Sermon Notes, August 7, 2011

In Jin Moon

1. In Jin Nim greeted everyone. (The applause was especially enthusiastic – with all the middle school camp kids in the audience). She just got back from Las Vegas at two o'clock this morning. True Parents (True Parents) send us their greetings!

True Parents at Hoon Dok Hae in Las Vegas, August 6, 2011

2. In Jin Nim reported to True Parents about the WFWP 19th annual conference -- they were delighted to hear about it. Congratulations to the WFWP. In Jin Nim recognized Angelika Selle (President) and the team that did such a phenomenal job. The conference highlighted the beauty of women from all around the world who came to discuss how to unlock the power and beauty of relationships. In Jin Nim had the honor of being the keynote speaker at one of the morning plenary sessions. To come together in the spirit of the feminine and in the celebration of the feminine and discuss amongst themselves how they can be the agent of change to usher in the new millennium. It was an incredibly powerful and profoundly moving experience for In Jin Nim. In Jin Nim could not attend the gala in the evening which she heard was a great success (she had to fly out to Las Vegas to report to True Parents) – with lovely dancers and a comedian who brought down the roof. True Parents and (especially) True Mother were delighted to hear that the WFWP had completed its 19th conference

3. Whenever In Jin Nim visits True Parents she always is so grateful – realizing what an incredible time we are living in. She likes to say that this is the time of the breaking news. Jesus Christ brought the good news – truly helping all of humanity to understand the meaning of what it is to truly love one another and encouraging women to live an inspired and true life. But now is the time of the breaking news because now we are not only talking about understanding and substantiating and applying true love and true life in our lives but really coming to substantiate the true lineage of God – grafting on to the heavenly lineage and becoming one family under God. So – it is an incredibly exciting time for all of us here working in the Ministry

4. As we think about each Sunday and what topics and issues will be discussed – they (Lovin' Life team) are always tickled pink when they realize that so much of the inspiration comes from the enthusiasm of the young people which they show to the Lovin' Life Ministry every Sunday – and enthusiasm that is shared all around the country in 100 different satellite locations across America. "We know that when we can see and experience the inspired youth, truly encouraged in the spirit of true love – wanting to build that ideal family, society, nation, and world, we know that it is not just a dream that we are dealing with, when we think or ponder or ruminate on the topic on this beautiful world of peace, but it is something tangible, something that we are working towards each and every day, something that we can build upon starting with you and me."

5. As In Jin Nim was taking the trip to Las Vegas, on the way back going through LA they had to wait for a plane to come and replace the plane they were supposed to be on. And so they had some delay time. People started gathering in small groups and talking with each other. And In Jin Nim noticed in one corner three young teenage girls. They were beautiful girls huddled together looking at fashion magazines. Glamour, Elle, Cosmopolitan, People, Us, (and others). They were pointing at different people and things exclaiming, "I want to be like her, I want to have that, she has legs 6 miles long, her body is perfect, 36-24-32." In Jin Nim listened to their conversation – "you know, these people they have it all, they're beautiful, they have their cars, mansions, iPods and iPad's, fabulous girlfriends and boyfriends, all the designer clothes (In Jin Nim named the brands and designers – "they knew their stuff" – designer bags and shoes). When I become rich and successful these are the things that I want!"

6. These ladies were between 15 and 17. They were infused with this incredible desire – wanting the latest designer clothing and bags (In Jin Nim gave several designer names). It is interesting how, it doesn't matter where we come from, what culture we are born into, what race we belong to – in the journey through life, on the road of life where we come to understand what we are all about and who we are and what we need to do and what kind of people we need to be – there is this word that we come face-to-face with from time to time – the word 'desire.'

7. Many times we say to ourselves that we desire things. We desire all these things that we want to acquire – we desire. In Jin Nim often thinks, yes we desire all these things, we desire X – (fill in the box). But many times in life there are other things at play, not just we as individuals, but there are also supernatural things at play, there are things in the spiritual world at play, there are forces at play in our lives and in our environments. Just as much as we desire, there are things that are not positive – negative things that we might even call evil or Satan. There are these satanic, evil, negative things that conspire to make sure that we never get there, that we never become the people we were meant to be.

8. While these forces, satanic or evil or negative forces, conspire to hold us back, to make us fall short of our goals, to prevent us from filling our divine destinies – we also know that at the same time there is a God, our Heavenly Parent in heaven, and there are things that are positive in our lives that inspire us to fulfill our destiny, to complete the reason why we are here, to be the inspired kind of people that we were meant to be.

9. When we look at Webster's dictionary and look at three words – desire, conspire, and inspire – and we look at the root of the word, it comes from the Latin desiderare which means – we understand desire as something that we long for, we covet, we crave, and wish for – but the root in Latin means to "await from the stars." In Jin Nim found this definition to be quite interesting.

10. The root of the word, that makes up the word desire, means to await from the stars. It's almost as if – when we desire something we are constantly in a state of longing or waiting, and where are we waiting from? Many times we are waiting from the very thing we desire. We look at the heavens and see the glorious constellations of stars in the sky, many times we said to ourselves, "I wish I could be that star. I wish I could touch that star. I wish I could be that moon, or, I want to be the star, that celebrity that shines my luminous light on the world and gets to wear (designer) shoes, suits, or vests. Many times we are hoping we can be these things. But the word desire means to await from the stars – meaning that we are already on the star. We are the very thing that we so long for. And we long for it so desperately – we don't realize what we have now. We long for something so desperately, we are not reveling in the moment, we are not appreciating what has already been given or what has already been entrusted in our care – which is the divinity that has touched all of us, the gift that our Heavenly Parent placed in our care as his eternal sons and daughters.

11. When you look at the word 'conspire' Webster's defines it as something – to breathe together, to unite, to agree. But usually the word conspire has a negative tint to it in that you breathe together, you unite and you agree – to plan or plot a crime or something that is not so positive. This concept of breathing – In Jin Nim thought was incredibly interesting.

12. When you look at the word 'inspire' it also comes from Latin and the root word, inspirare, also means to breathe. Webster defines it – to inhale or to impel the creative effort or to take in the divine influence so that we are inspired to do great things. Again there is this concept of breathing of somehow being united. In Jin Nim always found it interesting how when we say someone is an inspired individual, "this woman is truly inspired," or "this woman is filled with the Spirit" – it is almost as if she has inhaled this incredible spirit and therefore she is infused with the spirit – illuminated by this glorious light of the divine and she is inspired, she is an inspired agent of change ready to do good work upon this earth.

13. When we look at these words you realize, wow! We always want things that are kind of not there – things that are outside of us. Many times we want what we are not, we want what is not within us, but what is outside, something we have to strive for, something we have to be in pursuit of. And many times being in pursuit literally means following the purse – in the pursuit, meaning you are constantly chasing after money or the superficial things in life or things that seemingly might bring you great joy.

14. Many times when we desire things we are not just thinking about what we are not, and not only thinking about trying to get something that is not within – but is without, but at the same time we are constantly consumed with this need for acquisition – not in the future, but acquisition now.

15. When we look at our modern world and this great country America that we call a superpower, we realize that many times in the lives of many young men and woman the importance of having a relationship with God has been replaced with the cult of celebrity. The cult of celebrity teaches young people certain things. It teaches them that you have to be superficial to be loved by people. You cannot be loved for who you are but you have to have the right shoes, be the right person, and have the right clothes. You have to look right. You have to be thin or you will not be loved. You cannot be unique – you have to fit in or you will not be loved.

16. Many of the young people that are consumed with the cult of celebrity or consumerism can easily be misled to think that the most important things in life are things that are superficial. And sometimes, perhaps when the senior pastor is talking about the need to develop the generation of peace that will be a paradigm, and exemplification of a young man and a woman who is not just internally excellent but also externally excellent – some people might think, "what does the senior pastor mean when she says externally excellent? Does that mean that we have to wear the right kind of shoes or we have to wear the right kind of clothing or we have to carry the right kind of bag? Or we have to look a certain way? Can a big person be considered externally excellent or do we have to all be thin and lean, a lean mean machine, in order to be excellent?"

17. When In Jin Nim talks about internal excellence, being the kind of good people who understand who we are – that we are God's eternal sons and daughters, divine beings who have been anointed and touched by God – to be living at this incredible time with our True Parents, the time of the breaking news when we can share with the world the good news that the Messiah is here!

18. And the Messiah comes in better form, in the completed picture together with a spouse – so the world can finally understand the need for womankind or mothers and sisters – to reclaim her divine divinity as that equal partner to her husband, to her brothers, so they can stand strong and proud as God's daughter – and not be in bondage to sin or to the fall of man – as the one who led Adam astray. But, through the restoration and the indemnification process that our True Father has gone through to perfect himself as that perfected Adam and then finding this woman that could stand in the position of the perfected Eve – and together stand as the True Parents of humankind and therefore provide a platform and foundation through which all the world, men and women and children of the world, can be invited to graft on to this holy lineage of God – to become part of that one family under God, is an incredible blessing and an incredible time.

19. In a way, all of us have been prepared by God. Every one of us is that beautiful handiwork. Thank God we don't all look the same! Thank God some of us are tall, some of us are short. Thank goodness some of us are wide – as wide as the ocean. Thank goodness some of us are as thin as the reed. But these differences that we see all around us is what gives us this great diversity – all the different colors of the rainbow, all the different types of thread and textures that goes into weaving the tapestry of humanity – that is incredibly beautiful.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

20. Can you imagine if we go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and they are holding an exhibition on all the beautiful tapestry that have existed throughout the centuries and the only thing we saw on the walls were white tapestries, or just black, with no design work, no picture, no form or texture or depth, no meaning. It would be a very boring exhibition. What makes the different tapestries beautiful is the way the years have worn the threads in such a way that gives it the depth, that it has been around and has seen life and yet still holds the different colors and textures that make that tapestry what it is. That is what gives it value and meaning and inspires the onlookers to want to perhaps create a beautiful tapestry of our own. It's the differences, the uniqueness of every individual that make our world a beautiful place.

21. The reason why, in this superficial world, there is this need and there is a reason why we have to have a relationship with God, our Heavenly Parent up in heaven, and an understanding of who we are through the teachings of our True Parents, is that we have to realize that it's not what we are not, it's not what is on the outside, it is not those fast woman and men, the mansions and beautiful sports cars that are going to ultimately reward us with happiness and love, but it is really in realizing what we are – what we are as God's eternal sons and daughters. Not looking out, not longing and waiting for something that we need to find outside of ourselves, but it is in realizing that we need to look within. Because we are that reservoir of true love that God prepared when he created each and every one of us.

22. Instead of thinking, "we have to acquire all these things, now, in order to be happy," it's in realizing that this life is truly a gift, an opportunity for us to fulfill, or complete the picture that Jesus originally came to perfect – so that he can teach what the paradigm of love is all about.

23. Jesus was not meant to die on the cross. He was supposed to have met a beautiful wife he could call his own and come together in holy matrimony, holy blessing. And, had Jesus Christ lived, he would have done the very thing that our True Parents are famous for and continue to do to this day – they would have blessed many different faiths, all the different races and peoples of different cultural backgrounds, to come together in matrimony and to think of ourselves as one family – to encourage all of us to love above and beyond our differences and different barriers and obstacles that stand in our way and truly love each other so that we don't just talk and dream about this world of peace, but actually take part in substantiating it and in building it.

24. This is why, when In Jin Nim thinks about the importance of understanding this need, to not just continually be tempted by what is outside, but in realizing that we have everything, that we have been blessed with everything that we really need.

J. K. Rowling

25. In Jin Nim thought that it was interesting how just recently the end of the Harry Potter movie saga came out. Harry Potter and gave a great deal of entertainment to a lot of children and also adults. In Jin Nim has five children so she of course read about it, went to the movies, went through the experience of being entertained by J. K. Rowling.

26. In one sense, if you think about the simple plot that Harry Potter is all about it is really a story about a boy coming to understand who he is all about. Here is this orphaned boy growing up under the stairway of his aunt and uncle's home – being treated so badly by his relatives, knowing that he has a special purpose in life. Along the way he realizes that he has this special mission and destiny to fulfill. He goes through different relationships with different characters and it goes through many adventures that have carried us throughout the different books coming to the end of the saga – and now we go to see the last chapter of the book. One of the most moving things about the book for In Jin Nim was in the end when there is the great culmination, the battle between good and evil, and he overcomes Voldemort and he ends up destroying Voldemort and he ends up fulfilling a destiny that he was born for – to overcome and conquer this evil force that was going to take over the world.

