Sun Myung Moon
July 16, 1975
Barrytown International Training Center
My topic this afternoon is "A Needed Man." In your family there's someone who is the most needed one of all. In your village there must be someone most needed, and in your nation, too, there must be someone most needed by the people. What kind of people are the most needed?
In any society, the most neede person is the person who is sacrificial and who lives for the sake of other people. This has been true through history. A good man is the person most needed by all people. Where do you find these most-needed people. When you look around, if you find a person who is living for the sake of the public, for the sake of the whole, for the sake of other people you can define him as good or as a needed person. History shows that in the past saints and sacred men have without exception been those who lived for the sake of other people; Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Confucius, Buddha, all those people lived their lives for the sake of others.
You want to be educated in colleges and universities. But why do you want to be educated? You want to live a life where you are needed everywhere. You want to be good persons, and who are good persons? Good persons are those who are needed by all other people. When you think you are good people or needed people, you are proud of yourself, because you find examples in sacred and respected men like Jesus or Buddha or Mohammed, and that's the way you want to be. But have you been educated for that purpose? (No.) Then there must be something wrong.
Perhaps the educational system was wrong or you yourselves were wrong. Up to the present, what you were dreaming of was that after graduation you would be successful in a worldly career and you would make more money than others. Everything was centered on yourself, and it was entirely the wrong idea.
We must reevaluate our educational system.
Seen from that standpoint we must reevaluate our educational system. Once we understand that we've had a misguided education, then on the individual, family, national and worldwide levels we want to right the wrongs and remake the educational system. We want to produce persons needed by everyone else. However hard you may struggle in educating yourselves, if you don't practice living for other people you will have been educated in vain.
We have many good-looking young ladies here. Don't you want to have good mates in the future? (Yes.) When you say you want a good husband, you don't mean that he must be a doctor or he must have a master's degree or something like that, but immediately you think of a person who is going to live entirely for you, don't you? (Yes.) Even though he may be only a graduate of primary school, if he is going to live entirely for you, you would rather take him than the one with the doctorate degree who would not live for you. Pure love comes from the person who lives for his or her own spouse.
You must not only have an ideal but you must put whatever you are taught into practice. Then you are going to be good persons and needed persons. Do you want to be needed by your village, needed by your nation, or needed by the whole world? (World.) If you really mean what you say, then you are needed everywhere. Your parents would need you, your brothers and sisters will need you, your relatives, your friends, your nation and the whole world will need you. If the Unification Church can produce many of that kind of people, other people can determine our movement to be good. Otherwise we are going to be called bad. You can picture yourselves in the future and picture our movement in the future by whether you are going to be that kind of person.
Then is the Unification Church a good movement or a bad one? (Good!) Why? Because here we teach the ideal and teach people how to put the ideal into practice: to live for the sake of other people.
Dream of a life of sacrifice
When you are trained here, you don't dream of any flowery future, but rather of a life of sacrifice for the sake of other people. You want to be the fertilizer for mankind to grow wholesomely. If I teach you to go back to your families and be loyal and pious sons and daughters to your parents, your parents will be overjoyed to have you back, I know. But despite that fact I'm driving you out into the world to live a sacrificial life for the whole country, for the whole of mankind, because I know corruption is prevailing in American society. So after saving America, naturally including your families, then you are going to be devoted sons and daughters to your own parents. Among American youth you cannot find anyone who is ready to live for the sake of other people or for the sake of the country. So we are needed that much more in this nation.
There have been many religions and many nations in the world, but those religions have not taught their people to live for others but only for the benefit of the particular denomination or religious sect. The nations have been educating their young people to live for the sake of the nation at best, and not for the sake of the world.
If the leader of any religion or nation teaches the people to live for the sake of other people, that religion or nation is going to be the foremost one in the world. Let us take an example. Suppose there are two people of equal intelligence and with the same capabilities. One lives and works for the sake of other people. The other does things for the sake of himself. In the long run which of the two will be most needed by other people? Even though they have equal capabilities, if one of the two lives for the sake of other people, then he will attain subjectivity over others. In your family life, too, if anyone in your family lives for the sake of the rest of the family, then he will be the center of the family. In any country, a loyal subject can be defined as that person who lives for the sake of the king and country. In the Unification Family, too, those who are most needed are those who live for the sake of the church and not for the sake of themselves.
There may be some people in our Family who dream of utilizing this movement for their own good. We need the first kind of people, and in society, too, those who live for the sake of other people are always chose who are needed.
Be needed by God
Then, what kind of persons are those needed by God? The same thing applies. Would you want to be persons needed by the United States of America, by the world, or by God? (By God!) Would you want to be a person needed by God, by the world, or by America? (God.) You must cling to just one of the three and let the others go, at first. More than anything else you want to be a person needed by God, don't you? If you want to live for the sake of America and if God calls you to work for the sake of the whole world, you must abandon America. If you are ready to work for the sake of the world and God calls you and cells you to follow Him alone, what would you do? (Follow.) You want to be a person needed by America, but when you want to be a person needed by the world you can even abandon America. And if you find yourself most needed by God, you can even abandon the world and follow Him.
