will say, “I will go see my parents tomorrow. I will go see my parents at the end of the year. I will go see my parents next year.”
But if we really love our True Parents, then we’re going to go see our True Parents today. And if they’re not here physically, we’re going to go see them in our prayers. So much of life is good intentions, but unless we seize upon our good intentions and substantiate them starting from today, nothing will be accomplished.
Exercising Responsibility
This reminds me of something that I think is interesting.
We, coming from the Eastern tradition, tend to be very superstitious people. We come from a shamanistic culture, and it’s a part of our traditional heritage. It’s part of Korean culture that when somebody gets married, when somebody’s about to go into the next phase of life— maybe graduating and going abroad to study at a different country – then usually the parents like to do a little astrological reading on that person’s destiny, or what I call their blueprint.
Julia' Hoon Sook (Pak) Moon
So Hoon Sook and I from time to time like to go visit an astrologer. He did a reading for me and a reading for Hoon Sook, and I thought one of the things he said was very interesting. I said, “Could I ask you a question?” He’s been reading astrology for a great many people in Korea, including presidents. Anybody who’s anybody in Korea has gone to this man. I said, “What do you think about destiny? What is your understanding of a person’s destiny? Is somebody born to be a certain thing? And just because a person is born with a certain blueprint, is that the person they’re going to be?”
His response to me was, I thought, very interesting. He said, “Many people don’t realize that there’s a God up there, there’s a supreme being up there. And yes, we are born with incredible destiny, but so many people come to me to have their charts read because they are saying, ‘I am stuck. Nothing is working out for me. Why is my destiny so horrible? Why did God give me a bad one? Why does everybody have such great destinies but I have a bad one?’”
Then he said something that was, I thought, especially interesting. He said, “Most people are born with marvelously good destinies. But the problem is that the destiny is there, but the people are not responsible.” Of course, he doesn’t use the Divine Principle wording like, “They’re not exercising their five -- percent responsibility in acting.” That’s not what he said. But that’s basically what he was saying. “The destiny is there, but people are afraid to act. They don’t have the courage to love; they don’t have the courage to take the first step. They don’t have the courage to decide today how they’re going to make their destinies come true. So,” he said, “when I study the charts of winners versus losers in society, the only real difference is in the fact that the winners have acted. They have decided.” They have exercised their five -- percent responsibility.
That’s something I’ve realized about True Father and True Mother for many years. These are not just people who are consumed by their own perspective. They take God’s perspective. These are not the kind of people who are stuck in a quagmire or a swamp of existence. They don’t play the waiting game. They don’t wait for us. They’re going to run, with or without us. They’re going to move the providence whether we are there or not.
Sometimes when young people come up to me and say, “How do you know they’re the messiah? “ I like to say, “I know they’re the messiah because they’re here, and guess what? I believe that I am living in a blessed time, and I’ve studied enough, I’ve spent enough time in the library and in research to know that there is something quite ground breaking about the breaking news that our True Parents bring. The gift of the Blessing— it is ground breaking because they bring the gift of the Blessing. But not only do they bring the gift of the Blessing, they bring themselves as that supreme role model that we can aspire to, that we can look to.”
For sure, one thing about Father and Mother is that they don’t wait for tomorrow. Once something comes into their head, that’s when they act. They act today. I’m sure they want to bite into a Twinkie just like any of us. Every now and then I look at that Twinkie wrapping and I’m salivating, but I’m also thinking, “I’d like to be healthy. I’d like to make sure that I take care of myself.” And that helps to control the impulse.
Likewise, once our True Parents decide that they’re going to do something, they do it. I’ve never heard our True Father say, “I’m going to be the messiah tomorrow. I am going to be the messiah at the end of the year. I am going to be the True Parents next year.” No. Our True Parents seize the day. They seize the moment; they are here to substantiate what they came to do. They are the messiah now, today, and every day, and they have been for more than 50 years.
The Opportunity for Improvement
You young people have a glorious future. When I went into the Lovin’ Life camp meeting room, I saw such handsome young men and women and such beautiful faces. Some of them were happy to be there; some of them were still trying to figure out why they’re there; and some of them were happy that they had made their parents happy by coming. But one thing that they all had in common was that their hormones were raging. I n that room I could cut the raging hormones with a knife.