Actor Ralph Fiennes as Valdemort

27. But at the end of the movie what was truly inspiring was when he held in his hands the most powerful wand in the world, the wand that Voldemort was wielding to dominate the world, to enslave all of humanity under his evil powers for his own selfish pleasures – but now that he has defeated, conquered, and killed Voldemort – now he becomes the owner of the most powerful wand in the universe. And the most moving part of the movie is when Harry Potter realizes that he is holding the world's greatest power within his hands – but then he decides to do what? He decides to break the most powerful wand in the universe and he throws it away.

28. For In Jin Nim that was an incredibly important moment – because this is what we are talking about. The Harry Potter movie is really a movie about desire. This is the desire of an orphaned boy and his desire to understand his meaning or purpose in life, to want his parents back. In the last movie there is a part where there is the resurrection stone and he gets to see his parents again and all the desires and temptations of the world are constantly with him throughout the story. He wants them so badly that many times he cannot truly experience or enjoy what he has now – but throughout the whole process he comes to realize his own mission in life, his purpose in life, and he fulfills this purpose of conquering and defeating evil and freeing everyone from Voldemort – and fulfilling the destiny of becoming the owner of the most powerful wand in the universe – but he decides to break it.

29. This reminds In Jin Nim of a passage in the Bible, the good book, Hebrews 10:36 that says, "for you will have need of endurance. After you have done the will of God you may receive the promise." Hebrews promises that you may have need for endurance, and when you read through the chapters and different books of Harry Potter you realize that this boy had the need for endurance. He had to endure, he had to overcome hardships, obstacles, and he had to fight demons and forces of evil – he had to endure and persist on his God-given mission.

30. And Hebrews says, "after you have done the will of God." You have done the will of God, meaning, the will of God is something that God has for each and every one of us. God has a destiny for each of us. God had a destiny for Harry Potter – to defeat the evil forces and become the owner of the most powerful wand in the universe. And Harry Potter did just that, he did what he was supposed to do. And it says, after he has done the will of God you may receive the promise.

31. Why does he use the word 'may'? Why does it not say, after you have done the will of God you will receive the promise, you will have the promise. Why does the Bible say, you may receive the promise?

32. In Jin Nim believes the story of Harry Potter is a good one to juxtapose on the Bible passage because that moment when Harry Potter looks at the wand and sees all the powerful glories laid out before him, but decides to break the wand, this is what the Bible is talking about. You may have done the will of God, you may have fulfilled your destiny, you may have conquered evil and your demons and temptations, but in that final hour when all has been presented to you, it is still conditioned on something. It says you "may receive"

33. What the Bible is really saying is – you can do all the good things, you can fulfill all these things, but what is most important is where your heart is at, at that moment in the final hour of your victory. Where is your heart? Are you really victorious in really thinking and living for the sake of others or are you thinking only about yourself.

Harry Potter

34. So, when Harry Potter decides to give up the world's riches, the world's most powerful wand, because he knows how dangerous it can be – what he is doing is he is, in a way, owning up to it. It is not something that the wand gives him that is the most important thing. It is not something that is outside of me that now I have a chance to hold, like a designer handbag and shoes. It is not something outside the gives me the power of what and who I was meant to be, but it is in realizing – it's not what we are on the outside, but who we are.

35. It's not that we become the incredible human beings we are because we are constantly desiring or awaiting from the star, but it is really about now, it is really about seizing the moment to realize. Stop thinking, stop floating on the sea being lost, continually wandering – when will I have what I am not?, when will I be what I am not?, but in realizing that we really are, we already are and we have been given the ultimate gift.

36. The most important thing is in realizing, all of us, we are… who are we? We are the children of God's love. We are love. All of us are manifestations and personifications of God's love. Therefore, when we realize that we are God's love, when Harry Potter realized that it is not what he is going to wield outside of himself that will give him the greatest power, but it is in throwing away those things and realizing what he is, what he has the capability to become by tapping in to his rich reservoir of true love, this divinity, channeling the power of the universe, applying the principle of living for the sake of others and thereby becoming an incredible man and a woman. This is what Harry Potter realized.

37. And so what does the movie do? It fast forwards 19 years and we see Harry Potter with his family. Harry Potter with the redhead who stole his heart and now with two beautiful children. This, we realize, is what he gave away the most powerful wand in the universe for. He gave away the most powerful wand in the universe for what? For love and for family and in realizing that it is the things that are within us that give us our divinity and our immortality. We live through our children and our grandchildren and so on and so forth.

38. So instead of seeking that great power of the universe or wanting to chase after that incredible holy chalice in Indiana Jones that would give immortality. It is not something outside of us in a cup that is going to give us immortality. It is something within us, something within that is created through the miracle and power of love – by channeling the universal force that our Heavenly Father wants to give to all of us, together in beautiful matrimony, committing ourselves to God and humanity, building beautiful families that is going to give us immortality to our children.

39. A long time ago the great writer Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Money often costs too much." Meaning, money often costs too much, because many times when we are in pursuit of the great purse, riches, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – it cost us our lives, our family, and the very thing that makes us who we are, our souls. That is what Emerson meant.

40. And In Jin Nim's addendum to that quote would be, "money often costs too much, knowledge often boasts too much, and power often corrupts too much."

41. When we realize that all the things that we want outside of us, yes they may give us the power and knowledge and the wealth that we are looking for, but if the inside of who we are does not reflect our capacity to hold these things, then sooner or later the very thing that we long for, that we are awaiting from the stars, might be the thing that will destroy our lives and our souls and the divinity within.

42. We are the eternal sons and daughters, divine beings who have been given the inspiration to dream the dream, but not just dream the dream, but actually turn it into reality and substantiated in our lives. And as we walk this road that we call our journey, we need to think and ruminate on this word 'desire' and how we should have a healthy understanding of what the word means. And we need to realize that the most important thing in understanding this word 'desire' is not to go after something that we are not, something that is outside of us, after acquisition now, thinking that is going to bring us happiness, but it is really in the profundity of looking inward, in realizing who we are that the most important gift is within, and that we have this incredible life – to fulfill our destiny and to unleash the power and passions that our Heavenly Father has blessed all of us with.

43. Then we will realize that we have an incredible gift in each other. This really should be a life in which we celebrate our differences, our different beauties, are different sizes – thank goodness not everyone is the same. And, instead of always waiting for our Heavenly Father to "light my way" to "light our way" we have to be the agents of change. We have to realize that we, as the agent of change, lighting our way starts with us.

44. If we can decide today that we are not going to be desirous, awaiting, from the star, but we are actually going to be the light – starting with ourselves lighting the way, being that beautiful star, that luminous light that we can share with the rest of the world, that luminous light that is grateful that we have been given this great gift of our True Parents, are Heavenly Parent, and also each other – then we can do incredible things and we can affect a whole lot of change that needs to be done in our lifetime – to make the world what it needs to be if we truly want to build a world of peace.

45. "Brothers and sisters be inspired because we have a glorious future ahead of us. Please thank our Heavenly Parents and our True Parents and once again – I want to thank and congratulate the graduates of the middle school Lovin' Life Camp. Go back home and inspire and let your parents know how much you love them. Give them a kiss. Come on, you can do it. Give them a hug. And treat them in the Oriental style because Lovin Life is really about uniting the West and East – so give your parents a full bow of appreciation that you are alive at this incredible time with our True Parents. God bless and have an incredible Sunday! Thank you!

Notes:

Hebrews, chapter 10

1: For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices which are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who draw near.

2: Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered? If the worshipers had once been cleansed, they would no longer have any consciousness of sin.

3: But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sin year after year.

4: For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.

5: Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, "Sacrifices and offerings thou hast not desired,
but a body hast thou prepared for me;

6: in burnt offerings and sin offerings thou hast taken no pleasure.

7: Then I said, `Lo, I have come to do thy will, O God,'
as it is written of me in the roll of the book."

8: When he said above, "Thou hast neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings" (these are offered according to the law),

9: then he added, "Lo, I have come to do thy will." He abolishes the first in order to establish the second.

10: And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

11: And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.

12: But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God,

13: then to wait until his enemies should be made a stool for his feet.

14: For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

15: And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,

16: "This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws on their hearts,
and write them on their minds,"

17: then he adds, "I will remember their sins and their misdeeds no more."

18: Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

19: Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus,

20: by the new and living way which he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh,

21: and since we have a great priest over the house of God,

22: let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

23: Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful;

24: and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,

25: not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

26: For if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,

27: but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries.

28: A man who has violated the law of Moses dies without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses.

29: How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God, and profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace?

30: For we know him who said, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay." And again, "The Lord will judge his people."

31: It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

32: But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings,

33: sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated.

34: For you had compassion on the prisoners, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.

35: Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.

36: For you have need of endurance, so that you may do the will of God and receive what is promised.

37: "For yet a little while,
and the coming one shall come and shall not tarry;

38: but my righteous one shall live by faith,
and if he shrinks back,
my soul has no pleasure in him."

39: But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and keep their souls.

Conduct of Life
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882)
Part 3. Wealth

… As soon as a stranger is introduced into any compations which all wish to have answered, is, How does that man get his living? And with reason. He is no whole man until he knows how to earn a blameless livelihood. Society is barbarous, until every industrious man can get his living without dishonest customs.

Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He fails to make his place good in the world, unless he not only pays his debt, but also adds something to the common wealth. Nor can he do justice to his genius, without making some larger demand on the world than a bare subsistence. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.

Wealth has its source in applications of the mind to nature, from the rudest strokes of spade and axe, up to the last secrets of art. Intimate ties subsist between thought and all production; because a better order is equivalent to vast amounts of brute labor. The forces and the resistances are Nature’s, but the mind acts in bringing things from where they abound to where they are wanted; in wise combining; in directing the practice of the useful arts, and in the creation of finer values, by fine art, by eloquence, by song, or the reproductions of memory. Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot. One man has stronger arms, or longer legs; another sees by the course of streams, and growth of markets, where land will be wanted, makes a clearing to the river, goes to sleep, wakes up rich. Steam is no stronger now, than it was a hundred years ago; but is put to better use. A clever fellow was acquainted with the expansive force of steam; he also saw the wealth of wheat and grass rotting in Michigan. Then he cunningly screws on the steam–pipe to the wheat–crop. Puff now, O Steam! The steam puffs and expands as before, but this time it is dragging all Michigan at its back to hungry New York and hungry England. Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may well call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle: and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half–ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.

When the farmer’s peaches are taken from under the tree, and carried into town, they have a new look, and a hundredfold value over the fruit which grew on the same bough, and lies fulsomely on the ground. The craft of the merchant is this bringing a thing from where it abounds, to where it is costly.

Wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps the rain and wind out; in a good pump that yields you plenty of sweet water; in two suits of clothes, so to change your dress when you are wet; in dry sticks to burn; in a good double–wick lamp; and three meals; in a horse, or a locomotive, to cross the land; in a boat to cross the sea; in tools to work with; in books to read; and so, in giving, on all sides, by tools and auxiliaries, the greatest possible extension to our powers, as if it added feet, and hands, and eyes, and blood, length to the day, and knowledge, and good–will.

Wealth begins with these articles of necessity. And here we must recite the iron law which Nature thunders in these northern climates. First, she requires that each man should feed himself. If, happily, his fathers have left him no inheritance, he must go to work, and by making his wants less, or his gains more, he must draw himself out of that state of pain and insult in which she forces the beggar to lie. She gives him no rest until this is done: she starves, taunts, and torments him, takes away warmth, laughter, sleep, friends, and daylight, until he has fought his way to his own loaf. Then, less peremptorily, but still with sting enough, she urges him to the acquisition of such things as belong to him. Every warehouse and shop–window, every fruit–tree, every thought of every hour, opens a new want to him, which it concerns his power and dignity to gratify. It is of no use to argue the wants down: the philosophers have laid the greatness of man in making his wants few; but will a man content himself with a hut and a handful of dried pease? He is born to be rich. He is thoroughly related; and is tempted out by his appetites and fancies to the conquest of this and that piece of nature, until he finds his well–being in the use of his planet, and of more planets than his own. Wealth requires, besides the crust of bread and the roof, — the freedom of the city, the freedom of the earth, travelling, machinery, the benefits of science, music, and fine arts, the best culture, and the best company. He is the rich man who can avail himself of all men’s faculties. He is the richest man who knows how to draw a benefit from the labors of the greatest number of men, of men in distant countries, and in past times. The same correspondence that is between thirst in the stomach, and water in the spring, exists between the whole of man and the whole of nature. The elements offer their service to him. The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it, — day by day to his craft and audacity. “Beware of me,” it says, “but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.” Fire offers, on its side, an equal power. Fire, steam, lightning, gravity, ledges of rock, mines of iron, lead, quicksilver, tin, and gold; forests of all woods; fruits of all climates; animals of all habits; the powers of tillage; the fabrics of his chemic laboratory; the webs of his loom; the masculine draught of his locomotive, the talismans of the machine–shop; all grand and subtile things, minerals, gases, ethers, passions, war, trade, government, are his natural playmates, and, according to the excellence of the machinery in each human being, is his attraction for the instruments he is to employ. The world is his tool–chest, and he is successful, or his education is carried on just so far, as is the marriage of his faculties with nature, or, the degree in which he takes up things into himself.