Through religion God is teaching you how to follow Him first, without minding the world and your nation. After becoming entirely one with God alone, you can live your life for the sake of the world and the nation. Without your being united with God, what you have done on the level of the nation and the world will have no meaning in God's sight. First of all, you must return to God and be united with Him. Before being the citizen of America, you must become the son of God. Before being able to dominate mankind, you must know how to be dominated by God, to be the sons and daughters of God. Due to the Human Fall you lost this relationship to God, so what you must restore first of all is to be sons and daughters to Him. You muse construct a family with God as your father, and then you will recover your world and nation and family. That is what the order should be. You are living or fighting for your country and for the whole of mankind, but if you lack unity with God, in the end what you have done will have no connection with God's providence.
Where can you find God? You can find God by knowing His work, how He has proceeded with His providence in the world. We must know how God has been successful or sometimes unsuccessful, and we must be sorrowful because of the successes or failures of our forefathers. We are here to be sympathetic with God, to console His heart and to pledge before Him that we are going to be devoted sons and daughters to carry out the mission left unaccomplished by our predecessors. Then alone can we really find God and know Him and live with Him. Do you really realize that there is God? (Yes.) How does He exist? Do you feel the presence of God in the physical sense as you would miss your food and things like that in your everyday life? It's only a vague concept in your brain.
Feel the presence of God
You must feel the presence of God as you would feel your own brother or Sister by your side. To really understand your parents you must know Him and feel Him. Suppose someone explains to you that your parents are not your own parents and let's suppose he explains it to you for hours, days, months and years. But you are not convinced that these are not your parents, because you have deep attachment for them. The nation may be mobilized -- the whole of mankind may be mobilized to explain to you that your parents are not your own. Would that do anything? But suppose you are sons and daughters of God? Then you must really feel the presence of God as you would your own parents. If you don't have that feeling, you cannot really say that you have found Him. Are you qualified to be His sons without knowing His presence, without knowing who He is and what He is? You must know Him through experience.
Where do you find God in your living room or on the front line? Even though you may only have a vague concept of God in your mind, if you go out witnessing to the people, testifying to God and teaching the truth to them in the face of difficulties and persecution, that is the best place for you to see Him and feel Him. God is the Being most needed in the whole world because He lives for the sake of other people. If you want to be recognized and needed by God, you must live for the sake of God and for the sake of humanity. Otherwise, you cannot recognize Him or have Him or find Him. It is natural for sons and daughters to resemble their parents. If you are sons and daughters to God, you must resemble God. Don't trust men, but only God.
Before commencing any of my work, I must think over what God would do for the world and put myself in the position of God. God would be grieved by the corruption prevailing in the Christian world, and if I were in God's position I would want to restore it. There's no discrimination in God's sight between all the denominations in the Christian world. There have been fights among the denominations and religious sects. That's why all the churches are empty and all the young people are leaving. If the established churches are corrupt, God would want us to restore them. I intend to do that.
Who can defend America?
God also wants to have someone prevent the Communist threat. America is the final target of Communist invasion. Both Soviet Russia and Red China-and not only those two but North Korea and all the satellite countries -- have their sights set on America as the final target. Who can defend America from the Communist invasion? If America collapses before Communism, there's no free world left. I came to America because I wanted to be responsible for preventing that. If America cannot remain a democratic and free nation, if it cannot carry out its mission as the leading nation of the world, then I must revive America to come back to its original position.
Otherwise the world of peace and freedom cannot be realized. That's what America needs most, that's what the whole world needs.
I named two things God would have us do. First, to revive the Christian churches to their original position, and secondly to prevent a Communist invasion. I must add one more thing: the corruption of youth must also be corrected. You know how corrupted the American youth are. You have been enjoying material wealth. You have been nourished with rich food. And that's not all -- that's just the animal life. Unless you eradicate the corruption among youth, you cannot be revived. The young people here are of a different breed. You are at least trying to live for the sake of other people, your nation and the world.
In America married couples even exchange their wives and husbands, and in that way they think that they are living for the sake of other people. We must revolutionize that kind of thinking in this nation. In the Unification Church we are strict in teaching our young people; we know that's not the way we should behave. We must reform American families because they are not the way they should be.
We will unite young people
We are going to do what the nation of America has not been able to do. We will do what American teachers have not been able to do. We are going to unite the young people of the world, transcendent of nationalities, and then mobilize them to the front line to save the whole world.
That kind of group is needed by God, needed by the world, and needed by America, too. That's the way we are most needed by God, and that's what we are aiming at: to make ourselves into such a group.
God is like a diamond mine or gold mine. The deeper I dig into the hole, the purer and the more I find. I must put my whole energy into digging the hole to find gold or diamonds. More than anything else we are in the position of sons and daughters to God, and just as children need their parents, so we need God. And just as parents need the children, so God also needs us.
If you go through the heart of God, then you can reach out to the end of the world, covering all mankind, but if you remain what you are now you are helpless, without being able to do anything great. When you are united with God, nothing is impossible. That's true. God is as big as the whole universe.
We must prove we are on God's side by being faithful to what we are doing.