Let Us Repay Our Debts

Sun Myung Moon
March 10, 1975
Excerpt
Barrytown Training Center

Photo date and location unknown

My topic today is going to be "Let us repay our debts." Let us study closely whether or not you have debts. Before your birth, you inhabited your mother's womb for at least nine months. For three to four months, your mother felt like vomiting whatever she ate. She was physically feeble, so she may have needed more help and more love from her husband. The baby in the mother's womb was making the mother suffer, and through the mother, he mobilized even the father. Even if she is experienced, just before childbirth a mother is scared, because labor is frightening. At the moment of childbirth, she could die. When she's in labor, you just cannot imagine how agonized she is. She has no one to rely on, no one whom she can really trust or lean on. You did that. Every one of you when you were in your mother's womb caused that. So, you are greatly indebted to your mother, to your parents.

You are the one who caused her such pain, but right after your birth your mother felt overjoyed to see you and loved you immediately. If it were in other matters you would hate and feel like kicking the person who caused you such trouble and pain. If every three years you were given the same pain as your mother experienced when she gave birth to you, practically everyone would be faithful to his mother.

Have you ever stopped to think that you caused such pain to your mother? No, instead you feel free to say anything against her, act any way against her, and you think that you are born for the sake of yourself. In your everyday life, suppose you are hungry and almost starved to death, so you visit a friend of yours and he feeds you; you are immensely thankful to him. When you are in a difficult situation, if you are helped by one of your relatives or friends, you are grateful. But have you ever thought of the pain you caused your mother and have you been grateful to her? Compared to the gratitude you feel towards your friends what you should be feeling towards your parents must be many, many times more.

Before being born into this world, there was a period of time when your eyes had to be formed, your ears, your nose, your mouth. Every cell of yours was being formed in your mother's womb. So every morning when you look at yourselves in the mirror, why don't you remind yourselves of how your eyes were formed, your nose came into being, your mouth and ears. When you closely examine your face, you will find that your eyes resemble your mother's, your ears resemble your father's, your nose resembles your father's again, and maybe your mouth resembles your mother's mouth. They are a copy of either your father or mother. How can you misuse them? To you, your face is precious; if that is true, why don't you talk highly of your mother and father? Why don't you feel that they are precious to you. Your whole body, every cell of yours, belongs to them and resembles your parents. If you love yourselves, why don't you love your parents?

Seen from this point of view, we are greatly indebted to our parents. But have you ever seen a parent who would ask you to repay that debt? There is no way possible for us to repay the debts we have towards our parents. What does the mother do after childbirth? She has to change the diapers; if a rash appears, she has to medicate it. If you are sick, your mother stays by your bedside, just caring for you and nursing you. If you were at the brink of death, she would pray that she might die in place of you. That's parental love. Have you ever thought of that? Your parents are a symbol of sacrifice for you. There's no comparison to parental love toward you.

Every morning your mother is anxious to get you on the way to school before you are late, and she prays for you and begs you to be a nice boy or girl, to behave yourself, be a good pupil and things like that. Every moment of her life, she cannot have an easy heart. As time goes by you grow bigger and bigger, reaching toward adulthood, but even when you are in the university, she won't cease to care. Until the time of their death, parents care for their children, not thinking of any debt owed to them. They are the greatest of all benefactors. So, in terms of love you are, have been, and are going to be indebted to your parents until your death. Suppose your parents are somewhere around 100 years old and you are 80 years old. Still, your parents think that you are their child. If you are going out driving in the car, they will still say, "Be careful driving the car." So, parental love lasts for eternity, without changing.

I say for eternity because, even though they pass away into the other world, they will keep loving you and caring for you; the greatest of all loves is parental love. Suppose there's a young mother who died leaving a young baby. Do you think the mother would have an easy heart and say, "Well, I'm glad I'm relieved from the pain, here in spirit world?" Or would she love the baby and care for her all the more? Her love, in the spirit world, toward the bereaved child is more than that she felt on Earth. In that case, the baby must know that she's being cared for by her mother to a larger and higher degree.