The strong race is strong on these terms. The Saxons are the merchants of the world; now, for a thousand years, the leading race, and by nothing more than their quality of personal independence, and, in its special modification, pecuniary independence. No reliance for bread and games on the government, no clanship, no patriarchal style of living by the revenues of a chief, no marrying–on, — no system of clientship suits them; but every man must pay his scot. The English are prosperous and peaceable, with their habit of considering that every man must take care of himself, and has himself to thank, if he do not maintain and improve his position in society.

The subject of economy mixes itself with morals, inasmuch as it is a peremptory point of virtue that a man’s independence be secured. Poverty demoralizes. A man in debt is so far a slave; and Wall–street thinks it easy for a millionaire to be a man of his word, a man of honor, but, that, in failing circumstances, no man can be relied on to keep his integrity. And when one observes in the hotels and palaces of our Atlantic capitals, the habit of expense, the riot of the senses, the absence of bonds, clanship, fellow–feeling of any kind, he feels, that, when a man or a woman is driven to the wall, the chances of integrity are frightfully diminished, as if virtue were coming to be a luxury which few could afford, or, as Burke said, “at a market almost too high for humanity.” He may fix his inventory of necessities and of enjoyments on what scale he pleases, but if he wishes the power and privilege of thought, the chalking out his own career, and having society on his own terms, he must bring his wants within his proper power to satisfy.

The manly part is to do with might and main what you can do. The world is full of fops who never did anything, and who have persuaded beauties and men of genius to wear their fop livery, and these will deliver the fop opinion, that it is not respectable to be seen earning a living; that it is much more respectable to spend without earning; and this doctrine of the snake will come also from the elect sons of light; for wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times from their taste or their humor, to once from their reason. The brave workman, who might betray his feeling of it in his manners, if he do not succumb in his practice, must replace the grace or elegance forfeited, by the merit of the work done. No matter whether he make shoes, or statues, or laws. It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him. The mechanic at his bench carries a quiet heart and assured manners, and deals on even terms with men of any condition. The artist has made his picture so true, that it disconcerts criticism. The statue is so beautiful, that it contracts no stain from the market, but makes the market a silent gallery for itself. The case of the young lawyer was pitiful to disgust, — a paltry matter of buttons or tweezer–cases; but the determined youth saw in it an aperture to insert his dangerous wedges, made the insignificance of the thing forgotten, and gave fame by his sense and energy to the name and affairs of the Tittleton snuffbox factory.

Society in large towns is babyish, and wealth is made a toy. The life of pleasure is so ostentatious, that a shallow observer must believe that this is the agreed best use of wealth, and, whatever is pretended, it ends in cosseting. But, if this were the main use of surplus capital, it would bring us to barricades, burned towns, and tomahawks, presently. Men of sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature to themselves, the converting of the sap and juices of the planet to the incarnation and nutriment of their design. Power is what they want, — not candy; — power to execute their design, power to give legs and feet, form and actuality to their thought, which, to a clear–sighted man, appears the end for which the Universe exists, and all its resources might be well applied. Columbus thinks that the sphere is a problem for practical navigation, as well as for closet geometry, and looks on all kings and peoples as cowardly landsmen, until they dare fit him out. Few men on the planet have more truly belonged to it. But he was forced to leave much of his map blank. His successors inherited his map, and inherited his fury to complete it.

So the men of the mine, telegraph, mill, map, and survey,— the monomaniacs, who talk up their project in marts, and offices, and entreat men to subscribe: — how did our factories get built? how did North America get netted with iron rails, except by the importunity of these orators, who dragged all the prudent men in? Is party the madness of many for the gain of a few? This speculative genius is the madness of few for the gain of the world. The projectors are sacrificed, but the public is the gainer. Each of these idealists, working after his thought, would make it tyrannical, if he could. He is met and antagonized by other speculators, as hot as he. The equilibrium is preserved by these counteractions, as one tree keeps down another in the forest, that it may not absorb all the sap in the ground. And the supply in nature of railroad presidents, copper–miners, grand–junctioners, smoke–burners, fire–annihilators, &c., is limited by the same law which keeps the proportion in the supply of carbon, of alum, and of hydrogen.

To be rich is to have a ticket of admission to the master–works and chief men of each race. It is to have the sea, by voyaging; to visit the mountains, Niagara, the Nile, the desert, Rome, Paris, Constantinople; to see galleries, libraries, arsenals, manufactories. The reader of Humboldt’s “Cosmos” follows the marches of a man whose eyes, ears, and mind are armed by all the science, arts, and implements which mankind have anywhere accumulated, and who is using these to add to the stock. So is it with Denon, Beckford, Belzoni, Wilkinson, Layard, Kane, Lepsius, and Livingston. “The rich man,” says Saadi, “is everywhere expected and at home.” The rich take up something more of the world into man’s life. They include the country as well as the town, the ocean–side, the White Hills, the Far West, and the old European homesteads of man, in their notion of available material. The world is his, who has money to go over it. He arrives at the sea–shore, and a sumptuous ship has floored and carpeted for him the stormy Atlantic, and made it a luxurious hotel, amid the horrors of tempests. The Persians say, “’Tis the same to him who wears a shoe, as if the whole earth were covered with leather.”

Kings are said to have long arms, but every man should have long arms, and should pluck his living, his instruments, his power, and his knowing, from the sun, moon, and stars. Is not then the demand to be rich legitimate? Yet, I have never seen a rich man. I have never seen a man as rich as all men ought to be, or, with an adequate command of nature. The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth; but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should be undone. Men are urged by their ideas to acquire the command over nature. Ages derive a culture from the wealth of Roman Caesars, Leo Tenths, magnificent Kings of France, Grand Dukes of Tuscany, Dukes of Devonshire, Townleys, Vernons, and Peels, in England; or whatever great proprietors. It is the interest of all men, that there should be Vaticans and Louvres full of noble works of art; British Museums, and French Gardens of Plants, Philadelphia Academies of Natural History, Bodleian, Ambrosian, Royal, Congressional Libraries. It is the interest of all that there should be Exploring Expeditions; Captain Cooks to voyage round the world, Rosses, Franklins, Richardsons, and Kanes, to find the magnetic and the geographic poles. We are all richer for the measurement of a degree of latitude on the earth’s surface. Our navigation is safer for the chart. How intimately our knowledge of the system of the Universe rests on that! — and a true economy in a state or an individual will forget its frugality in behalf of claims like these.

Whilst it is each man’s interest, that, not only ease and convenience of living, but also wealth or surplus product should exist somewhere, it need not be in his hands. Often it is very undesirable to him. Goethe said well, “nobody should be rich but those who understand it.” Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends. They should own who can administer; not they who hoard and conceal; not they who, the greater proprietors they are, are only the greater beggars, but they whose work carves out work for more, opens a path for all. For he is the rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom the people are poor: and how to give all access to the masterpieces of art and nature, is the problem of civilization. The socialism of our day has done good service in setting men on thinking how certain civilizing benefits, now only enjoyed by the opulent, can be enjoyed by all. For example, the providing to each man the means and apparatus of science, and of the arts. There are many articles good for occasional use, which few men are able to own. Every man wishes to see the ring of Saturn, the satellites and belts of Jupiter and Mars; the mountains and craters in the moon: yet how few can buy a telescope! and of those, scarcely one would like the trouble of keeping it in order, and exhibiting it. So of electrical and chemical apparatus, and many the like things. Every man may have occasion to consult books which he does not care to possess, such as cyclopaedias, dictionaries, tables, charts, maps, and public documents: pictures also of birds, beasts, fishes, shells, trees, flowers, whose names he desires to know.

There is a refining influence from the arts of Design on a prepared mind, which is as positive as that of music, and not to be supplied from any other source. But pictures, engravings, statues, and casts, beside their first cost, entail expenses, as of galleries and keepers for the exhibition; and the use which any man can make of them is rare, and their value, too, is much enhanced by the numbers of men who can share their enjoyment. In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged to all who could behold it. I think sometimes, — could I only have music on my own terms; — could I live in a great city, and know where I could go whenever I wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves, — that were a bath and a medicine.

If properties of this kind were owned by states, towns, and lyceums, they would draw the bonds of neighborhood closer. A town would exist to an intellectual purpose. In Europe, where the feudal forms secure the permanence of wealth in certain families, those families buy and preserve these things, and lay them open to the public. But in America, where democratic institutions divide every estate into small portions, after a few years, the public should step into the place of these proprietors, and provide this culture and inspiration for the citizen.

Man was born to be rich, or, inevitably grows rich by the use of his faculties; by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players. Cultivated labor drives out brute labor. An infinite number of shrewd men, in infinite years, have arrived at certain best and shortest ways of doing, and this accumulated skill in arts, cultures, harvestings, curings, manufactures, navigations, exchanges, constitutes the worth of our world to–day.

Commerce is a game of skill, which every man cannot play, which few men can play well. The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune, and so, in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this, and believe in magic, in all parts of life. He knows, that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent, — for every effect a perfect cause, — and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose. He insures himself in every transaction, and likes small and sure gains. Probity and closeness to the facts are the basis, but the masters of the art add a certain long arithmetic. The problem is, to combine many and remote operations, with the accuracy and adherence to the facts, which is easy in near and small transactions; so to arrive at gigantic results, without any compromise of safety. Napoleon was fond of telling the story of the Marseilles banker, who said to his visitor, surprised at the contrast between the splendor of the banker’s chateau and hospitality, and the meanness of the counting–room in which he had seen him, — “Young man, you are too young to understand how masses are formed, — the true and only power, — whether composed of money, water, or men, it is all alike, — a mass is an immense centre of motion, but it must be begun, it must be kept up:” — and he might have added, that the way in which it must be begun and kept up, is, by obedience to the law of particles.

Success consists in close appliance to the laws of the world, and, since those laws are intellectual and moral, an intellectual and moral obedience. Political Economy is as good a book wherein to read the life of man, and the ascendency of laws over all private and hostile influences, as any Bible which has come down to us.

Money is representative, and follows the nature and fortunes of the owner. The coin is a delicate meter of civil, social, and moral changes. The farmer is covetous of his dollar, and with reason. It is no waif to him. He knows how many strokes of labor it represents. His bones ache with the day’s work that earned it. He knows how much land it represents; — how much rain, frost, and sunshine. He knows that, in the dollar, he gives you so much discretion and patience so much hoeing, and threshing. Try to lift his dollar; you must lift all that weight. In the city, where money follows the skit of a pen, or a lucky rise in exchange, it comes to be looked on as light. I wish the farmer held it dearer, and would spend it only for real bread; force for force.

The farmer’s dollar is heavy, and the clerk’s is light and nimble; leaps out of his pocket; jumps on to cards and faro–tables: but still more curious is its susceptibility to metaphysical changes. It is the finest barometer of social storms, and announces revolutions.

Every step of civil advancement makes every man’s dollar worth more. In California, the country where it grew, — what would it buy? A few years since, it would buy a shanty, dysentery, hunger, bad company, and crime. There are wide countries, like Siberia, where it would buy little else to–day, than some petty mitigation of suffering. In Rome, it will buy beauty and magnificence. Forty years ago, a dollar would not buy much in Boston. Now it will buy a great deal more in our old town, thanks to railroads, telegraphs, steamers, and the contemporaneous growth of New York, and the whole country. Yet there are many goods appertaining to a capital city, which are not yet purchasable here, no, not with a mountain of dollars. A dollar in Florida is not worth a dollar in Massachusetts. A dollar is not value, but representative of value, and, at last, of moral values. A dollar is rated for the corn it will buy, or to speak strictly, not for the corn or house–room, but for Athenian corn, and Roman house–room, — for the wit, probity, and power, which we eat bread and dwell in houses to share and exert. Wealth is mental; wealth is moral. The value of a dollar is, to buy just things: a dollar goes on increasing in value with all the genius, and all the virtue of the world. A dollar in a university, is worth more than a dollar in a jail; in a temperate, schooled, law–abiding community, than in some sink of crime, where dice, knives, and arsenic, are in constant play.