Whenever we group young people together, I feel it. We’re all divine spiritual beings. When you walk into a room, there’s an immediate feeling that you feel, and I felt hormones. I said to the young people, “You guys are so awesome. You have so much to look forward to, and I’m sure some of you are wondering, who’s going to be my eternal partner. You are here to learn about your community, to learn about your tradition, and to learn about the Divine Principle— which I’m sure you did because I know Dave Hunter and I’m sure he’s done a fabulous job with all the young couples and young men and women helping out together as a team. But I’m sure you must be thinking, you must be wondering.”
That situation at the Lovin’ Life camp reminds me of a movie that my kids like to see: It’s either Wayne’s World or Bill and Ted’s Great Adventure. You know what I’m talking about, right? It’s a movie that plays out a stereotypical life of a teenager. These guys are kind of geeky. They don’t really fit into society. They’re kind of weird, kind of like the way we all feel when we’re an adolescent.
One of the weirdoes or one of the geeky guys is madly in love with an incredible -- looking blonde woman, and every time this blonde woman comes into view, the lights go out, the spotlight comes on, and he goes, “Foxy.” He starts saying, “Foxy.” He’s looking at this beautiful blonde with the wind blowing in her hair, and all he’s thinking is “Foxy,” because he wants to be seen— because he feels like an invisible tree. He feels like an invisible tree, but he wants to catch her attention.
That’s what it’s like when the hormones are raging. It’s like it is in Wayne’s World. Every time you look at the beautiful woman, it’s like schwing. You see a beautiful woman, schwing. You see a really handsome guy, schwing. Everything is schwing, and you’re wondering, when am I going to get focus in my life? When am I going to have enough solid foundation so that I can concentrate on what I need to concentrate on?
The reason why Lovin’ Life camp is important and the reason why Divine Principle is important is that there are a lot of people who live their whole life schwing -- ing. T hen at the end of their life, they realize that all they’ve ever accomplished was a whole lot of schwing and nothing else.
What True Parents as a great role model are here to tell us is that our life is not about schwing here and then a schwing there, and then after we’ve lived our life, our legacy is a life of schwing -- ing. Our True Parents are here to remind us that we really do have an opportunity to work on ourselves. When we are young, we’re often looking toward the other to complete us. But as somebody who has counseled many blessed couples, I know that if you want a healthy marriage, if you want a great blessed life, it’s best to do the hard work of working on yourself before the Blessing. In that way, by working on ourselves, we prepare to have a good foundation with great latitude and great depth so we can invite another person into our lives and build something beautiful.
Working on ourselves is something that we young people might not be too inspired to do every now and then. If we want to be a great father or a great mother and we want to have a great family, however, then the huge bulk of character building by setting goals and accomplishing them as a committed person with a purpose and a goal in life, must start way before the Blessing. Then when the ultimate gift of the Blessing comes, we can work on something that’s even more great and important— rubbing up against each other to create an ideal family.
I’ve had many personal experiences, but also I have seen my friends, and a lot of First Generation, who, all of us, went to the Blessing not being properly prepared because nobody knew what to do with all of us. Nobody gave us a manual or a handbook on how to prepare for the interpersonal relations of the Blessing.
We were rushed into the Blessing all unprepared, and then over the years we’ve had to work on our character, work on our issues, and work on all the problems that naturally should have been taken care of before we brought another person into our lives. But because we didn’t, many of us suffered a great deal. Many of the bad habits that were never resolved in a person’s life came into the Blessing and remained as bad habits in the blessed family.
Confronting Addiction before the Blessing
One of the bad habits that I would like to address to the congregation, especially because we have a lot of young people here, is this big problem of addiction to pornography that we are fighting. It’s a huge problem not just in our community, but in all the different churches around the world. People are being addicted to this kind of a medium.