There's no way possible for us to repay the debt to our parents. So, in a word, you are all indebted to your parents. You are going to be indebted to them all through eternity. So you must be filial children to them. If you love your parents one-tenth of their love towards you, then you are 90 percent indebted to them. What about your teachers? If there's any teacher who loved you so much that he cannot forget you, if you are implanted in his memory, you can never forget that teacher. So, for our birth, we are indebted to our parents, and secondly, we are indebted to the teachers who educated us. Fallen man must also be indebted to his ministers, the church itself, and church members. Your minister cannot save your soul without loving you more than your parents did, on a higher dimension.

Then you are indebted to your country. Especially Americans must be graceful to their nation because in this affluent country you have been enjoying your life while others are starving to death. The government protects you by exercising the law, and if you do not violate the law you are always protected and cared for by your government.

You must also be grateful towards the whole of mankind. America could not have been blessed with affluence like this without other nations. By means of imports and exports you earn money, and use it for the benefit of your people. The American population itself is composed of people from all over the world. Here we have black people, white people, and yellow people living as citizens of the United States. You think you have built your own culture, your own civilization, but your forefathers brought things from other countries. Even at this very moment, businessmen are drawing money and materials from other countries for the benefit of this nation. So you are indebted to the whole of mankind.

Then you are indebted to your ancestors. Think of your forefathers who founded this nation. How much blood and tears and sweat have they shed? But for their struggle and labor, could you enjoy life in the United States? Could you ever become hippies and drug-users when you think of that? If you were starving to death, you could not become a hippy. You have more than enough to eat, you are degraded spiritually, you become lax, you hate life, and you hate yourself when you become hippies. When you don't have money to buy the drug, how can you use it. Your forefathers worked so hard to make an environment for you to enjoy; are you repaying your ancestors that way? Being great debtors like this, how can you repay all the debts? If you lead a meaningless life, just drifting like a fallen leaf, you will die without repaying your debts. You will remain a debtor in the spiritual world. You would not be well received by God.

There's a way open here. Jesus said, whatever was done to his little ones in that way you repay him. Your ancestors and all the rest living in spirit world as creditors would want you to repay your debts to the whole of mankind and to your own descendants. Starting from your own family, if you repay your debts by loving your brothers and sisters, by loving your parents and relatives, friends and neighbors, you reach other people. For instance, a river or a stream always flows downward. The size of the river doesn't matter, big or small they flow downward. We too must flow down, filling other people's hearts.

Up to the present, you were never aware of being a debtor or of how to repay the debt. Think of God and how He worked. His providence of restoration, even after we became debtors, transgressors. We named many to whom we are indebted. But more than your ancestors, more than anyone else, we are indebted to God every moment of our lives. What would God want you to do to repay Him? God's only wish would be for you to repay the debt towards other people, His own children. Your parents' wish is for you to love your brothers and sisters more than you would your own parents. The same thing is true with God. God as the parent would want you to love your brothers and sisters more than you love Him.

In God's sight all of mankind are brothers and sisters. So He would want you to love all mankind. Your parents would want you to love your offspring. More ideal is that you love the whole of mankind as you would your own descendants, doing things for later generations of mankind. What God wants you to get is not knowledge, position, or wealth, but love to give to other people. You know that you can love your children naturally as you would your own self, and with that same kind of love you must love other people. That's the only thing God would want you to do.

Your parents would want you to be successful in your life so that everyone around you would praise you and admire you, then they can be proud of their children. They would want you to love your brothers and sisters as you would yourselves, to take care of them and help them to be equally successful. So you can see divine love in your parents' love towards you. If you are sons and daughters of filial piety, would you not want to carry out what your parents want you to do? So, you want to be able to love your brothers and sisters, your parents, relatives, friends, and neighbors as you would your own self, and you want to be successful in worldly careers without using evil tactics or things like that, but instead using goodness and heart. In choosing your maces, you want to have your spouse like that, too.

Let's go back to the mainstream of thought. We are aware that we are all great debtors. Now you have learned how to repay the debt. Repay means pay back. But your creditors wouldn't want you to pay back the money to them, but to pay it to your descendants and people around you. In God's love everything good and valuable flows down, like water flows downward, filling up any hollow places and when it is on level ground it covers the whole space. That's the only possible way for us to repay. It works two ways: on the horizontal level towards all mankind, and vertically, to your descendants. You must always be thinking how to repay the debt, what to leave for mankind and what to leave for your descendants. An artist would want to leave a masterpiece of his handiwork. Your leaving something means you transmit your love to other people. If you want to repay your debt at the soonest possible time, you must choose the place.