The “Bank–Note Detector” is a useful publication. But the current dollar, silver or paper, is itself the detector of the right and wrong where it circulates. Is it not instantly enhanced by the increase of equity? If a trader refuses to sell his vote, or adheres to some odious right, he makes so much more equity in Massachusetts; and every acre in the State is more worth, in the hour of his action. If you take out of State–street the ten honestest merchants, and put in ten roguish persons, controlling the same amount of capital, — the rates of insurance will indicate it; the soundness of banks will show it: the highways will be less secure: the schools will feel it; the children will bring home their little dose of the poison: the judge will sit less firmly on the bench, and his decisions be less upright; he has lost so much support and constraint, — which all need; and the pulpit will betray it, in a laxer rule of life. An apple–tree, if you take out every day for a number of days, a load of loam, and put in a load of sand about its roots, — will find it out. An apple–tree is a stupid kind of creature, but if this treatment be pursued for a short time, I think it would begin to mistrust something. And if you should take out of the powerful class engaged in trade a hundred good men, and put in a hundred bad, or, what is just the same thing, introduce a demoralizing institution, would not the dollar, which is not much stupider than an apple–tree, presently find it out? The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society. Every man who removes into this city, with any purchasable talent or skill in him, gives to every man’s labor in the city, a new worth. If a talent is anywhere born into the world, the community of nations is enriched; and, much more, with a new degree of probity. The expense of crime, one of the principal charges of every nation, is so far stopped. In Europe, crime is observed to increase or abate with the price of bread. If the Rothschilds at Paris do not accept bills, the people at Manchester, at Paisley, at Birmingham, are forced into the highway, and landlords are shot down in Ireland. The police records attest it. The vibrations are presently felt in New York, New Orleans, and Chicago. Not much otherwise, the economical power touches the masses through the political lords. Rothschild refuses the Russian loan, and there is peace, and the harvests are saved. He takes it, and there is war, and an agitation through a large portion of mankind, with every hideous result, ending in revolution, and a new order.

Wealth brings with it its own checks and balances. The basis of political economy is non–interference. The only safe rule is found in the self–adjusting meter of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws. Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and property, and you need not give alms. Open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue, and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands. In a free and just commonwealth, property rushes from the idle and imbecile, to the industrious, brave, and persevering.

The laws of nature play through trade, as a toy–battery exhibits the effects of electricity. The level of the sea is not more surely kept, than is the equilibrium of value in society, by the demand and supply: and artifice or legislation punishes itself, by reactions, gluts, and bankruptcies. The sublime laws play indifferently through atoms and galaxies. Whoever knows what happens in the getting and spending of a loaf of bread and a pint of beer; that no wishing will change the rigorous limits of pints and penny loaves; that, for all that is consumed, so much less remains in the basket and pot; but what is gone out of these is not wasted, but well spent, if it nourish his body, and enable him to finish his task; — knows all of political economy that the budgets of empires can teach him. The interest of petty economy is this symbolization of the great economy; the way in which a house, and a private man’s methods, tally with the solar system, and the laws of give and take, throughout nature; and, however wary we are of the falsehoods and petty tricks which we suicidally play off on each other, every man has a certain satisfaction, whenever his dealing touches on the inevitable facts; when he sees that things themselves dictate the price, as they always tend to do, and, in large manufactures, are seen to do. Your paper is not fine or coarse enough, — is too heavy, or too thin. The manufacturer says, he will furnish you with just that thickness or thinness you want; the pattern is quite indifferent to him; here is his schedule; — any variety of paper, as cheaper or dearer, with the prices annexed. A pound of paper costs so much, and you may have it made up in any pattern you fancy.

There is in all our dealings a self–regulation that supersedes chaffering. You will rent a house, but must have it cheap. The owner can reduce the rent, but so he incapacitates himself from making proper repairs, and the tenant gets not the house he would have, but a worse one; besides, that a relation a little injurious is established between land–lord and tenant. You dismiss your laborer, saying, “Patrick, I shall send for you as soon as I cannot do without you.” Patrick goes off contented, for he knows that the weeds will grow with the potatoes, the vines must be planted, next week, and, however unwilling you may be, the cantelopes, crook–necks, and cucumbers will send for him. Who but must wish that all labor and value should stand on the same simple and surly market? If it is the best of its kind, it will. We must have joiner, locksmith, planter, priest, poet, doctor, cook, weaver, ostler; each in turn, through the year.

If a St. Michael’s pear sells for a shilling, it costs a shilling to raise it. If, in Boston, the best securities offer twelve per cent. for money, they have just six per cent. of insecurity. You may not see that the fine pear costs you a shilling, but it costs the community so much. The shilling represents the number of enemies the pear has, and the amount of risk in ripening it. The price of coal shows the narrowness of the coal–field, and a compulsory confinement of the miners to a certain district. All salaries are reckoned on contingent, as well as on actual services. “If the wind were always southwest by west,” said the skipper, “women might take ships to sea.” One might say, that all things are of one price; that nothing is cheap or dear; and that the apparent disparities that strike us, are only a shopman’s trick of concealing the damage in your bargain. A youth coming into the city from his native New Hampshire farm, with its hard fare still fresh in his remembrance, boards at a first–class hotel, and believes he must somehow have outwitted Dr. Franklin and Malthus, for luxuries are cheap. But he pays for the one convenience of a better dinner, by the loss of some of the richest social and educational advantages. He has lost what guards! what incentives! He will perhaps find by and by, that he left the Muses at the door of the hotel, and found the Furies inside. Money often costs too much, and power and pleasure are not cheap. The ancient poet said, “the gods sell all things at a fair price.”

There is an example of the compensations in the commercial history of this country. When the European wars threw the carrying–trade of the world, from 1800 to 1812, into American bottoms, a seizure was now and then made of an American ship. Of course, the loss was serious to the owner, but the country was indemnified; for we charged threepence a pound for carrying cotton, sixpence for tobacco, and so on; which paid for the risk and loss, and brought into the country an immense prosperity, early marriages, private wealth, the building of cities, and of states: and, after the war was over, we received compensation over and above, by treaty, for all the seizures. Well, the Americans grew rich and great. But the pay–day comes round. Britain, France, and Germany, which our extraordinary profits had impoverished, send out, attracted by the fame of our advantages, first their thousands, then their millions, of poor people, to share the crop. At first, we employ them, and increase our prosperity: but, in the artificial system of society and of protected labor, which we also have adopted and enlarged, there come presently checks and stoppages. Then we refuse to employ these poor men. But they will not so be answered. They go into the poor rates, and, though we refuse wages, we must now pay the same amount in the form of taxes. Again, it turns out that the largest proportion of crimes are committed by foreigners. The cost of the crime, and the expense of courts, and of prisons, we must bear, and the standing army of preventive police we must pay. The cost of education of the posterity of this great colony, I will not compute. But the gross amount of these costs will begin to pay back what we thought was a net gain from our transatlantic customers of 1800. It is vain to refuse this payment. We cannot get rid of these people, and we cannot get rid of their will to be supported. That has become an inevitable element of our politics; and, for their votes, each of the dominant parties courts and assists them to get it executed. Moreover, we have to pay, not what would have contented them at home, but what they have learned to think necessary here; so that opinion, fancy, and all manner of moral considerations complicate the problem.

There are a few measures of economy which will bear to be named without disgust; for the subject is tender, and we may easily have too much of it; and therein resembles the hideous animalcules of which our bodies are built up, — which, offensive in the particular, yet compose valuable and effective masses. Our nature and genius force us to respect ends, whilst we use means. We must use the means, and yet, in our most accurate using, somehow screen and cloak them, as we can only give them any beauty, by a reflection of the glory of the end. That is the good head, which serves the end, and commands the means. The rabble are corrupted by their means: the means are too strong for them, and they desert their end. ... 

Sermon Notes, July 31, 2011

In Jin Moon

1. In Jin Nim asked us how we were. She conveyed True Parents greetings to us from Kodiak Alaska. They are always asking how everyone is doing – how the blessed children are growing up and how inspired In Jin Nim is each day.

2. Our True Parents are very much concerned about this country of America – because this country has been blessed by God to exercise that power to influence the world in a godly way.

3. When In Jin Nim was thinking about what she would like to share with the brothers and sisters on this Sunday morning, she thought about how in many ways what took place last week in Oslo Norway, where this man, a right wing Christian fundamentalist, took it upon himself to take the lives of 84 children who were at a political camp in Utoya – and decided to take it upon himself to send a message to the world by blowing up a government building – killing seven and wounding over 90.

4. This is an example of the sign of the times. When we look at this man we have to ask ourselves where does someone like this come from? How is it that someone can grow up with so much hatred and so much desire to speak his own words of truth – that he is willing to take many, many lives.

5. One of the most profound things that In Jin Nim saw was how the Norwegian people decided to respond – not by hating this person, but as a country deciding to come together and be that city of love. They took the word Oslo and turned it into the city of love, Oslove. In Jin Nim was watching the different networks as they covered the story and she was moved by the way the country came together in a sea of roses. They said that they were not going to let this one horrific event – this one man's desire to make his own words heard, making so many people die in the name of hatred – become the symbol of Norway. They came together and said "we want to show the world that we are a country of love, we are the city of Oslove." They came together in the most beautiful expression – holding up roses. It started in Oslo, but it was such a beautiful expression of love, of people coming into unity and deciding that they were not going to let one horrific event inspired by hatred define who they are as a people – and so all the cities in Norway held this event. The cities and towns were flooded by a sea of roses.

6. For In Jin Nim this was an incredibly hopeful expression of love. In our day-to-day life there is so much tragedy and suffering, so much hatred and ugliness, but the country that bestows the Nobel Peace Prize on the countries of the world – came to realize that you can't begin to have a peaceful world or nation if we don't understand the meaning of love.

7. Our True Parents have always taught us that sometimes the greatest lessons in life can be learned and taught through incredibly difficult situations. So what took place by the hand of Mr. Breivik was incredibly unfortunate and horrific. But the people came together and decided the lessons that they were going to learn. "Are we just going to learn how to give back the hatred – or are we going to take it a step further by helping humanity progress into something more beautiful – into the peaceful millennium that we are all striving for?" Their expression of love is truly an inspiration.

8. When In Jin Nim thinks about the work that we are doing here in the United States, and we are looking at this time frame of living in the providential time, we realize that our True Parents come with an incredible mission – to share the breaking news. And when you study the life and the background of this man (Breivik) – you realize how important it is that we have True Parents with us at this time.

9. When you study this man's background you realize that he comes from a broken home. His father left his family when he was one year old. And you realize that he has gone through a series of events in his life – which he understood to be rejection. He suffered the same thing that a lot of adolescents go through – perhaps being ostracized, made fun of and rejected by different social groups. But this man, because of the framework he came out of – the family environment, the context in which he was dealing with all of these rejections – you realize that deviant behavior is not something that happens overnight. It is really a process.

10. When True Parents emphasize the importance of building an ideal family, providing an ideal environment for children to grow up in, we realize how true that is.

11. So, he came from a single-family home where he was raised by his mother along with his sister. He never really had an example of a male figure in his life. His father was non-existent. And so you can probably gather that the mother probably said words to the effect, "now you have to be the man of the house, we don't have a father so you have to carry the burden of taking care of all of us." Imagine a little boy growing up in an environment in which the father is not there – he has no example of a male mentor or figure to look up to or aspire to. At the same time the mother is putting undue pressure, undue expectations on the child – to be or to take the place of that absentee father.

12. In a setting like that we realize that this child must have gone through an incredible sense of burden in his life. And many times what children do in order to tackle this monumental behemoth that they call life – they have to have an inordinate sense of self – and many times that translates into an unrealistic, arrogant understanding of the self. The child begins to think, "I am so incredibly important. What I believe is the most important thing. I am the most important thing." This extreme desire to establish the self-overrides anything else that takes place or exists in his life.

13. When a child comes from this kind of environment and is put through the traumatic and difficult phase called adolescence, when they are not accepted, they are constantly rejected, or the child perceives himself to be constantly rejected – then the child slowly isolates himself more and more and resides in his own world – in his own 'master of the universe world' where he has been born to teach the world. He is creating himself into this almost messianic figure that has to right the wrong – his understanding of righting the wrong.

14. When you see someone like this commit the crime and then to see him several days later in court, and his demeanor is very much that of, "I did what I did and in 60 year's time you will herald me as a hero." This is what he said. He is smiling claiming that he has done the world a favor – because he was disappointed or angry against some of the policies of the Norwegian government – because they supported and tolerated cultural exchange and coexistence of other faiths in Norway. He felt that was not acceptable. Here he is, bearing the banner of being a Christian, taking it upon himself to commit this atrocity in order to shake this world up, because in his mind he is righting the wrong – you realize that this is a man who has not gone through the usual growth that most people go through in understanding the importance of moral reasoning in their life.