The reason why we have stood firm in this fight against pornography is that when you are constantly engaged in a visual relationship with someone other than your future wife or your future husband, or your current wife or your current husband, it’s blurring the lines of what’s proper and what’s not. If I’m already having sex with the Internet, what’s the difference with having sex with a real person that I found on the Internet? It blurs the line— and this is not just for boys. This is also for girls. A lot of girls have this problem, too.
If you get addicted to something like this, it does not prepare you for a good married life in that you are accustomed to using another person visually for your own sexual pleasure. You’re not teaching yourself visually in the way we hope to do through ballroom dancing, to look upon the other sex with respect and honor, taking God’s perspective. This other person is not just my sexual toy that I can play around with for the moment. This is a child of God. This is a daughter of God; this is a son of God who is going to be a mother or a father someday. How can I do that?
This is the kind of question we need to ask. So many times because the individual did not have a chance to resolve the problem of pornography before he or she got married, guess what? It enters a blessed life, and now you have another person that you have to take care of, all the while trying to overcome your addiction to pornography. It can make the marriage absolutely hellish, and it can destroy marriages for many people.
So the difficult work of confronting this issue— not just pornography but addictions of all sorts— needs to be addressed prior to the Blessing. That’s why in the Blessed Family Department I’ve been stressing the need for proper education before we send our children to the Blessing. We have to talk. We have to talk about the difficult things. We have to talk about pornography, and we have to address it. We have to have the children, here like at GPA, listen to lectures given by John Williams on the subject that many people find taboo. We need to talk about it. We need to educate ourselves. We need to give our children the tools, the ways through which they can overcome their addiction and look toward a healthy spiritual and physical life. That’s the only way we’re going to build the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
Substantiating the Kingdom of Heaven
This passage, Luke 21:28, reminds us to take God’s perspective, not to get stuck just waiting around, and it encourages us to act. So if we’re in a lousy relationship, let’s think about what we can do today that might make it better. I’ve heard of situations in which some couples are having a really tough time because the husband is taking care of the children while the wife go off to Chung Pyung to pray for 40 or 120 days. Going off to Chung Pyung and praying for 40 days or 120 days is great, but how does that better our relationship with our husband? If we’re not working on our relationship with our husband in the same room, how the bleep is the relationship going to get better? How does the relationship get better by running away? It’s like giving God our problem.
And what about the poor husband, going without sex for 40 days? Come on, sisters, let’s think about this. Or for 120 days? Then we expect our husbands to be good? Being in a blessed life, in a blessed marriage, should not be a prison. The Blessing is forever, and so we may think we don’t have to take care of our husband, we can just go off and do whatever we want, as long as it’s in the realm of the spiritual.
But guess what? Substantiation of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth means it’s got to be substantiated, meaning we’ve got to take our heads out of the clouds and start thinking about how we’re going to build ideal families. So we need to work on problems together. We need to act. So if you’re going to go off for 40 days and leave your husband high and dry with the kids, you’d better come back with something. Make sure your man is taken care of.
People might be thinking, “Why am I hearing such things from the senior pastor?” It’s because I receive a lot of e -- mails from husbands who are at their wit’s end and from wives who are at their wit’s end. We need to talk about these things, and we need to laugh about it. And not just laugh about it, but address it and act now.
Victoria’s Secret lingerie shop
It might be a good idea for some wives to go shopping today later in the afternoon, maybe visit Victoria’s Secret. We’re supposed to be a movement of ideal families, of people loving life. Can you imagine if we would be known as one of the best clients of Victoria’s Secret because we love our spouses and we want to take care of our families? I think that would be kind of cool, actually.
The Angels, the Lotus Flower and the Rainbow
People look at our True Parents and they say, “Miracle.” That’s what they said when our True Parents survived the helicopter accident that took place on July 19, 2008. It’s been three years since that accident. True Parents survived in a Sikorsky helicopter. Sixteen survived, having crashed into a hill in Chung Pyung. In the history of Sikorsky, in the history of helicopter aviation, they’ve never seen anything like it. Nobody could believe that all 16 people survived.
And the interesting thing about that helicopter accident is, “Yes, indeed it was a miracle.” That miracle was witnessed by Mr. Kim Young Ho, a three -- time chairman of the Korean Film Producers Association. He, together with the top movie producers of Korea, get together and like to go fishing near Chung Pyung Lake every year.
