Sun Myung Moon
July 14, 1974
Tarrytown, NY
Rev. Moon gives direction to American and international leaders. Seated at left are Rev. Reiner Vincenz, Rev. Paul Werner, and Neil A. Salonen
Everybody wants to be a responsible person over others. Among responsible persons there are those who are supported by others, and those who are not supported by others. There are many kinds of persons responsible over others. Some are responsible over ten people, or a hundred people, over an organization, over a nation, and even over the whole world.
Seen from the viewpoint of God's providence, there are people responsible over internal things and people responsible over external things. Which kind of responsible persons are more important? Many young people think that they want to be responsible over a nation. Each one thinks that he wants to be the most important, capable leader of the nation. He especially wants to cause his nation to develop and progress more than ever, and thinks of many ways to do this. He must have the capacity, potential, or power to do this, and he will have many ways to apply the power. He must know how to organize and develop. Before taking action he must study the situation closely and see how things have been developing in his nation. Then he must use some power or capacity to cause progress to occur. He wants to leave what is already good and either improve or revolutionize what has been bad or not desirable.
Those who are capable get responsibility.
A person who is responsible over others must have a certain capacity. He must have not only the power or capacity to take responsibility but also the power to cause things to develop. He must be efficient and capable, and he needs strong leadership ability; then he can cause his people and his organization to grow. His ability cannot be perfected in an instant, but he must have much experience. Through education we will inherit the knowledge which other people have accumulated, and then we must put it into practice ourselves. We must first have the knowledge, and then put it into practice until it is proven. Unless what you have is better than what others have, you cannot be responsible over others. Naturally we come to the conclusion that people who are more capable than others will be responsible over them. Whether the group is large or small, it doesn't matter. The same principle applies.
In order for you to be a leader, you must have the ability to organize, but more than anything else, you must be the person who is the center of love. It is simple to ask what kind of personality God has; we can first of all say that He is the person who wants to believe or trust people, while they are not trustworthy.
When in the Garden of Eden God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He wanted to trust these people. Of course, there were many things for which God could not trust them, but He tried to trust them and put them in the position of His children whom He could rely on. In creating the universe, too, of course God created the universe for Himself, but mostly, or in another sense, He created the universe for His children, Adam and Eve. God wanted to give love, a love of untold value, to those children who were yet immature.
The most important thing is to lead in love
In order for you to become responsible leaders, you must be equipped with external qualities of course, but then the next thing, or the most important thing to come, is to know how to love them, lead them in love. People need a leader over them who is responsible for them and who will take care of them. So they want to believe that the leader is for them, and that the leader loves them. These qualities are indispensable for a leader, a genuine leader.
However hard you may struggle to be a good leader and give out your love and your whole being to the people, sometimes they not only betray you but they would try to use you. When the leader's love towards his people is self-centered, and if he calculates on what's coming as the reward, he is apt to be discouraged at the moment when he is faced with rebuff, and then think that he is not for these people, and he will retreat from his position.
When you are responsible over financial things, it is easy. You calculate and you say you have obtained so much profit, and you think you have done your part. But for spiritual leaders, things are different -- and more important. In the financial matters, if you have acquired what you have planned, then you are successful. But on the spiritual level of things, even though you have won some people's hearts, if others complain or others are in low spirits, and if you cannot distribute your love evenly and people are not equally happy, you are not a successful leader.
As a spiritual leader, you must not be satisfied with their response, and even though your group is happy for the time being, you must add more things to them and try to make them happier and still happier. The greatest of all the spiritual leaders being God, you can well imagine how difficult God's situation is. Do you imagine that the great spiritual leaders of the world always feel happiness in their hearts? If you can get them to be really frank to you, they are always distressed, they are always unhappy or miserable. It is because a spiritual leader always has to give away what he has, always be giving. He has to deal with so many types of people all the time, and if he cannot give things out to them, in that case his love must not be one-sided, and his love has to be fulfilling to every kind of person. There are all kinds of people, and if they cannot feel contented or satisfied, what would he do? Problems are apt to arise there.