Lawrence Kohlberg

15. The great psychologist Kohlberg has done a great deal of study in understanding the stages of moral reasoning. He talks about four stages. Stage I – being that immature understanding of what morality is all about in which superficiality rules everything, above all else. In stage one the most important thing becomes power. Might is the most important thing. An understanding of this would be, "my dad is the boss because he is the biggest and the strongest." And so the strong decide what is right. Morality is determined by the strength of the person.

16. After a while you realize, in stage II, the prominent understanding is the word 'deal'. In stage one we understand that we are capable of understanding moral reasoning by saying – we just follow our big strong daddy because he is the strongest. But in stage II you start thinking, let's make a deal. What's in it for me? Or, I scratch your back and you scratch my back. There is a sense of some kind of interplay in the moral reasoning process of the individual.

17. A more advanced understanding, stage III, takes us to this concept of mutuality where the term care comes into play – words like trust, caring, and love start to creep into a child's understanding, their moral reasoning, when they look around the world and decide what they're going to do. They are thinking, "how would I like that person to treat me?" When you are thinking about how you would like to be treated by another person there is an element of empathy that plays into a child's way of thinking when their moral reasoning is at play.

18. But in the more advanced understanding, stage IV, the main word is 'systems.' This is when a child realizes that there are certain set moral norms, or standards, or sense of moral values that is necessary for us to be an interdependent society, where cooperation is necessary for the society to be viable.

19. Kohlberg talks about how a child goes through these stages, but for some reason when a child is in an unhealthy environment, not the best environment to grow up in, the child never progresses naturally – the way most children or adults do. Many of these people get stuck. So a person like Breivik is stuck on stage one. He has never really gone past the understanding that power is the most important thing – he who wields the biggest gun, the biggest power, going on to the island of Utoya where no one is armed except himself – to take the lives of all these innocent girls and boys. What he is wielding is this thing called power, and he is defining himself as that most important player in his world, where he is the master of the universe.

20. When we look at Breivik's actions, we realize that this is obviously not a healthy individual. It is someone who suffers from cognitive disorders. And quite a few psychologists and doctors have done a great deal of research on this – Yochelson, Samenow, Gibbs, and Potter have done this incredible work – summarizing for us what the main elements are of cognitive disorder. They define cognitive disorder, or the error in a person's perceptions or cognition, the ability to think, as being some of these things. These doctors talk about – people who suffer from cognitive disorders have an element of self-centeredness. "The whole world revolves around me. Me, myself, and I. It's me first and it's me only. Whatever I want I will take. Whatever I see, if I want it and can get away with it, I will do it." This is a serious cognitive disorder in that no one else exists other than me myself and I. I am the first and only thing that matters.

21. You realize that the second element, of most people suffering from cognitive disorder, is this thing called, 'assuming the worst.' They assume the worst in people because they cannot possibly think good thoughts of people. They feel that people are the way they are and they cannot be changed. There is a belief in this inability of people to change, the inability of people to do great things. When you are stuck in this cognitive disorder – an example would be – a child who is not emotionally well developed, in high school, will walk down the corridors and someone will just look at them, but the child will take that as a hostile action. Any ambiguous action is taken to be a hostile action. A glance will be looked upon as the person laughing at them, a person putting you down, the person threatening you, wanting to hurt you. They feel as if the whole world is against them.

22. Another element of cognitive disorder is this thing called, 'blaming the others.' It is almost as if you can do no wrong. You have done nothing wrong. This would be like a thief, getting caught and then explaining to the cops why they did what they did. The thief burglarizes the house and when the cop asks why they did it, the thief, blaming others, would respond by saying, "the owner of the house did not lock the door. So they had it coming." Or blaming the others, such as – when the cop asks, "why did you rape that 15-year-old girl?" "She was wearing a skirt that was too short. She was asking for it. She had it coming." They did nothing wrong. They simply responded to the stimuli. Therefore it's the stimuli that is at fault. It's the person who did not lock the house who invited the burglary and it's the girl who wore a dress that was too short who invited him to rape her.

23. The fourth point in people suffering from cognitive disorders is this thing called, "minimizing" or mislabeling. This would be something like, "I did what I did because everybody does it. Everybody lies so I lie. True family has so many problems so I am going to have a lot of problems. I saw somebody do drugs, so I am going to do drugs." There is a sense, since everybody is doing it, it's not harmful. It's not harmful because everybody is doing it. You are neutralizing your own conscience. The perpetrator doing the crime is neutralizing their conscience which tells them that it is wrong – in their mind it is not wrong since everybody is doing it.

24. If you look at the example of Breivik, you realize that he is suffering from all these points. He is a man so consumed with self-centeredness, it is only me, myself, and I. Nobody can teach the world, nobody knows the truth, so I have to teach truth and if I need to teach them I will do it. If I need to kill somebody I will do it, because I am the only thing that matters right now. A person like Breivik, assumes the worst in that he only perceives the ugliness that exists. He doesn't see anything beyond his own perception, of the errors in his perception. Therefore he cannot possibly fathom or contemplate the possibility that people can change and the world can be made into a better place. He assumes the worst and he is going to take it into his hands to punish the world to wake the world up. A person like him blames the others – "I didn't do anything wrong I am just responding to what is needed at this time." He is responding with hatred, by taking the lives of these people, because – that's the stimuli that was given and he is responding just to let people know that something has to be done. A person like him minimizes what he is doing in one sense. Because, he is saying, "look, everybody does something like this in one form or another in different circumstances at different levels in their lives – I just took it 100 notches higher." He is thinking as if his message is so important that what he did, the horrific nature of what he did is minimized in his mind because it was necessary to teach the world what he needs to teach.

25. When you realize that people like this are walking around, and thinking of all these different ways that they, the master of the universe, are going to teach lessons to the world – and he himself promoting himself as one of the faithful, wherein the banner of being a Christian – you realize that terrorism, if you really think about it, is a war of religions. Terrorism, what took place on 9/11, is a war of religion. It's the Islamic world not being happy with the Christian world, or the free market system, or some of our political ideas and policies. It's people like Breivik who thinks that he is a Christian fundamentalist, taking it upon himself to wage war against different faiths being in his country. Terrorism is a war of religions.

26. The reason why In Jin Nim says it is extraordinarily important for us to have our True Parents with us at this time of the breaking news is that, who else is going to bring all of these faiths together. How do you bring the faiths together? A lot of the good work that we have done – promoting service, peace organizations, and dialogue – those are great things, but you don't create peace through dialogue alone. You need something more than that. Our True Parents are absolutely correct in saying, "if you want peace you have to understand love. And the only way to understand how to live love in our lives is within the context of a family." Without building healthy ideal families we cannot even begin to dream or hope for world peace.

27. The Bible in Proverbs 23:7 says, "He who thinks this in his heart, so he is." We are creatures of what we think, because how we think determines how we act. Therefore, the psychologists Kohlberg stressed the importance of understanding moral reasoning, and the importance of character development in children and in young adults. When our True Parents teach us Divine Principle and encourage all of us to live a principled lifestyle, living for the sake of others, and asking us to be that ideal man and a woman who can come together and create ideal families of their own – what they are really asking us to do is to start practicing what true love is all about. Because, if we don't understand how to practice true love in a family setting there is no way we are going to understand how to practice true love in a societal setting, let alone on a national or world stage.

28. The emphasis on the importance of family, of providing a great environment for our children to grow up in a healthy way, so that their divinity, their God-given passions and talents can be shared with the world – this message is incredibly important. When you think about True Parents, a lot of people think, "Rev. Moon, yes he's a great man. He's a man of peace. He has done a lot of great works in the name of peace." But our True Parents are much more than that. They are not just a man and woman of peace. They are the physical manifestation of God, our Heavenly Parent, on earth.

29. And the reason why they are so crucial to world peace is that you cannot unite the world religions just on dialogue. Dialogue is the first step in the progress towards world peace, but that is just the first step. What we need is for somebody, sent by God, to encourage us to love each other as members of our own family. That is why this concept of the Blessing, that our True Parents give, which is a sacrament and gift to all of us, is the secret ingredient to world peace. Because only by people actually becoming one family, only by a Protestant coming together with a Catholic spouse, only by a Hindu coming together with an Islamic spouse, only by a Jehovah witness coming together with (a member of) the Church of Christ – only through marriage do we become family, do we really understand how it is to love. Without our True Parents there is no gift of the Blessing, there is no secret ingredient that is going to translate the good start of interfaith dialogue and substantiate it into a world of peace.

30. We have to understand that all the hatred and misunderstanding arises because we have different perspectives on how we want to honor God. But what our True Parents are doing is saying, "people of different faiths, different races, different cultural backgrounds – we have within our power to destroy our world, we have the power to blow up our world 100 times. We have the technology. And we have all these renegade groups taking it upon themselves to blow people up – in the form of suicide bombers or people like Breivik who take it upon themselves to teach the world how things should go and how things should be – and decides that he is going to be the master of the universe. Because he thinks being a Christian is the most important thing. Being Christian is more important than anything else. So the killing of people, of his own country, men and woman, is minimized. His own deeds are blamed on others, because the world provoked him to do it. And, assuming the worst, thinking that there is no hope – he must therefore take it upon himself to proclaim the truth, and he is so self-centered he doesn't see anything beyond himself or his faith.

31. And you realize that throughout the years and months we see examples of somebody like Breivik all around the world. Who is going to bring someone like that together in an embrace with an Islamic brother or sister and realize that we belong to one humanity, we belong to one family, and that we must love each other as we do our spouse, as we do our own children, as we do our own relatives. That is the gift that our True Parents are bringing to the world. They are asking us to re-imagine the world of differences, of hostilities, a world full of hatred – and re-imagine the world where people can live as if we are really belonging to one family – because we have made that pledge to God, to humanity, to our spouse, and to our families, to love another just as much as we do our own. Only a concept such as this can heal the hatred, can bring unity to all these different faiths that, left alone without our True Parents' gift of the Blessing, is going to result in the war of religions or terrorist attacks around the world.

32. Our True Parents, they are not just our father and mother. They are providential figures of history. For us to be living at the same time together with them, we have to realize that this is not just a time to re-imagine our world, but actually make it real.

Sun Myung Moon, Hak Ja Han and family in front of Santa Sofia, Istanbul, Turkey, May 7, 2011

33. Through the example of Jesus Christ and his life of piety we come to understand what it is to truly love, what it means to seek a true life. But we were never able to solve – how do we have, or substantiate, the true lineage of God. How do we change our satanic lineage that resulted from the fall of man to the heavenly lineage and engraft ourselves into the heavenly lineage, into this one family under God – how do we do this? With Jesus Christ we never had that answer, because Jesus' life and mission were cut short. He never had a chance to find a wife, to have a family, to establish a paradigm of true love that everybody could look at and say, "That is how we build the ideal family, ideal society, ideal nation, and world." We just never had that model to follow, or to contemplate, or to think about, because Jesus died on the cross. He died without his disciples, without the Holy Spirit manifesting itself into that beautiful True Mother of mankind through which Jesus Christ would have stood as the True Parents. Jesus never had that opportunity. Therefore our understanding of how the world is was really quite askew.

34. Throughout the centuries, because we had Jesus' model as to how to live a true life, practicing love – then the good Christians have followed his example by denying all of the world creature comforts – by denying the fulfillment they might have in a marital relationship. In a way, they decided to go the way of the cross. They decided that Christian piety is the best way to serve the Lord and to serve Jesus Christ – to live a life of endless suffering and sacrifice.

35. But we realize with the advent of True Parents, we can truly understand what it means, or how we can go about establishing this true lineage of God. We realize that through the magic of True Parents – and the incredible thing is, yes true father is the Second Coming, the Lord of the Second Advent, but, as awesome as he is, without True Mother he cannot be True Parents. But with our True Mother standing together with him as a loving partner, that loving paradigm of true love, they stand in the position of the True Parents who have indemnified and restored history and therefore are in the position to really gift the world the chance to graft on to the true lineage of God, changing our lineage from the satanic lineage that has enslaved all of us and kept us in bondage throughout the centuries – to a place where we can have a brand-new beginning, grafting onto the heavenly lineage and having an opportunity to build and become a part of this one family under God.

36. Throughout the centuries the Church, when you study the Christian church, it has done a great job of bringing the brothers and sisters along – following the Christian model of Christian piety, following Jesus' life of sacrifice and suffering – and we thought that was the purpose of our lives. And the church has done its best.

37. And In Jin Nim has always thought it interesting that the role of the church is to take care of its congregation, take care of its brothers and sisters, nurture its brothers and sisters, nurture the children of God, and inspire the children of God to be those great men and women of God. If you think about it, the role of the church is extremely feminine. These are the characteristics – what a mother would usually do in a home.