On that particular day when the accident occurred, he happened to be there with a bunch of his buddies— movie producers, the best in Korea. “Usually,” he says, “I fish across the river from where the accident happened.” But one of his friends said, “Why don’t we all come over to my house and we can share some soju,” which is Korean sake. “ Then we can talk about the new script we’re thinking about and we can decide the actor and the actress we want to have in this film.”
So Mr. Kim, along with a couple of other producers, went over to his friend’s house across the river. It was there that they had lunch, settled down, and put their fishing poles out into the river. Mr. Kim was waiting to catch some fine fish when he heard the helicopter.
So he looked up, and he said it was absolutely astounding. “I looked up, and I saw a helicopter, but the weird thing is, the helicopter was surrounded by the ring of a rainbow, and it looked like the helicopter was buttressed or held up by a huge lotus flower floating in the sky.” Around the helicopter he said he saw 50 or 60 angels flapping their wings. So he said, “Oh my goodness, what is this?”
Then the next day he heard on the news that my father and my mother were in a helicopter accident, and, miraculously, a true miracle, all 16 survived. So this man, who’s the chairman of the Film Producers Association and had been a Christian for 21 years before he had this vision, realized that, “Oh my God! The rainbow, God and the angels and the lotus flower is what saved Chairman— he calls my father “chairman”— Chairman Moon.”
He’s an outside person having nothing to do with the church, but he was overpowered by the Holy Spirit on the next day when he was the honored guest at the Puchon International Film Festival. When he was being introduced, he came up to the podium and everyone was expecting to hear about the movies he would be coming out with, what actors and actresses he would be using, or his comments on some of the international movies that were floating around for the year.
But he came up to the podium totally consumed and overpowered by the Holy Spirit, and he said, “Do you know who saved Reverend Moon? God, the angels, and the rainbow saved Reverend Moon.” Everybody at the festival was totally shocked to think, “This is our chairman? What has gotten into our chairman?” And different people at the film festival said, “Sit down, sit down, you’re drunk.” But he persisted. “I am not drunk. I saw what I saw. Reverend Moon was saved by the angels, the rainbow, and the lotus flower.”
Then they literally had to escort him out because that is not what his prepared speech was supposed to be. But this man said, “I don’t know what came over me. The spirit just moved me, like something from the belly of my stomach just came out, and before I knew it, I was saying these things.” Then he said, “When I got off the podium, my friends said, ‘What is wrong with you, Young Ho? You’re the chairman of the Korean Film Producers Association. We are under the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism. You are a big man on campus. What are you doing?’”
He said, “I don’t know what I was saying. I just had to say it.” So his friends said, “Okay.” Then on the way back, they were all riding together in the bus back to Seoul and the spirit consumed him again. The belly came forth, the Holy Spirit had to come out, and then on the bus he started talking about his vision. He said, “Reverend Moon survived because of God, the angels, the rainbow, and the lotus flower.” There was no stopping this man.
Somebody on the bus happened to be a member, so we heard about it. I heard that one of the leaders in Korea contacted him and said, “You need to share your story.” He said, “I don’t know what happened to me. I was just consumed by the spirit. I said what I felt I needed to say, but I’m a public person. I can’t meet with you now.”
So he didn’t meet with another representative of our faith for over three months. “But then,” he said, “the weird thing is that the producer’s busiest day of the week is Sunday, so even though I’ve been an ardent Christian, I have not been at church that much. But then three weekends in a row somehow opened up for me, and again I was consumed with this feeling that I have to find Unification Church.”
“ Back then,” he said, “I was looking for the Unification Church. I called 114 “— I guess that is the equivalent of our 411— “ but I couldn’t find Unification Church listed anywhere.” Later he realized that it was Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. But somehow he got in touch with somebody who knew the church, and he went to one of the churches and sat for three consecutive Sundays before he shared his story with the minister. Then later Father came to hear about it.
Because this man felt so pushed to share this news, this vision that he had experienced, he was accused of embezzlement, voted out of his position, and another person was re-elected chairman. He said, “They accused me of embezzlement, but they checked all my bank statements and realized that there is really nothing that warranted such an accusation.”
