Sun Myung Moon
July 23, 2004
Address at the World Culture and Sports Festival 2004
Yu Gwan-soon Gymnasium, Cheonan, Korea
Photo date and location unknown
Distinguished guests from 120 nations, leaders of religious, academic, political and civil society, youth participants from the Inter-religious Peace Sports Festival, participants of the international marriage Blessing ceremony, students and youth leaders, ladies and gentlemen:
The theme and goal of the World Culture and Sports Festival, which I first proposed in 1988, is to establish a world culture of heart. All people need to come together in harmony and unity centering on God and true love, to create a world of harmonious interdependence, mutual prosperity and universally shared values. The events in this festival are meant to break down man-made walls that would prevent us from realizing these ideals. This is a cultural festival that aims for unity, transcending nation, race, and religion.
This tenth World Culture and Sports Festival is all the more significant because it comes during the providential time in history when the Era after the Coming of Heaven is within reach. In fact, this festival is opening the way for the era of the coming of God's kingdom. The title of this speech is, "Determining the Owner of True Love According to the Absolute Value System of the True Ideal Family'' It introduces a portion of the truth that God is giving humanity at this time.
The way to become an owner of love is by living for the sake of others
Dear guests, what was God's purpose in creating human beings? The desire of the omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent God was not to live in solitude. Thus, He created the cosmos as a part of the process of creating an environment for His children, and on that foundation, He created men and women as the object partners of His absolute love.
God created us as His children. His desire was for us, His object partners, to become even better than Himself. Even in this world, parents wish for their children to become better than they are. This is the love of a parental God, which He gives as a blessing.
God's purpose of creation was to rejoice in seeing His children grow and perfect themselves, receive His marriage Blessing, multiply true children, and create a true, ideal and heavenly world in which to live.
We open the path to becoming an owner of love by practicing true love. This means we invest and sacrifice ourselves completely first for our partner. Before God created human beings, He first established the standard of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience and then invested Himself one hundred percent. Through this, He brought the realm of the object partner into the realm of absolute values. One cannot become an owner of love on one's own. It is only possible through an object partner.
This love principle of absolute values also pertains to God. Just as parents can never become owners of love without children, for God to stand in the position of the owner of absolute love He must create His children, who stand as God's object partners. In this way, God and His children form a realm replete with the values of absolute love. Perfection is reached when the subject partner values the object partner absolutely, and vice-versa.
People think that the weak are sacrificed and exploited for the sake of the strong, but when we observe the order of the universe, we can see that it is not true. The theory of the survival of the fittest and the law of the jungle are fundamentally wrong. Those who believe in this theory overlook the absolute importance of human beings working toward their perfection as owners of love. They should stand as the lords of all by living for the sake of others, investing true love in their object partners and forgetting that they ever invested. Their object partners, in turn, are meant to respond with absolute obedience to the same principle. If true love is excluded from this formula, only the concept of struggle remains. God's principle of creating is not that existence and development occur through struggle. Rather, He seeks harmony and unity leading to the emergence of absolute values through a mutual process of giving and receiving among entities in the relationship of subject partner and object partners.
An individual may be sacrificed for the sake of the greater good; however we must not perceive this as struggle. It must be seen as an investment for the sake of mutual development. Can we indeed define the act of an individual willingly sacrificing him or herself for his or her family, or the family willingly sacrificing itself for the nation, or the nation for the world, as struggle? Rather it is the way to form the realm of absolute values for the sake of bringing about the full realization of true love, where each strives to first set up the other in a position of an owner of true love.
Thus, we must uproot our self-centered and individualistic mind-set and the behavior that stems from it. This is the root of fallen nature and the cause of evil. This can be said not only of self-centered behavior on the individual level, but also of selfish behavior of collectives in society. Self-centeredness is directly contrary to the spirit of true love's system of absolute values. Instead of sacrificing and living for the sake of others, self-centered people call for others to sacrifice for them. Self-centeredness causes people to be more concerned with their own interests than with the wellbeing of others.
Self-centeredness was insidiously injected into humankind through the Fall. It induced the struggle between mind and body. Satan planted this poison mushroom in the human heart. Although embracing self-centeredness may result in a person appearing beautiful and gaining worldly fame and earthly comforts, it is a trap that once sprung will lead its victim to addiction and a life of suffering that is difficult to escape.
All beings exist for the sake of other beings
Let us think about the concepts of "front" and "back." When we say "front," we acknowledge as a preexisting condition the concept, "back." "Above" can only exist when there is a "below" and "left" presupposes "right."
In the same vein, male denotes the prior existence of female. In other words, men were born for the sake of women, and women were born for the sake of men. Without men, there is no need for women, and without women, men cannot retain the value of their existence.
In the end, nothing is born for its own sake. All beings exist and act for the sake of their partner. This means that we were created to live in an ideal homeland within the context of relationships of mutual concern for one another.
Let us think about our five sensory organs. Did your eyes come into being for the sake of looking at themselves? Our eyes, nose, ears, mouth and hands all were created for others. What is the force that mobilizes our five sensory organs to sustain our lives and maintain our activities? It is the force that aims to perfect the values of true love. Therefore, our five sensory organs are simply tools that came into existence for the sake of practicing true love.
In this way, nothing exists for its own sake. A life of living for the sake of others, giving and sacrificing out of love, and perfecting a life of love through surrendering to your partner, is a life that satisfies God's ideal of creation. You were created for the sake of your partner. Therefore, the law of nature calls you to live for others more than for yourself. This is where the absolute values of true love emerge.