38. Because Jesus Christ never had a wife, Church history has been dominated by men. And, because there was no seat made for a woman, our understanding of Christian history has been very much skewed, so much so that they have debated for centuries whether women should be silenced, should they be given an active role in the life of faith, whether they should stand behind the pulpit at all, whether that is right or wrong. But the great thing about our True Parents is that through the position and the person of True Parents man and woman find their own dignity. And we realize that when Father stresses the importance of the Pacific rim era, the importance of woman coming to the forefront – encouraging all of humanity to graft onto this heavenly lineage and realize that our True Parents are here and to compel all of us to become that one family of God – in a way, by having the woman take the lead, it is pushing the role of the church – even that much more into the forefront – in emphasizing the importance of compassionate giving, caring, and inspiring. These are all virtues that are extremely feminine, but necessary if we want to create a world of peace.

39. Through our True Parents we realize that all of us have been anointed as their representatives upon the world. They are encouraging us just like the astronauts in the movie Armageddon (a clip from the movie was shown before In Jin Nim began speaking) – here they are in slow motion walking up to the rocket because they are going to save the world from the asteroid that is going to collide with the Earth and extinguish any source of life forever. These astronauts are the anointed, the blessed, the chosen ones, to put their life on the line, to go out there into space, and save their humanity, their earth, from total destruction.

Professor R. Peter Hobson

40. If we truly understand the providential timeline, the providential history that all of us are living in, we are those astronauts that have been anointed, hand-picked, blessed and chosen by God to safeguard the world. Safeguard the world against all of these asteroids that are incoming, that are volatile, that are deadly. And these asteroids can be in the form of terrorist attacks, people fighting with each other because of their differences in religion, race, and cultural backgrounds. These asteroids can be the moral corruption that is going to overtake our world and degenerate all of humanity into the animal-like existence that Hobson talks about.

41. What True Parents are doing is they are giving us the means to fight for what we believe in, to fight and build the kind of world – to safeguard our children from all these different asteroids. The asteroids might be all these temptations in the form of drugs, sexual abuse, all these temptations – asking us to live superficial lives. But through an understanding of who we are as God's sons and daughters, and in understanding that we are these astronauts that are going to go into space and put up a good fight, that are going to stand strong because we believe in something, we are going to fight for something, and we are going to come together and work and build something. That is what we are all about. This is what our Heavenly Parent, our True Parents, is asking us – not just think about in our heads, but to truly feel it, get it in our heart, truly feel it – but better than that – experience it so that we become what we think, so we start living the life that we have decided to live.

42. If you understand that our church has gone through several different stages, the first generation is like the first part of a rocket with a whole lot of shaking and rolling, and then here comes the second generation, once it clears the atmosphere the initial thrust blasters fall by the wayside – allowing the second part of the rocket to come forward and take the rocket to a whole new level. And then, when it comes time, the second stage of the rocket falls by the wayside allowing the third part to take us to a place where we have only dreamed about.

43. We have to understand that we are a work in progress. The most important thing is to remind yourselves not to lose ourselves along the way – do not get lost after the initial first stage of the rocket falls by the wayside – do not be discouraged, do not lose hope thinking, "oh my sacrifice was in vain!" "No! It is your sacrifice that has propelled the second generation, the second stage of the work that we need to do, as high as it is now – the place where we're standing." And the second generation, if they do their part, will take it to the third level, and our future generations will take the world into that safe and peaceful and loving world that we so long for.

44. This is the time to take our re-imagining of what the world can be and realize, with our True Parents here, that we truly have this magical gift, this gift of the Blessing through which all of humanity can become one family. Therefore it is our job to share the breaking news with the rest of the world, to tell the people the good news that the Messiah is here, our True Parents are here. And the things that we thought, the way we thought things should be done, the status quo, the rocks of the world – will be shattered by the Messiah, by our True Parents who reveal the completed way of doing things, the fulfilling way of doing things. For example, instead of understanding Christian piety as denial and suffering we realize that through our True Parents it is not a life of suffering and misery that God would want for his children, but it is the life of completion and fulfillment that God wants for all of us.

45. And we realize through our True Parents that it is not a world of hatred that we should be living in, but it is truly a world where love needs to take the leading role, where understanding of true love – exercise, practice, and implemented in the context of the family – is taken to a whole new level, to the society, nation, world, and cosmos. We realize that through uniting with our True Parents all of this is possible.

46. This is an incredibly exciting and important time. This is the time not to be sleeping like the disciples of Jesus Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. We must be alert, we must be awake, we must be aware, and we must not miss a thing – because every day with our True Parents is precious, every moment here with each other is precious. You and I are those anointed astronauts who are going to change the world – so be proud of who we are.

47. And, the work of the church is not to just teach you about who God is, that is not really the work of the church. If you really think about it the work of the church, in the context of the advent of True Parents in our lives, is to help give us the tools to not just know what an ideal family is but to give us the weekly tools to implement it in our lives, to start building it in our lives.

48. When you look at the example of people like Breivik, men and women who suffer from cognitive disorders, the majority of psychologists and doctors agree on one thing – the only way you can start treating these people who have isolated themselves to such an extent that they have become monsters, or Masters, of their own universe and only they know the truth, only they have the means to right the wrongs in the world – they realize that the most important thing in terms of treating these individuals with cognitive disorders is to bring them into a group setting – have them go through a process of rubbing up against different people – just as in school we are intellectually challenged every day – we become a great mathematician by having challenging problems. Some of In Jin Nim's kids when they were doing mathematics, which they were very good at, what they always wanted was a math challenge. They wanted to be challenged intellectually so that they are honed and practiced – and they did this to work the muscles of their intellect so that their minds can do greater and greater formulas and computations in their head.

49. Likewise the way to treat cognitive disorders – and every child goes through a period when they will suffer through these four elements – being self-centered, assuming the worst, blaming the others, and minimizing – every child is going to go through this process. But the way that you deal with, the way you help a child go through these difficult processes is by putting them into a group setting. This is why a healthy family environment is incredibly important – dealing with the mom and dad, dealing with siblings and relatives – this is how a child slowly learns how to have a healthy response and a healthy understanding of how they need to be in a social context.

50. Likewise psychologists and doctors realized – putting people through these role-playing – where the child is in a family setting or group setting, where they are made to feel like "okay you want to do whatever you want, but how would you like it if your sister becomes you for the day and role-plays what you just did in the context of the family." By working out the problems, working out the responses from different family members that will naturally arise when you put yourself forward in such an aggressive and self-centered manner – that is really the only way that people can come to understand, "I need to grow, I need to do something different." This is why a place like a church where we gather together on a weekly basis – it is a great time to talk about different ways that we can improve our community or improve our families.

51. An example of Breivik is a wonderful opportunity to really stress the importance of providing that healthy group dynamic setting where a child learns to healthily have a dynamic interplay in relationship with different family members – thereby getting a holistic picture of what they're doing right and what they are doing wrong and therefore, day by day, develop a healthy ability to reason cognitively.

52. In Jin Nim expressed that she is hoping, that in light of what took place in Norway, if Norway can be a country of 'Oslove' what about the beautiful country of America and all the brothers and sisters here who have been anointed to be those astronauts, to share the breaking news, and don't miss a thing along the way. Can we not do better? Can we not really inspire our youth by sharing the breaking news with the rest of the world, exercising our power to influence the world – to seek a life based upon true love – and encourage everybody to join in this common humanity of man as one family of God, to really experience the beauty of the Blessing. "Don't you think we can do that brothers and sisters?!"

53. Tentatively, our True Parents have set the next Blessing for February, and so we have a lot of work to do in terms of sharing the breaking news. Encourage your colleagues, your friends, your relatives, and really ask them to take a look at what took place in Norway and ask them, "how are we going to build a world of peace? Are we just going to talk about it and feel good about it amongst ourselves? Or are we actually going to do the building, to actually be that one family under God?"

54. "Please encourage everybody to understand the importance of our True Parents and invite the world to come and experience the magic of the Blessing. And at this time please understand the importance of unity with our True Parents and the importance of really uniting and aligning with their vision – and working together in the ways that they compel us to do each and every day."

55. "God bless, have a great Sunday! And thank you very much"

Notes:

The Books of Proverbs, chapter 23

1: When you sit down to eat with a ruler,
observe carefully what is before you;

2: and put a knife to your throat
if you are a man given to appetite.

3: Do not desire his delicacies,
for they are deceptive food.

4: Do not toil to acquire wealth;
be wise enough to desist.

5: When your eyes light upon it, it is gone;
for suddenly it takes to itself wings,
flying like an eagle toward heaven.

6: Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy;
do not desire his delicacies;

7: for he is like one who is inwardly reckoning.
"Eat and drink!" he says to you;
but his heart is not with you.

8: You will vomit up the morsels which you have eaten,
and waste your pleasant words.

9: Do not speak in the hearing of a fool,
for he will despise the wisdom of your words.

10: Do not remove an ancient landmark
or enter the fields of the fatherless;

11: for their Redeemer is strong;
he will plead their cause against you.

12: Apply your mind to instruction
and your ear to words of knowledge.

13: Do not withhold discipline from a child;
if you beat him with a rod, he will not die.

14: If you beat him with the rod
you will save his life from Sheol.

15: My son, if your heart is wise,
my heart too will be glad.

16: My soul will rejoice
when your lips speak what is right.

17: Let not your heart envy sinners,
but continue in the fear of the LORD all the day.

18: Surely there is a future,
and your hope will not be cut off.

19: Hear, my son, and be wise,
and direct your mind in the way.

20: Be not among winebibbers,
or among gluttonous eaters of meat;

21: for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty,
and drowsiness will clothe a man with rags.

22: Hearken to your father who begot you,
and do not despise your mother when she is old.

23: Buy truth, and do not sell it;
buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding.

24: The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice;
he who begets a wise son will be glad in him.

25: Let your father and mother be glad,
let her who bore you rejoice.

26: My son, give me your heart,
and let your eyes observe my ways.

27: For a harlot is a deep pit;
an adventuress is a narrow well.

28: She lies in wait like a robber
and increases the faithless among men.

29: Who has woe? Who has sorrow?
Who has strife? Who has complaining?
Who has wounds without cause?
Who has redness of eyes?

30: Those who tarry long over wine,
those who go to try mixed wine.

31: Do not look at wine when it is red,
when it sparkles in the cup
and goes down smoothly.

32: At the last it bites like a serpent,
and stings like an adder.

33: Your eyes will see strange things,
and your mind utter perverse things.

34: You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea,
like one who lies on the top of a mast.

35: "They struck me," you will say, "but I was not hurt;
they beat me, but I did not feel it.
When shall I awake?
I will seek another drink." 

Moral Reasoning, Cognitive Distortion, and True Parents' Message of True Love

In Jin Moon
July 31, 2011

InJinMoon-110731a_a.jpg

Good morning. How is everyone? I am so delighted to see you once again and to share this beautiful moment with all of you. Our True Parents send you their greetings from Kodiak, Alaska. They're always asking about how everybody is doing, how brothers and sisters are faring, how the blessed children are growing up, and how inspired I am each and every day.

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Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han with members in Kodiak, Alaska, July 28, 2011

Our True Parents are very much concerned about America because this country really has been blessed by God to exercise its power to influence the world in a godly way. When I was thinking about what to share with our brothers and sisters on Sunday morning, I thought about what took place last week in Oslo, Norway. We have seen in the news that a right-wing Christian took the lives of 69 young people who were at a youth political camp in Utoya. He tried to send a message to the world by also blowing up government buildings, killing eight people, and wounding another ten. This is an example of the sign of the times.

When we look at this man we have to ask ourselves, "Where does somebody like this come from? How is it that somebody can grow up with so much hatred and so much desire to speak his own words of truth that he is willing to take many lives?" One of the most profound things I saw was the way the Norwegian people responded not by hating this person but by deciding as a country to come together and turn the city of Oslo into the city of love, "Os-love."

The people of Norway came together and said, "We want to show the world that we are a country of love. We are a city of Os-love." They came together in the most beautiful expression of holding up thousands of roses. That show of roses started in Oslo, and it was such a moving expression of love, with people coming together to demonstrate that they were not going to let one horrific event inspired by hatred define who they were, that all the other Norwegian cities held a similar event in which they flooded the streets with a sea of people holding up roses. This was a wonderfully hopeful expression of love. In our day-to-day lives there's so much suffering, hatred, and ugliness, but the country that bestows the Nobel Peace Prize came to realize that we can't really begin to have a peaceful nation or world if we don't understand the meaning of love.