True Parents Are the Greatest Miracle
The whole experience left him feeling like, “I may have lost my temporary position but I have found an eternal position as the son of God and as the son of True Parents.” So this man came to visit our True Father at one of the Hoon Dok Hae sessions. He came to True Father and greeted him, and Father just looked at him. Mr. Kim later said, “Father looked at me with those piercing eyes. He looked right through me. And Father said, ‘You lonely guy. You’re lonely, but you’ve been good to your ancestors so all your children will do well in life.’”
Mr. Kim just broke down and cried because he usually doesn’t talk about his personal past. He usually doesn’t talk about the fact that he lost both his parents to the Korean War, so he grew up alone. He grew up very lonely. But he felt that Father was peering into him and understanding the kind of a life that he’s led but also reassuring him at the same time, because “you’ve led a good life and you’ve always honored your ancestors, your children are going to do well.” He felt wonderfully comforted.
So Mr. Kim was saying, “It’s a miracle.” In English, you say miracle, right? But when Koreans say miracle it sounds like mir -- a -- kul, a big mir -- a -- kul. That’s what it sounds like, like mira -- cool, right? But in my ears the word miracle, when it’s set to a Korean pronunciation, sounds like two words. It sounds like mira, like in Spanish, “to look.” Look, mira. A miracle is something we want to see. It’s something that’s not supposed to happen. It’s something that contradicts scientific law as we know it. We see it as an act of God and we want to see it. It’s like mira cool. Saying, look, look, mira. And kul sounds like coooool.
So the helicopter accident was a mira cool. That was a vision showing Mr. Kim Young Ho that the messiah is here, our True Parents are here. The breaking news is here. And this is a message to all the young and old and happy and sad and thin and big people in the audience: Our life is a miracle. We only need to lift our heads. We only need to mira— look— to realize, cool. This community is cool. Our kids are cool. And our future is cool.
We’re always waiting for the miracle but we— all of us here— only need to lift our heads to realize the miracle is right here. And if we realize that, we realize that we have the greatest miracle in our life every day. We have the great role models who are going to guide and inspire us, who have inspired us, and who continue to empower us to be incredible, awesome, and cool eternal sons and daughters of God.
So be grateful, be happy, and always know that you are loved because True Parents truly love you, and our Heavenly Parent has truly shown great love for you by giving us all such a wonderful role model as True Parents in our lives. God bless, and have a great week.
Notes:
Luke, chapter 21
1: He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury;
2: and he saw a poor widow put in two copper coins.
3: And he said, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them;
4: for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all the living that she had."
5: And as some spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings, he said,
6: "As for these things which you see, the days will come when there shall not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down."
7: And they asked him, "Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign when this is about to take place?"
8: And he said, "Take heed that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name, saying, `I am he!' and, `The time is at hand!' Do not go after them.
9: And when you hear of wars and tumults, do not be terrified; for this must first take place, but the end will not be at once."
10: Then he said to them, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom;
11: there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences; and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.
12: But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name's sake.
13: This will be a time for you to bear testimony.
14: Settle it therefore in your minds, not to meditate beforehand how to answer;
15: for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.
16: You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends, and some of you they will put to death;
17: you will be hated by all for my name's sake.
18: But not a hair of your head will perish.
19: By your endurance you will gain your lives.
20: "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near.
21: Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it;
22: for these are days of vengeance, to fulfil all that is written.
23: Alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck in those days! For great distress shall be upon the earth and wrath upon this people;
24: they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led captive among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
25: "And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves,
26: men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
27: And then they will see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
28: Now when these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."
29: And he told them a parable: "Look at the fig tree, and all the trees;
30: as soon as they come out in leaf, you see for yourselves and know that the summer is already near.
31: So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.
32: Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away till all has taken place.
33: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
34: "But take heed to yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a snare;
35: for it will come upon all who dwell upon the face of the whole earth.
36: But watch at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of man."
37: And every day he was teaching in the temple, but at night he went out and lodged on the mount called Olivet.
38: And early in the morning all the people came to him in the temple to hear him.