Seen from this viewpoint, God is the loneliest one and the most pitiful one, because He's responsible for all humanity. Those who receive are not easily satisfied. On the part of the giver, He has no one to receive from. He wants to receive from the central figures, the great leaders of the world. So God must be the one who has all things and all qualifications. If God would find all the people just wanting to receive from Him, He would have difficulty. He is of course ready to give whatever He has, but if all the people would want to receive good things from Him, for instance love -- well, everybody wants His love -- He will be put under great strain. Then He must emphasize how to carry out your mission, and He would want you to trust not for the sake of yourself, but for the sake of other people, those whom you are going to trust, and give love for the sake of other people and do everything for the sake of those who are under you.
Trust, sacrifice and love for the sake of others.
Trust or belief in the truest sense is trust for the public -- for the greater public, the super-public, or the greatest public. God being of absolute goodness is absolutely for the public, the greater things and the greatest. That's what places Him in the central position.
Suppose you are on the central point, where you have every direction radiating from you, md all distances are equal. When you are a leader, you are the central figure, and being the central figure means your bearing is right in the middle and you don't put more stress on a certain people, and you are not favoring a certain people and not others. You must be even and fair. In order for you to be able to move other people, manipulate the people, you must lose yourself or deny yourself. What you eat, where you live, and what you wear must be well balanced with others.
If you have too strong a personality, you must try to erase that. If your personality is etched, you must scrape it out or rub it in such a way that your personality will be rounded. As a leader you cannot say, "My principle is to sleep eight hours a day." You cannot say, "I cannot go on without eating three meals." You cannot say, "I must be created well and they must respect me." You can never dream of being that kind of person as a leader. If you are the leader over so many people do you think of things in the selfcentered way, never thinking of the public, then just wait and see -- you will lose the quality of the leader and people won't respect you. You may be so clever as to be able to cheat them and pretend as though you are a great leader, and that may pass in the outside world, but in a spiritual movement that cannot be accepted. The spiritual world will work in the group, and the people will lose trust in you, and they will somehow feel like disliking you.
Always be anxious to do more
If and when you are a leader, if you feel easy and not out-going, not standing in the vanguard of others, then you can safely say that you are losing the quality of a leader. You must always be anxious to do more things; you cannot just sit with folded arms and with easy heart, but you must feel like working more than your people and for the people, and then people will respect you and you will be strong leaders. You can cultivate more leadership.
In the Bible we read that we must love God with all our heart, with all our sincerity, and with all our might, and if we lose that quality you are not for that mission. So I can safely define that when you are a leader over 100 people, you are and you must be the most wretched and unhappy and miserable person of them all. If you are responsible over 1,000 people, you must be the most miserable one of them all. More than that, the responsible person, the leader, cannot get rid of the burden at any moment. You are heavyladen with the burden of responsibility. But fortunately, when you are the spiritual leader, there are assistants coming from the spiritual world. In that case, the leader's life must be one of deep faith.
In the face of difficulties, you must be able to get the willing cooperation of other people and respect and trust from other people. If you lose that, you cannot go on. You must be able to arouse the attention of people and get them either interested in you, trusting and believing in you, and to love you and sacrifice for you. And reversely, you must be doing the same for them. Sometimes you are discouraged by your people and you can call out and say, "I am discouraged by the people, but you know what I am, and I hope you can trust me and you can love me, and I love you so much. I rely on you." And then you can even get spiritual cooperation from nature which will strengthen you.
However small a thing or a person may be, if you rely on it or on him and put out your love and energy and sacrifice for him or for it, then certainly something great will come from it or him. All things considered, the leader's position is the most difficult one. His is a position of weakness and helplessness. But when you are weak or helpless for the sake of others, you are safe. You will be aided by the vast spirit world and you will have many deep spiritual experiences which will strengthen you. If you are ready to receive spiritual cooperation from above, then you, by going through those kinds of experiences, will find yourself being successful as a leader because you have cooperation from the spirit side.
I can readily understand Jesus' heart when he said, "If you are not like these little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of God." He was faced with difficulties and he was disappointed by people not believing in him; because of their disbelief he would turn to the children, and when he saw small children he would talk to them saying in his heart, "You know me and you can believe me, and I love you, and I can rely on you." They are so innocent and so pure, he saw a quality in them which entitled them to the kingdom of heaven.