Mourning the victims of Anders Breivik in Oslo, Norway

Our True Parents have taught us that the greatest lessons in life can sometimes be learned and taught through extremely difficult situations or circumstances. What took place at the hands of Mr. Breivik was fiendishly unfortunate and unbelievably horrific, but nonetheless the people came together and considered, "What lessons are we going to learn from this? Are we going to learn how to give back hatred and respond with hatred, or are we going to take it a step further by helping humanity progress into something more beautiful, into the peaceful millennium that we're all striving for?" So their expression of love is truly an inspiration.

Providing a Healthy Environment for Our Children

When we think about the work we are doing here in the United States, looking at the time frame of living in this providential era, we realize that our True Parents come with an amazing mission to share the breaking news. When we study the life and background of Breivik, we can consider anew how important it is to have True Parents with us at this time.

If we study Anders Breivik's background, we see that he comes from a broken home. His father left the family when Anders was one year old. Anders went through a series of events in his life that he understood to be rejection. So he suffered the same thing that a lot of adolescents go through. Perhaps he was ostracized, or made fun of, or rejected by different social groups. But seeing the framework he came from, the family environment or context in which he was dealing with all this rejection, we may note that the pattern of deviant behavior does not happen overnight. It's really a process.

Therefore, when True Parents stress to us the importance of building ideal families, and providing an ideal environment for children to grow up in, we realize how true that is. Breivik came from a single-parent home where he was raised by his mother along with a sister. He never really had an example of a male figure in his life. His father was nonexistent. We can easily imagine that his mother may have said words to the effect, "You have to be the man of the house. We don't have a father so you have to carry the burden of taking care of all of us."

Imagine a little boy growing up in an environment where the father is not there. He has no example of a male mentor to look up to and aspire to, and yet at the same time the mother may be putting undue pressure and expectations on the child to take the place of that absentee father. Such a child would have a great sense of burden in his life.

Often what children do to tackle this overwhelming behemoth we call life is to develop an inordinate sense of self that translates into an unrealistic, arrogant understanding of the self. The child begins to think he is so extremely important that the beliefs he holds are the most important beliefs and that he himself is the most important person. Therefore, this extreme desire to establish the self overrides anything else that takes place or exists in his life.

When a child comes from this kind of environment and goes through the especially traumatic and difficult phase called adolescence, while being constantly rejected, or perceiving himself to be constantly rejected, then the child slowly isolates himself more and more, and resides in his own world, in his own "master of the universe world," feeling that he has been born to teach the world. He is almost creating himself as a messianic figure who has to right the wrong, whatever may be his understanding of righting the wrong.

When somebody like this commits a crime, and we then see him several days later in court, his demeanor is very much that of, "I did what I did, and in 60 years' time you will herald me as a hero." This is what Breivik said. He was smiling as if to say, "I did the world a favor. I did all of you a favor." He had been disappointed or angry at some of the policies of the Norwegian government in supporting cultural exchange, encouraging coexistence with other faiths in Norway. He felt that that was not acceptable.

So, here he was, bearing the banner of being a "Christian," taking it upon himself to commit this atrocity, to shake the world up because in his mind he was righting a wrong. Then we realize that this is a man who has not gone through the usual growth that most people go through in learning the importance of moral reasoning in his or her life.

Stages of Moral Reasoning

Great psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg

The great psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg did a great deal of study of the stages of moral reasoning. He talked about several stages. The first stage is characterized by an immature understanding of what morality is all about in which superficiality rules everything above all else. The most important thing is power. An example of this kind of reasoning would be, "My dad is the boss because he's the biggest and the strongest." So the strongest defines what is right. Morality is determined by the strength of the person.

Then, according to Kohlberg, after some period of moral development a person enters the next stage, in which the predominant understanding is the word deal. First we learn that we are capable of understanding moral reasoning by saying, "We just follow our big, strong daddy because he's the strongest." But then we begin to start thinking, "Well, let's make a deal. What's in it for me?" Or, "I scratch your back and you scratch my back." There's a sense of some kind of interplay in the moral reasoning process of an individual.

But a more advanced understanding, the next level, takes us to the concept of mutuality, in which the word care comes into play. Words like trust, caring, and love start to creep into children's understanding of their moral reasoning when they look around the world and decide what they're going to do. They're thinking, "Hmm, how would I like that person to treat me?" When children are thinking about how they would like to be treated by another person, an element of empathy plays into the children's way of thinking in their moral reasoning.

As a child progresses, the main word is systems. The child realizes that a certain set of moral norms, or consistent standards, is necessary for an interdependent society in which cooperation is important for society to be viable.

A child who is in an unhealthy environment may not progress naturally, the way most children and adults do. Many of these people get stuck. A person like Breivik is stuck in the first stage. He has never really gone past the understanding that power is the most important thing. He who wields the biggest gun, the greatest power, can go onto the island of Utoya where nobody is armed except himself and take the lives of all these innocent girls and boys. He is wielding power, and he's defining himself as that most important player in his world where he is the master of the universe.

Elements of Cognitive Distortion

But when we look at Breivik's actions, we realize that obviously this is not a healthy individual. We realize this is somebody who suffers cognitively. Many psychologists have done the work of summarizing the main elements of cognitive distortion. They define cognitive distortion as being an error in a person's perception, or cognition, or the ability to think. They say that people who suffer from cognitive distortions have an element of self-centeredness: "The whole world revolves around me, myself, and I. It's me first, it's me only. So, whatever I want I will take, whatever I see, if I want it and if I can get away with it, I will do it." This is a serious cognitive distortion in that nobody else exists other than me, myself, and I. I am first, and I am the only thing that matters.

The second element possessed by most people suffering from cognitive distortion is the trait called assuming the worst. They assume the worst in people because they cannot possibly think good of people. They feel that people are the way they are and cannot be changed. There is a belief in the inability of people to change and to do great things.

When you are stuck in this cognitive distortion, any ambiguous action is taken as hostile. An example would be a child who's not emotionally well developed going to high school and walking down the corridors. Someone might just look at the child, but the child will take that as a hostile action. Any glance will be looked upon as that person laughing at him, putting him down, wanting to threaten or hurt him. An emotionally underdeveloped child will feel as if the whole world is against him or her.

Another element of cognitive distortion is blaming the other, as if you can do no wrong. You have done nothing wrong. That would be like a thief basically getting caught and justifying to the cops why he did what he did. The thief burglarized the house, and when the cop asked, "Why did you do that? Why did you rip that guy off?" The thief, blaming the others would respond in this kind of fashion: "The owners of the house did not lock the door, so they had it coming." Or in another situation, if the cop asked, "Why did you rape that 15-year-old girl?" the perpetrator might reply, "She was wearing a skirt that was too short. She was asking for it. She had it coming."

These people say they did nothing wrong. They simply responded to the stimulus, so it's the stimulus that's at fault. It's the person who did not lock the house that invited the burglary, and it's the girl who wore a dress too short who invited him to rape her.

The fourth point in people suffering from cognitive distortion is something called minimizing or mislabeling. This would be something like, "Well, I did what I did because everybody does it. Everybody lies, so I lie. True Family has so many problems, so I'm going to have a lot of problems. I saw somebody do drugs, so I'm going to do drugs."

There is a sense that since everybody is doing it, it's not harmful. Therefore, we neutralize our own conscience. If I am the perpetrator of a crime, I neutralize my own conscience that tells me it is wrong, because in my mind it is not wrong, since everybody is doing it.

When we look at the example of Breivik, we realize that he's suffering from all of these points. He is consumed with self-centeredness: "It's only me, myself and I. Nobody else can teach the world. Nobody knows the truth, so I have to teach everybody truth. And if I need to teach them, I will do it. And if I need to kill somebody, I will do it, because I am the only person that matters right now."

A person like Breivik assumes the worst in that he sees only the ugliness that exists. He doesn't see anything beyond his own perceptions or the errors in his perception. Therefore, he cannot possibly fathom or even contemplate the possibility that people can change and the world can be made into a better place. He assumes the worst and he's going to take it in his hands to punish the world, to wake up the world.

A person like him blames the others: "I didn't do anything wrong. I am just responding with what is needed at this time." He is responding with hatred, responding by taking the lives of these people because that's the stimulus that was given and he is responding, just to let people know that something has to be done.

A person like him minimizes what he is doing in one sense because he's saying, "Look, everybody does something like this in one form or another, in different circumstances, or on different levels in their life. I just took it 100 notches higher." But he's thinking as if his message is so important that what he did, the horrific nature of what he did, is minimized in his mind because it was necessary to teach the world what he needs to teach.

The Importance of Our True Parents

When we realize that people like this are walking around, thinking of all these different ways that they themselves, masters of the universe, are going to teach lessons to the world – and Breivik was promoting himself as one of the faithful, wearing the banner of a Christian – we can see that terrorism, if we really think about it, is a war of religions. Terrorism – what took place on 9/11 – is a war of religion. It's some members of the Islamic world not being happy with the Christian world, or the free market system, or some of our political ideas or policies. Terrorism is someone like Breivik who thinks of himself as a Christian and takes it upon himself to wage war against different faiths. Terrorism is a war of religion.

The reason why I say it is extraordinarily important for us to have our True Parents with us at this time of the breaking news is, who else is going to bring all these faiths together? How do we bring the faiths together? A lot of the good work that we have done in promoting service, peace organizations, and dialogue is a great thing, but we don't create peace through dialogue alone. We need something more than that.

Our True Parents are absolutely correct in saying, "Look. If we want peace, we have to understand love, and the only way to apply love in our lives is within the context of a family." Without building healthy ideal families, we cannot even begin to hope or dream of world peace.

In the Bible, Proverbs 23:7 says, "For as [one] thinks in his heart, so he is." We are creatures of what we think because how we think determines how we act. Therefore, the psychologist Kohlberg stressed the importance of understanding moral reasoning, the importance of character development in children and young adults.

So when our True Parents come and teach us the Divine Principle, encourage all of us to live a principled lifestyle by living for the sake of others, and ask us to be ideal men and women who can come together and create ideal families of our own, they are really asking us to start practicing what true love is all about. If we don't understand how to practice true love in a family setting, there is no way we're going to understand how to practice true love in a societal setting, let alone on a national setting or on the world stage.

This emphasis on the importance of family, on providing a great environment for our children to grow up in a healthy way, so that their divinity, God-given passions, and talents can be shared with the world, is incredibly important. When we think about True Father, a lot of people think Reverend Moon is a great man, a man of peace. He has done a lot of great work in the name of peace. But our True Parents are much more than that. They are not just a man and woman of peace; they are the physical manifestation of God, our Heavenly Parent, on earth.

The reason True Parents are so crucial to world peace is that we cannot unite the world religions just through dialogue. Dialogue is the first step in progress toward world peace, but it's only the first step. What we need is for somebody sent by God to encourage us to love each other as members of our own families. That's why the concept of the Blessing that our True Parents give – which is a sacrament and a gift to all of us – is the secret ingredient to world peace. Only by people actually becoming one family – by a Protestant coming together with a Catholic spouse, a Hindu coming together with an Islamic spouse, a Jehovah's Witness coming together with a Church of Christ spouse – through marriage do we become family, do we really understand how it is to love.

Without our True Parents, there is no gift of the Blessing, there is no secret ingredient that's going to translate the good start of interfaith dialogue and substantiate it into a world of peace. We have to understand that all this hatred and misunderstanding arises because we have different perspectives on how we want to honor God.

Our True Parents are basically saying to people of different faiths, races, and cultural backgrounds that we are seriously threatened because we have it within our power to destroy our world 100 times over. We have that technology, and we have all these renegade groups taking it upon themselves in the form of suicide bombers to blow people up, or people like Breivik, who take it upon themselves to be masters of the universe and teach the world how things should be. Breivik thinks being "Christian" is the most important thing, being "Christian" is more important than anything else. He minimizes killing, and his own deeds are blamed on others because he thinks that the world provoked him to do it. He has assumed the worst, thinking there is no hope and therefore that he must proclaim the truth. He is so self-centered that he doesn't see anything beyond himself or his faith.

Throughout the months and years we have seen examples of somebody like Breivik all around the world. Who is going to bring somebody like that together in an embrace with an Islamic brother or sister, and help that somebody realize that we belong to one humanity, one family, and we must love each other as we do our spouse, our own children, and our own relatives? That is the gift our True Parents are bringing to the world. They are asking us to consider the world full of differences, hostilities, and hatred, and instead to reimagine a world where people can live as if we are really belonging to one family because we have made that pledge to God, humanity, our spouse, and our families to love one another just as much as we do our own.

Only a concept such as this can heal the hatred and bring unity to all these different faiths that, left alone without our True Parents' gift of the Blessing, are going to result in the war of religions, or terrorist attacks all around the world.