Your reproductive organ is the borderline between heaven and hell
Dear guests, do you know where to find the dividing line between heaven and hell? Is it in the air? Is it in a cathedral? Is it on a border between nations? No, the dividing line between heaven and hell can be found in your body; it is your reproductive organ. The selfish use of human sexuality caused the greatest tragedy in human history; that tragedy turned heaven and earth upside down.
If you recklessly use your reproductive organ without regard for the consequences of your actions, you will surely go to hell. On the other hand, if you use it in accordance with the standard of God's absolute love, you will go to heaven. Who can deny this fact? If you doubt this, I ask you to carefully read the Divine Principle, which contains the heavenly laws that I revealed. If you are still in doubt, I sincerely ask that you pray to God. I'm sure that your prayer will be answered.
Tens of thousands of young people in the world who have accepted my teachings have ceased engaging in free sex. The message of the pure love movement, which advocates "absolute sex," or "absolute true love," is now spreading like wildfire.
If free sex is false love centered on selfish desires and Satan, then absolute sex is absolute love centered on God. Many literary works and stories in the press have the tendency to fan the fires of free sex, a disease that cripples individuals and nations. However, now leaders of all spheres of life, including politicians, economists, philosophers, journalists, religious leaders and writers will stand together in a resistance movement against free sex.
The cornerstone of world peace was supposed to have been within Adam's family, which was to have brought forth the absolute values of true love. It was also Adam's family that could destroy the path to world peace. Thus, we must bear in mind the importance of Adam's family, the ancestral family of humanity.
The reason I brought an end to our "church" and established the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification is because the time had come to focus on the family. How can we transform this hellish world? The practice of true love is the only way to bring forth absolute values. The attributes of God, the owner of true love, are based on eternal, unchanging, unique and absolute standards; hence, we need to inherit these attributes and live according to those standards.
The cornerstone of world peace is the family that follows the absolute value system of true love
Dear guests, why is the family a good thing? It is because the love of our parents should be the basis of our original freedom, and hence the family should be the basis for activities founded on our original freedom. Even though they may be shabby in appearance, when a family becomes an original family -- a family untainted by the Fall consisting of people bound in heart with true love at the core, it will be able to liberate humanity and even God.
Freedom without love is not true freedom. If you feel restrained when you go to someone's house as a guest, it means you lack a deep bond of love with that household. In other words, because your love does not spread out in all directions you feel awkward and restrained.
What is the highest and greatest value in the original, unfallen family? It is the original parents. Why are the original parents good? The original parents are the owners of eternal love. The original parents are the ones who stand closest to us; our relationship with them lasts throughout our lives and beyond.
In the original family, after birth, the first partner with whom we would relate to in joy is our parents. Thus the original parents are both the subject partners and object partners of our joy. When we are happy, original parents are the first to be happy for us. When we are sad, they are the first to shed tears of sorrow. That is why we are sympathetic to children who do not have parents.
The next most valuable being in the family is one's beloved husband or wife. Husbands and wives have to be able to give and receive original love that is unconditional. Their love may not have started within a relationship that is absolute and eternal in nature, but based on the absolute bond of marriage, their conjugal love can grow into original love. Then it will become the basis of the family's eternal happiness and joy.
However if this ideal, original relationship between husband and wife stops there, existing only between the couple, then it will not bring eternal happiness and joy that hold absolute value. That is to say, the couple needs to have children. If a couple decides not to have children, thinking that they will live in happiness being childless, you will see the result. Humankind would die out before the second generation. Couples need to receive the love that their original children give them; then they can become true couples that rise up to the position of original parents.
Therefore, the next most valuable and important thing is the love of children toward their original parents. The pure and genuine love of children is to sacrifice for and love their original parents with brightness and positivity. Even when circumstances are not ideal, children do not despair but hope for a brighter future. Such love has value because it exists for the sake of the family's happiness.
An original family extends over three generations, completely imbued with the sacrificial, original love of original parents toward their children, the true love between the original couple and the true love of original children toward their parents. That family will become the most ideal true family in the world.
The three-generation family is the starting point of true happiness
What kind of person do we call happy? What standard do we use to measure happiness? Can someone be happy solely by virtue of an external talent or authority that no other person has? Can a person be happy just because he or she has tremendous wealth that everyone envies? Is happiness obtained by becoming a world-renowned scholar? That is absolutely not the case.
No external condition alone can guarantee a person's happiness for eternity. It may prompt one's search for greater happiness, yet it cannot become the source of lasting happiness itself. In the end, genuine happiness comes from a family that has loving parents, a couple who are one in true love, and children who are devoted and faithful to their parents.
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, humanity will now witness a great revolution of true love, taking place on the Korean peninsula. People have struggled under the false love of Satan for thousands of years. Now, by establishing the absolute values of true family and ridding this land of all sorts of false values, they will shout for joy.
To make a clapping sound, two hands must come together. Heaven has already opened the gates of the Era after the Coming of Heaven on the foundation of our victories as the True Parents. Your responsibility is to become absolute object partners before God, the Subject Partner, and open the way for the age when we will create a new heaven and a new earth.
This is an historic age, when spirit world and physical world are uniting as one. It is the age for establishing Cheon Il Guk, the Nation of Cosmic Peace and Unity, the peace kingdom on earth and in heaven that God envisioned from the beginning of time.
The time has come for intellectuals the world over to receive my teachings. I, Reverend Moon, have served God as the vertical axis of humanity and upheld my mission as the horizontal True Parent. I have carried out this mission throughout my 85 years of life, consistently sacrificing and serving in order to discover and to establish a true person, a true couple, true parents, true families and the true world. I ask all of you to join me in completing this historical task for the sake of God.
May God bless your families to reach these ideals.
Thank you very much.