When you pray to God, you cannot be boastful of your title of leader, by saying, "Oh, God, I am the leader of such and such a group. Please do this for me." That kind of prayer cannot be heard by God. You must be able to put yourself in the position of children crying to God, calling for help, and denying yourself. You have no "yourself" there, but you should just rely on God, seeing Him as the only existence in the world, then you are sure to be answered.
To lead means to obey others' needs
Leaders on the external level, or on the worldly level, think that their role is to give commands to other people. But for spiritual leaders things are otherwise. Your responsibilities will be assigned when you are able to put yourself in the position to be given orders, and obey and fulfill others' needs.
What surprised me in the United States when I first came here was that you must make an appointment to see doctors. Immediately I thought that patients must have a disease or ailment according to a timetable. I could see that doctors make appointments from a self-centered point of view. Doctors are those who deal with people's lives, so in case of need they must be alert and attend to patients the whole day long, or around the clock, even 24 hours a day.
Spiritual leaders must go beyond the limits of time considerations and must be able to deal with people at any moment of need. Even though you have to sacrifice your sleeping hours, you must be ready to help others. You must not think of your meal hours as fixed. You must cultivate the attitude that every moment of your life is for other people. If you have that kind of attitude as a leader and put it into practice, you will be a good or successful leader.
When you look at bad points in other people or bad things being done in your group, don't be too impatient and too quick in judging people or doing away with or disposing of them. Wait and encourage good points in the people and good things that are being done, and then reserve your judgment to the end, and you must hope that that person will correct his mistake. It is very likely that you will find a person doing wonderfully, but if you had cut him off years ago he wouldn't be there, and he would almost rebel against you, but he is now doing a good job after having repented and corrected his mistake on his own.
With all these things in mind one can say that leaders are in the most miserable position. When someone knocks at your door, the leader would receive any people at any moment to his living room, his bedroom, or anywhere. So your home will be a public place. When the visitors urgently need you, you must see them. At that moment you are really for those people and not for your wife. So you must look as though you love those people more than your wife. And the leader would like to sell whatever his wife has that is good and use it for needy people. And then what will become of his home? If the wife were not understanding a rupture might occur in that family.
The leader's role is a lifetime commitment
You should realize that this is not a short-term difficulty, but it will go on for your lifetime. How many families can sustain it and endure to the end and maintain a good attitude, helping each other and liking the idea? This is the leader's position in which you always have to carry the cross.
If the people close to you say things for your sake, and they love you and sacrifice for you, you would tell them rather to sacrifice for the people whom I want to sacrifice for and love the people whom I love. At the table, before taking your first mouthful of food, you must think of your people first, and when you are going to buy clothing for yourself, you must think of your people first. Even at bedtime hour you must think of your people and how tired they must be, and then everything will be a cross for you. You are so tired that you take a nap for a while, and you immediately feel ashamed or guilty.
When your attitude as the leader is what I have described, then spirit world will be sure to be mobilized in cooperation with you, so you will be a successful leader. You must use your whole being for the sake of others. You must re-evaluate yourself to know if your eyes have not been misused and have been used for the sake of others; and likewise with your ears, your nose, your mouth, your limbs. All things, when they have been used for the sake of other people, will make you a success. Otherwise, you are a failure.
In order for you to" be responsible leaders, I have enumerated many necessary qualities. In order for you to become that kind of leader, you must have good training. Before becoming a responsible leader over 1,000 people, you must train yourself to be a good leader over one individual. You must ask yourself, "Do I have one person who can really believe in me, who can really rely on me, and who can really look up at me as a leader or teacher?" If you have gone though all those tests or experiences and have such qualifications and are sent out to the field, you must start by winning the heart of one individual on a perfect level. If you are going to be a perfect leader over one individual, then you must be responsible over his well-being, including criticism of his bad points and uplifting and encouraging his good points. You cannot just say, "I am responsible over your good points but not over your bad points," but you must be responsible over the whole person of that individual. What makes you separated from him or divided from him is always the bad point, not the good point. So you must be able to encompass and be responsible over the bad points as well as the good ones. You must be able to help him eliminate his bad points, then he will be a good person, helpful to you.
