Founder’s Address, Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon (Delivered by Sun Jin Moon) February 13, 2019, Jamsil Lotte Hotel, Seoul, South Korea
Distinguished scholars and participants gathered for the 25th International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences. Welcome to Korea and welcome to this very important conference which aims to address and offer solutions to some of our world’s critical problems, including the degradation of our environment.
It is my special privilege and honor to deliver the “Founder’s Address” on behalf of Rev. Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, my beloved mother. She very much wanted to be here today, as she has a great passion for the work you are doing to help humanity through scientific research. But, unfortunately, she has a schedule conflict related to the many concurrent events taking place at this time. Today she is awarding 2,519 Sunhak scholarships to young people from 80 countries so they may have the opportunity to attend college, and make a better and brighter future for the world. I am sure that many of these young people will pursue careers in science, following in your footsteps.
Since she cannot be here, I will read Rev. Dr. Moon’s speech, the Founder’s Address. I hope you will give it your wholehearted attention. Like my father, who always delivered a Founder’s Address at ICUS meetings, she has a profoundly spiritual and moral vision that I hope you will appreciate. It is her sincere wish that, together, we can build a world of sustainable peace, human development and mutual prosperity.
I will now begin to read the Founder’s Address: Year by year, the deterioration of the global environment is expanding. Climate change, extreme weather conditions, deteriorating air quality, polluted oceans are now the subject of everyday conversations. There is growing concern that a great catastrophe is upon us.
It is no exaggeration to say that the preservation of our environment is the most pressing and weightiest issue humanity faces today. Many countermeasures and policies have been proposed and implemented, but they have not been effective. Without a fundamental solution, we are reaching the point where we cannot guarantee the future of humankind.
It is time that we seek a more fundamental solution by turning our attention to God, the Creator of humanity and this universe. When people live without a higher, overall purpose, individualism and selfishness are triggered and the cosmic order is destroyed. As a result natural disasters, food shortages and pollution proliferate, leading to environmental problems and ecological crises, even threatening the survival of humankind and the natural world.
God, the Creator who made the entire universe, is the essential origin of true love. Since a feature of love is that there be partners, God created human beings as His substantial object partners of true love, and all aspects of the natural world as symbolic objects of His love. God created everything to become one through true love. He created human beings and all living beings to feel life, hope, and the joy of love. God’s joy is ultimately fulfilled by experiencing the joy of all humankind. The world He created is to be a source of joy for everything that lives here.
Yet God’s ideal of creation did not unfold as He had planned, and confusion resulted. As human beings, we were meant to grow our character and achieve perfection of love, thus completing our portion of responsibility in the creation. We would thereby obtain the qualification to take dominion in love over all the natural world. That we were unable to do so resulted in the collapse of the relationship between God, human beings, and all other living beings.
Those who are sick need to learn how to restore their health. Likewise, to restore the relationship between God, human beings, and all living things to the original state, we must know God’s original purpose of creation and the principles by which to achieve that purpose.
When we human beings come to have loving dominion over the natural world in oneness with God, with true love as the center, we can relate to all living beings with a true love that lives for the sake of others. This will bring about a change of heart toward the natural world. In particular, we will see a transformation that moves us away from pursuing self-centered development practices that abused and pushed nature to the point of destruction. Moreover, the natural world will receive God’s love through humankind, as it provides us with food for survival, aesthetic stimulation, and an adequate living environment. Since everything was created based on God’s heart of love, through even one blade of grass, a flower, or a tree, a person can deeply experience God’s limitless love.
We can only take dominion or stewardship over the natural world we ourselves come to embody God’s love. Through us, the natural world becomes connected to the true love of the intangible God, who is without form. For this reason, God, human beings, and the natural world are meant to form an organic whole, harmonized and united in true love, in accordance with God’s purpose of creation.
In this process, religion, which seeks God, and science, which deals with the world of material reality, are themselves harmonized and unified. Humankind is moving toward a time in which the barriers between science and religion will be overcome. In addition, science has developed to a point which will make it possible to know God directly. From this perspective, I sincerely hope that there is opportunity for conventional science to be newly understood with God as the center, and for its history to be newly arranged as the history of the sciences centered on God. In so doing, the original stature and value of everything that God created will be properly restored. I would therefore like to propose that this conference become a heavenly science conference – a conference on the sciences that is centered on God.
Ultimately, all people are to meet and become reborn through the original True Parents, God’s begotten son and daughter who are one in heart with God, and ultimately go on to actualize peace through forming true families, true tribes, true nations and a true world. On this foundation, the natural world will realize its connection to God’s true love through humankind, and its original status will be established. This will enable God, human beings, and all creation to fulfill God’s ideal of creation, by coming together in harmony centered on a heart of true love. Thus, we are not simply striving to protect nature and prevent any misuse or abuse; we must also restore the original status and value of the natural world by revealing the original relationship between our Creator, humankind, and everything in nature.
In addition to the vertical religious life, the primary focus of which is the relationship between God and human beings, humankind must also strive to ensure the firm establishment of the original ideal of the natural world, bringing Heaven, humankind and all things on earth into harmony.
We must understand the earnest heart with which the natural world looked forward to receiving God’s love through humankind. We must also experience deeply in our bones the effort God has invested and the spiritual challenges He has faced throughout the course of history to restore the original relationship between God, humankind, and all creation.
You cannot love people without loving the creation God made for them. You cannot love God without loving people, who are God’s children. The Middle Ages, when God was the main focus, have passed. The era when rationalism was the dominant philosophy has also passed. The materialistic thought that entrapped people in the realm of materialism is also fading away. We now need to usher in an age that seeks and enjoys true love, an era in which people live for the sake of one another. We need to establish a world in which people live for the sake of each other through interdependence, mutual prosperity and universal values.
I established the Hyojeong International Foundation for the Unity of the Sciences in 2017, and revived the International Conference for the Unity of the Sciences after 17 years, in order to urge all of humankind to invest effort globally to overcome the environmental problems we face today. I have done this for the sake of the development of scientific theories and technologies that can resolve these issues, and so that environmental policies that assure the well-being of future generations will be proposed to the governments of each nation and to international organizations. I hope that you, as well as all people, will invest yourselves fully as scientists, educators and global citizens to make this ideal a reality.
I sincerely hope that, based on your deliberations at this conference, we can look forward to a more comfortable and healthy future on this beautiful planet. Thank you.