Our True Parents are not just our father and mother; they are providential figures of history. As we are living together with them, we need to realize that this is a time not just to re-imagine our world, but actually to make it real. Through the example of Jesus Christ and his life of piety, we come to understand what it is to truly love, and we see an example of a true life. But we were never able to solve how to have or substantiate the true lineage of God. How do we change our satanic lineage, which resulted from the human Fall, to the heavenly lineage, and engraft ourselves into the heavenly lineage, into the one family under God. How do we do that?

With Jesus Christ, we never had that answer because Jesus' life and mission were cut short. He never had a chance to find a wife and have a family. He never had a chance to establish a paradigm of true love that everybody could look at and say, "That's how we build ideal families. This is how we build ideal societies, an ideal nation, and an ideal world." We just never had that model to follow or to contemplate because Jesus died on the cross. He died without his disciples, without the Holy Spirit manifesting itself into a beautiful true mother of mankind through which Jesus Christ would have stood as the True Parent. Jesus never had that opportunity. Therefore, our understanding of how the world is really went quite askew.

But the interesting thing was that throughout the centuries, because we had Jesus' model of how it is to live a good and true life, practicing love, then good Christians have followed Jesus' example by denying the world's creature comforts, denying the fulfillment that they might have in a marital relationship. In a way they decided to go the way of the cross. They decided that the way to best serve the Lord was to live a life of suffering.

Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han, May 15, 2011

But with the advent of True Parents we can finally understand how we can establish the true lineage of God. Yes, our True Father is the Second Coming. Yes, he's the Lord of the Second Advent, but as awesome as he is, without True Mother, he cannot be the True Parents. Only with our True Mother standing together with him as the loving partner and paradigm of true love, can they stand in the position as the True Parents who have indemnified and restored history. Only the two of them together are in a position to give the world the chance to graft onto the true lineage of God, changing our lineage from the satanic lineage that has enslaved all of us and kept us in bondage throughout the centuries, to the heavenly lineage that offers us a brand-new beginning and an opportunity to build and become a part of the one family under God.

Throughout the centuries the church has done a great job of bringing brothers and sisters along, following the model of Christian piety, following Jesus' life of sacrifice and suffering. We thought that was the purpose of our lives, and the church has done its best. I've always thought it was quite interesting that the role of the church is to take care of its congregation, nurture and inspire the brothers and sisters, the children of God, to be great men and women of God.

If we really think about it, we see that the role of the church is extremely feminine. These functions of the church are ones that usually a mother would do in the home. But the interesting thing is that because Jesus Christ never had a wife, church history has been dominated by men. Because there was no seat made for a woman, our understanding of Christian history has been very much skewed, so much so that they've debated over the centuries whether women should be silent, whether they should be given an active role in the life of faith, whether they should stand behind the pulpit at all, whether that's right or wrong.

The great thing about our True Parents is that through the position and the person of True Parents, men and women find their own dignity. When Father stresses the importance of the Pacific Rim era and the importance of women coming to the forefront in encouraging all of humanity to graft onto the heavenly lineage, we realize that our True Parents are here to compel all of us to become that one family of God. By having the woman take the lead, it's pushing the role of the church that much more in the forefront in emphasizing the importance of compassionate giving, caring, and inspiring. These virtues are all extremely feminine, and they are necessary if we want to create a world of peace.

Astronauts Hand-picked to Safeguard the World

Through our True Parents we realize that all of us have been anointed as their representatives to the world. They are encouraging us in a way to be like the astronauts in the movie Armageddon: Here they are in slow motion, walking up to the rocket because they're going to save the world from the asteroid that is going to collide with earth and extinguish forever any source of life. These astronauts are the anointed, the blessed, the chosen ones to put their lives on the line by going out there in space to save their families and humanity and the Earth itself from total destruction.

Brothers and sisters, if we truly understand the providential timeline and history that you and I, all of us, are living in, we are those astronauts who have been anointed, hand-picked, blessed, and chosen by God to safeguard the world against all incoming, volatile, and deadly asteroids. And these asteroids can be in the form of terrorist attacks or people fighting with each other because of their differences in religion, race, and cultural background. These asteroids can be the moral corruption that is going to overtake our world and degenerate all of humanity into the animal-like existence that Thomas Hobbes talked about.

Our True Parents are giving us the means to fight for and build the kind of world we believe in, and to safeguard our children from all these different asteroids. The asteroids might be all the temptations in the form of drugs or sexual abuse or all the temptations asking us to live superficial lives.

By understanding that we as God's sons and daughters are the astronauts going into space to put up the good fight and stand strong because we believe in something, we can work together to build that amazing something we call the one family under God. This is what our Heavenly Parent and our True Parents are asking us not just to think about in our heads but truly to feel it and to think and know it in our hearts. Better than that, we are to experience it so that we become what we think, we start living the life that we have decided to live.

Our church has gone through several different stages, with the first generation being like the first part of a rocket with a whole lot of shaking and rolling. Then here comes the second generation. Once the rocket clears the atmosphere, the initial propulsion stage falls by the wayside, allowing the second propulsion stage to take the rocket to a whole new level. Then when it comes time, the second stage falls by the wayside, allowing the third stage of the propulsion system to take us to a place we've only dreamed about.

We have to understand that we are a work in progress, and the most important thing we have to remind ourselves of is not to lose ourselves along the way, not to get lost as we transition to the second stage of the rocket and the emptied shell of the first stage falls by the wayside. We are not to be discouraged or lose hope thinking, "All my sacrifice was in vain." No, it was the sacrifice in the first stage that has propelled the second generation of the work to be as high as it is now, to the place where we are standing.

The second generation, if we do our part, will take it to the third level where our future generations will transform the world into that safe, peaceful, and loving home that we all so long for.

This is a time to take our reimagining of what the world can be and appreciate that with our True Parents here we have the magical gift of the Blessing through which all of humanity can become one family. Therefore, it is our job to share the breaking news with the rest of the world, to tell the people the good news that the messiah is here, our True Parents are here.

The way that we thought things should be done, the status quo, the rock of the world, will be shattered by the messiah, our True Parents, who reveal the completed way of doing things, the fulfilling way of doing things. For instance, instead of Christian piety as a life of denial and suffering, we realize through the love of our True Parents that God wants for his and her children not a life of suffering and misery but a life of completion. God wants a life of fulfillment for all of us.

Through our True Parents, we should not be living in a world of hatred but in a world where love takes the leading role, where true love – exercised, practiced, and implemented in the context of the family – is taken to whole new levels, into the levels of society, nation, world, and cosmos. By our uniting with our True Parents, all of this is possible.

So this is an incredibly exciting and important time, when we should not be sleeping like the disciples of Jesus Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. We must be alert, awake, and aware. We must not miss a thing, because every day with our True Parents is precious, every moment here with each other is precious. You and I, we are those anointed astronauts who are going to change the world. So let's be proud of who we are.

The Church as an Environment for Building Ideal Families

The work of the church is not to just teach us about who God is. That's not really the work of the church. The work of the church, if we think about it in the context of the advent of True Parents in our lives, is to help give us not just the tools to know what an ideal family is, but more specifically the weekly tools to implement it in our lives, to start building it in our lives.

When we look at the example of people like Breivik, or of men and women who suffer from cognitive distortions, we see people who have isolated themselves to such an extent that they have become monsters, or masters of their own universe, thinking that only they know the truth and only they have the means to right the wrongs in the world. In considering how to treat people with cognitive disorders, psychologists and doctors suggest that a very important foundation for treating these individuals is to bring them into a group setting and have them go through a process of rubbing up against different people.

This is similar to the situation in school where students are intellectually challenged every day, and some of the students will become great mathematicians by doing challenging problems. I know when some of my kids were doing mathematics – and they were very, very good at it – what they always wanted was a math challenge. They wanted to be challenged intellectually to become honed and practiced. They would do this to work the muscles of their intellect so their minds can do greater and greater formulas and computations in their head.

Likewise, the way to treat cognitive distortion is to follow a developmental sequence that every child goes through during a period when they suffer through the four elements of being self-centered, assuming the worst, blaming the other, and minimalizing. The way you help a child through these difficult processes is by putting them into a group setting. That's why a healthy family environment is extremely important. By dealing with mom and dad, siblings, and relatives, a child slowly learns to have a healthy response and a healthy understanding of how to be in a social context.

There is great value in putting people through role-playing in which people take the child position in a family or group setting, where they are made to feel like, "Well, okay, you want to do whatever you want, but how would you like it if perhaps maybe your sister becomes you for the day and role-plays what you just did in the context of the family?" By working out the problems and responses from different family members that will naturally arise when you put yourself forward in such an aggressive and self-centered manner, that's one way people come to understand, "Oh, I need to grow. I need to do something different."

That is why a place like a church, where we gather on a weekly basis, provides a great venue and a good time to talk about the different ways we can improve our community and our families. Discussing the example of Breivik is a wonderful opportunity to stress the importance of a healthy group dynamic setting, where a child learns dynamic interplay and relationship patterns with different family members and thereby gets a holistic picture of what the child may be doing right or what the child may be doing wrong. And therefore, day by day the child can be developing a healthy ability to reason cognitively.

Brothers and sisters, I'm really hoping that in light of what took place in Norway, if Norway can be a country of Os-love, what about America? What about all the brothers and sisters here who have been anointed to be those astronauts, to share the breaking news, and who don't miss a thing along the way?

Can we not do better? Can we not inspire our young people by sharing the breaking news with the rest of the world and exercising our power to influence the world to seek a life based upon true love? Can we not encourage everybody to join in this common humanity as one family of God, to experience the beauty of the Blessing? Don't you think we can do that, brothers and sisters?

Tentatively our True Parents have set the next blessing in February 2012, so we have a lot of work to do in terms of sharing the breaking news. Please encourage your colleagues, friends, and relatives, by asking them to take a look at what just happened in Norway. Ask them, "How are we going to build a world of peace? Are we just going to talk about it and feel good about it amongst ourselves? Or are we actually going to do the building, to actually be that one family under God?"

Please encourage everybody to understand the importance of our True Parents and invite the world to come and experience the magic of the Blessing. At this time, please understand the importance of uniting with our True Parents and aligning with their vision in working together in the ways they compel us to do every day.

So God bless, have a great Sunday, and thank you very much.

Notes:

The Books of Proverbs, chapter 23

1: When you sit down to eat with a ruler,
observe carefully what is before you;

2: and put a knife to your throat
if you are a man given to appetite.

3: Do not desire his delicacies,
for they are deceptive food.

4: Do not toil to acquire wealth;
be wise enough to desist.

5: When your eyes light upon it, it is gone;
for suddenly it takes to itself wings,
flying like an eagle toward heaven.

6: Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy;
do not desire his delicacies;

7: for he is like one who is inwardly reckoning.
"Eat and drink!" he says to you;
but his heart is not with you.

8: You will vomit up the morsels which you have eaten,
and waste your pleasant words.

9: Do not speak in the hearing of a fool,
for he will despise the wisdom of your words.

10: Do not remove an ancient landmark
or enter the fields of the fatherless;

11: for their Redeemer is strong;
he will plead their cause against you.

12: Apply your mind to instruction
and your ear to words of knowledge.

13: Do not withhold discipline from a child;
if you beat him with a rod, he will not die.

14: If you beat him with the rod
you will save his life from Sheol.

15: My son, if your heart is wise,
my heart too will be glad.

16: My soul will rejoice
when your lips speak what is right.

17: Let not your heart envy sinners,
but continue in the fear of the LORD all the day.

18: Surely there is a future,
and your hope will not be cut off.

19: Hear, my son, and be wise,
and direct your mind in the way.

20: Be not among winebibbers,
or among gluttonous eaters of meat;

21: for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty,
and drowsiness will clothe a man with rags.

22: Hearken to your father who begot you,
and do not despise your mother when she is old.

23: Buy truth, and do not sell it;
buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding.

24: The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice;
he who begets a wise son will be glad in him.

25: Let your father and mother be glad,
let her who bore you rejoice.

26: My son, give me your heart,
and let your eyes observe my ways.

27: For a harlot is a deep pit;
an adventuress is a narrow well.

28: She lies in wait like a robber
and increases the faithless among men.

29: Who has woe? Who has sorrow?
Who has strife? Who has complaining?
Who has wounds without cause?
Who has redness of eyes?

30: Those who tarry long over wine,
those who go to try mixed wine.

31: Do not look at wine when it is red,
when it sparkles in the cup
and goes down smoothly.

32: At the last it bites like a serpent,
and stings like an adder.

33: Your eyes will see strange things,
and your mind utter perverse things.

34: You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea,
like one who lies on the top of a mast.

35: "They struck me," you will say, "but I was not hurt;
they beat me, but I did not feel it.
When shall I awake?
I will seek another drink."