Then you must always ask yourself this question, "Can I be responsible over a single individual on the perfect level?" If you are qualified for that you can further be responsible over your family as the good leader, the perfect leader in that situation; then there is no problem for you to be the leader of a bigger group. If you are going to be the perfect leader of your family, it means you have to bear the cross for the members of your family. If the family members are responsible for their own problems, so much the better. But if they cannot be, if you take responsibility for their shortcomings, then they must obey you and they must rely on you for that, at least. So you must train yourself for that. If you are a good leader in your family, there is no problem for you to be the leader of your church. In that case, you must think of the church members as though they are your own family members and be ready to take the responsibility over whatever shortcomings they have; then they can rely on you.
Take responsibility for others' shortcomings
Instead of having other people responsible for themselves or for each other, you must be responsible for those people or their bad points. In that case, your people must willingly come under your guidance. The same thing applies to a national leader. You must ask yourself the question of whether you are qualified for those things; you can judge yourself whether you are a good leader and a qualified one.
When I am working for the nation of the United States, if I trust and love this nation more than God would, what would happen? The conclusion is that God cannot judge the United States too soon. Unless God can give us more than that which the leader gives to this nation, He cannot judge this nation, and judgment will be delayed. So it is simple to know in what way we can lead this nation, and it is that we must be responsible for the shortcomings of this nation, for its difficulties. What are the most difficult points in this nation?
First is the ruin or the crisis in the Christian world. We must be responsible for the corruption in the Christian world. In this nation, not only the Christian ideology, which was the founding ideology of this nation, is being corrupted, but also the families committed to that ideology are being corrupted, are collapsing. If families are collapsing, it means the nation is collapsing. The God-denying ideology of Communism is infiltrating the nation and undermining the hearts of the people and separating them from God. Those three important questions are the most crucial ones.
We must be a strong group of people, ever progressing, while the Christian world is being corrupted. While in the Christian world even the Christians are almost ruining the nation, we, coming out of Christianity, must be able to save this nation. We must be a different species of Christian. Are you different from them? (Yes.) Then there is hope for us. I low many years would it take us to save this nation? How many hundred years, how many thousand years? How many years? You may say we can save this nation in ten years' time, and you already imagine that you can rest after that. You must be ready to work for this nation for your lifetime. Are you that responsible? (Yes.) Then you are hopeful people. Go ahead and do that.
Family disunion and rupture is another problem. Because of that problem young people are leaving their homes, there are adolescent problems, problems of delinquency. How would you deal with them? We must do things reversely from what they are doing. When I ask you to do so, you will go back to your homes and restore your family, restore your neighborhood, relatives, and other people. You must be 180 degrees different from them.
The leader bears a heavier cross.
In order for the Communists to grow so fast, they do not care what measures are, used, but we must be much stronger than those people. It takes a leader who is strong enough to be able to sacrifice for the sake of other people and bear a heavier cross than his people and be equipped with the many attributes I have enumerated.
What I have so far done in this nation, making our movement conspicuous in the public eyes, will long remain when you inherit this mission and carry it out. You must be able to revitalize the Christian world, reunite families and maintain harmony as the lowest or smallest unit of the society or nation, and you must be able to annihilate Communism, exterminate it and make all the population of the world Godloving people. It may not be as easy as it sounds. You cannot do it with folded hands. The whole population of America is anxious to do the job, but they have so far failed to do it, and the handful of people in our group want that, so we have mobilized for that mission. With this in mind, can your hearts be at ease?
You must put yourselves in my position at all times and be responsible leaders over some group at least; then you will feel my heart and do the same. Jesus was the representative who bore the cross instead of letting others do it. He was the only historical figure who willingly volunteered to bear the cross himself and to be responsible for other people's lives, and to be connected with them through eternity on the spiritual level.
From that point of view, you must fancy or grasp the picture of how you are going to act when you are responsible for all the population of the world in the future. When you have to fight against the Communist power, it may be even easier. But when you want to absorb them and win their hearts and make them to be what we are, then what are you going to do with them? If you fight against them and win over them by power, they will not be conquered in the real sense, and they can gather up their strength and come against us. But in time after winning over them, we must be able to absorb them and make them into our members. Unless we establish the principle that we can trust them, by loving them and being responsible for their eternal lives, we are not real victors.