Which is the best place for yon to repay the debt, at your home, your relatives, your neighbor, your church, or what? When you do it through your church, it means you are doing it through God. Let me tell you why the church is the best place for you to repay your debt. If you pay by means of the church, God will be delighted in that. Up to the present point in human history, the church has played the major role in building up culture and civilization. If not for Christianity, do you think America as it is today could have been built? Without Christianity, fifty states could have meant fifty nations. Religion and the love of God enabled them to be harmonized into Oneness, with one purpose. Let me prove that. In the Unification Church, we are one with each other, be it black, white, or yellow. Here it is possible because we have the same purpose, the same goal. First we have to deny ourselves in order to be mingled together into ultimate oneness. There's nothing like white or yellow or black in God's sight. Through religion, people talk more highly of the purpose of the state than the purpose of smaller communities, the purpose of the whole country than the purpose of any one state and ultimately, the purpose of God.

God-abiding churches alone can do the job of bringing oneness to all people. So, before loving the United States you must love your church; before loving your parents, you must love your church. This is because churches have been playing the role of amalgamating or distributing love towards other people on the horizontal level. More than schools, the church has educated you in that field. This is the arena of the practice of love. Seen from this viewpoint, we choose the church as the place where we can pay our debts in the soonest possible time.

How many nationalities do we have here, in terms of your ancestors? You are people from all over the world, from many nationalities. Then it means if you are strongly united into one, it is the symbol of all mankind being able to unite into one. Suppose here we have members of 120 nationalities, and one from each nationality came to you, asking for something, for instance one would ask you for your finger to be cut off for him. Would you do that? If so, then you would be cut into 120 pieces. That means sacrificing yourself. So or total love and dedication, you must sacrifice yourself. That's our conclusion. You must give away your whole being. Again, we feel the depth of the truth when we read of Jesus saying, "Anyone who wants to lose his life will gain it, and he who is prepared to gain his life will lose it." If you are ready to sacrifice yourself for the sake of other people, you can save your own life and you can save others' lives.

Since we are such great debtors that we have no way to pay back all our debts, why don't we be ready to sacrifice ourselves; it is better to sacrifice our lives than to remain debtors. In a word, I tell you to love others as God would love them, but that doesn't reach you in the concrete sense. God showed His love towards mankind through your parents. So, you want to follow the example of your parents in loving others. Your parents have loved you more than they would their own selves. You must love your brothers and sisters and all mankind as you would your own self. That will solve the whole problem. Then you will repay all your debts and still leave something behind. The purpose of our life is to pay back all debts and then leave something behind in terms of transmitting our love to others. Our conclusion is the motto we are always chanting, "Let us strive forward with Father's heart, in the shoes of a servant, shedding tears for mankind, sweat for Earth and blood for Heaven." In that way alone, we will repay our debt and leave something behind. If you live your life in that way, you are entitled to the Heavenly Kingdom.

God would be anxious to educate you in that way, and your own parents are anxious to educate you in that way. However much they may study other tactics, there's no other way possible than this, and no better way. Every moment you are loved by your parents, friends, teachers and relatives. That very moment you must think of transmitting the love to others, with interest added so that you can love others all the more. If you are a debtor you cannot lift your face; you are not free in your thinking and acting, you are humiliated. American young people look so liberated, so free in doing things. It is because they don't realize that they are debtors. Only after having repaid your debt can you feel free to think of things, say things, and act out things in whatever way you wish, and that will meet God's standard. While you are debtors, if you act arrogantly, people will point to you, call you names, revile you. The western world has the mistaken idea that we are not debtors in the least.

You become hippies and you hate people. In that sense you are being used by satanic power. Satan is undermining this country through you. With the knowledge that you are debtors, you cannot sit still without paying the debt. If you really know that you are a debtor can you lead an easy life, or enjoy life without paying for it? No, you must be agonized and uneasy every moment. If you find yourself able to repay the debt, that would ease your heart a little bit. So, as a debtor, there's no other way possible to be happy than by repaying the debt. As I said before, the best place for you to repay the debt is the church. You are now here in the Unification Church for that purpose. Our method of repaying our debt is to make the whole of mankind into one family.

There's no boundary of families, clans, tribes or nations in our movement. The whole world is one. All people will want to belong to us.