The Communists, in their way, are thinking of erecting a kingdom of their own. But by going through untold sacrifices, we will save them and restore them and show them that the kingdom we mean to erect is far better than what they dreamed of, and they will be convinced and persuaded. Unless we do that they won't be convinced. Isn't that true?
We have a vast job ahead of us
We have such a vast job ahead of us. In order for us to be qualified enough to do that we must be able first to trust them and to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of those people, and be ready to love them as though we would our own people. First is trust, second is serve, next is love, and last is sacrifice -- trust, serve, love, and sacrifice for them. There is no other way possible for us to win over them. Do you like the idea? You must be able to trust them while they don't act kindly. You must be able to serve them. You must be able to love them and sacrifice for them. And that you must do not unwillingly, not reluctantly, but out of your heart, from the very bottom of your heart. Can you do that? What do you think God would do? Even for God, it is a most difficult job.
God Himself would want to prove Himself reliable and would trust them, serve them, and sacrifice for them to the fullest extent. When you can trust a person while he is not trustworthy, when you can serve a person when he is not worthy, when you can love those people when they are not lovable, and when you can sacrifice yourself for the sake of those people when they are not worth sacrificing for -- unless you can do that, you are not qualified as a responsible person.
When God had to leave Jesus in satanic hands and had to let him be killed, it was a demonstration of His love towards mankind; even at the cost of His own loving son, He had to trust the people that sooner or later they will be saved, and serve the people in giving His son, and love the people to the extent that He gave His own son and sacrificed His son for the sake of those who came against him. This kind of attitude will qualify you as the responsible leader.
We will absorb the Communist world
Would you want to be that kind of leader? (Yes.) You must realize it is a difficult job. But if you are willing to accept the responsibility and carry it out, then you will be relied on by God and be trusted by Him. God is in the position to do the job, and since He is an invisible entity, in place of Himself He sent the Messiah to do the job, and we must follow him, and walk with him as the example. And after we will have erected the kingdom of God on earth, to whom are we going to leave it? To the whole of mankind, of course. You know that half the world population is Communist.
In a way, it means we are going to leave the kingdom we will have erected to Satan himself. By that time the Communists and Satan will not stay our enemies, but they will be convinced of our trustworthiness and be touched by us and be absorbed.
On God's part, He will have us go through three stages in order to meet Him, or in order for us to be able to erect His kingdom. We must be able to erect a kingdom for the world: first, for God-loving people, and then for Communist people. That means we must make the Communist world into the kingdom of heaven, and the satanic world, into the citizens of the kingdom. If and when we will have erected a certain stage of the kingdom of heaven on earth, do you think the Communists would be willing to come and live as citizens in that kingdom at first? (No.) Then in our world, we must have a stronger economic system than theirs, and a stronger political system and a greater culture than theirs in order for us to be able to absorb them.
What I am doing in the United States is at the risk of my life. I am that serious. When your ambition is to save so many nations and the whole world, can you imagine that you can do it without risking your life? You may wish that you would live a happy life and make others live a happy life, but that's almost impossible. In order to save one worldly nation, to win independence, so many people have been martyred and denied themselves, and eventually were killed; how much more difficult it must be to erect the kingdom of heaven.
So I want you to realize how difficult a job we are going to take on from now on; be ready for that and become reliable, trustworthy leaders. When I look at my people working in the garden or doing anything, I always think, "If I were they, I would erase the time concept from my mind and think of that just as my job and there is no one else but myself to do the job, and then I can just work on and on without stopping after a certain hour." Only those who have experienced that would know how almost sacred it is to love work - to work until you are exhausted and eat at the spot of your labor, and lie down and fall asleep right at the place of your labor. Then your meditation, your prayer to God on the spot will be heard and answered. It is a great thing of beauty, even though at that time you are all dirty with mud and you are perspiring all over and your face is dirty like a discarded doll's. But that is a great thing of beauty in God's sight.