Sun Myung Moon
January 3, 1986
Seoul, Korea
Excerpts
Love is fundamental for human beings, but true love is never influenced by any environmental factors; it is not influenced by the seasons. If it were, human beings would not pursue it. How many people throughout history ever had such an absolute criterion for their love that they could not be influenced by environmental factors?
When an individual's mind is not perfect, the love in his or her mind also cannot be perfect. If a woman's mind changes more often than a man's, then a woman's love will be deemed less true than a man's. People say that a woman's mind is just like a reed, with roots that are not deeply planted; they say that a woman's love is not based on eternal value but on immediate reality. Human beings want unchangeable love because there is an unchangeable nature deep within their original mind.
You should think deeply about why I am talking so repeatedly about love today. Especially those in their adolescence need to seriously consider matters such as love and value. Inwardly they ask themselves many questions: Does God indeed exist? Where am I in the cycle of life? What is the meaning and value of my life? Why am I so affected whenever I see a beautiful young woman? The bigger the changes in your mind and body, the more vulnerable you are to the temptation of love. But you can control your sexual curiosity if you understand the value of love.
If you pursue love before successfully controlling your impulse to experience it, you will ruin yourself, the world, and finally the whole universe. There is a proper order and time for love. If you think that you own love and declare that your parents should not interfere with your experience of love, then you will destroy the social order built on God's ideal, and His world will come to an end.
Love Transcends Law
All living beings want to submit to love. Even all the laws of the cosmos want to submit to the realm of love. Love transcends law; in love we can even forgive the world's criminals. If the great order of love is firmly established, then there will be no more war and this world will be filled with freedom and happiness.
In all of history there has never been such a world, because human beings fell and lost true love. Because of the fall, the vertical line and the horizontal line of love could not meet perpendicularly. Instead, they came to run parallel to each other. [That is, Satan's realm, dominating the horizontal line, imitated and rivaled God's realm, centering on the vertical line.] The four position foundation of love was never established; thus, no three-dimensional sphere was formed, and no motion in the true sense was made possible. Therefore, the ideal of love could not be established. That is why all men and all creation are now running to find fulfillment in the Last Days.
The country of Denmark is famous for its high standard of living. Denmark's initial idea for a well-established welfare system was good, but in practice it is causing many problems. Danish law provides for the jobless to receive from the government as much money as any employed person earns. But after giving a lot of money to the jobless, the government cannot even pave the streets. How do the welfare recipients spend all their leisure time? Too much free time has resulted in decadence, and the ethical foundation of the nation is falling to pieces. A rich country is not necessarily a happy one.
People are happy to work when they feel loved, even if they can only eat one meal a day. Human beings can overcome hunger or any kind of hardship if they have love. There is nothing more beautiful or valuable than hope shared between two people who love each other. This wild and rugged world cannot destroy a tower of love built in such a way.
If your happiness is not proportionate to the amount of money you have, or if you earned money at the cost of love, can you say that you are happy? In a similar way, can a person who has lost the value of love really be helped by a college education? That person may receive a lot of knowledge, but he may turn into a materialistically minded individualist. Just like a rice cake, education must be placed in the offering bowl of love in order to fulfill its true purpose.
People Never Tire Of True Love
People who have tasted true love will never forget it and will never change their mind about it. We can easily get tired of fast food. If we can get love just as easily as we get fast food, then such love is probably not true love. Today there are many people who just cannot see any difference between instant love and instant food. This is a very great problem. Even a luxurious bubble bath will not deepen such a person's sense of love. The love between a couple living in the countryside who gratefully share a cold bath will be purer and deeper.
It is not natural for lovers to brush their teeth before they kiss each other. They want to smell each other's distinctive body odor. Do they want to taste love or toothpaste? Lovers who criticize each other's appearance and insist that their partner be dressed up all the time must have a self-centered motivation. Such artificial and egocentric demands make love false and deceptive. This kind of love, which is so prevalent, will cause this world to perish if it is not changed.
The primal cause of our existence is God, and the immediate cause is our own parents. These causes exist and interact through love. The universe has its own laws of existence and interaction, and without love, no one can adapt to them. For one thing, we survive physically under the protection of the universe. Without the appropriate atmospheric pressure, our bodies would burst into pieces and return to their original elements. More essentially, we need genuine love in order to exist and harmonize with the universe. Then the value of our existence will be recognized everywhere.
At the point where the true vertical relationship and the true horizontal relationship come together, a human standard centered on true love will arise which is one with the standard of the universe. Blessed members of the Unification Church stand on the line of true horizontal relationship through their position as husband and wife. They form the line of true vertical relationship through giving birth to children. All of the positions thus established are relative to God, who is at the top of the vertical line.
Children eventually grow up and arrive at the point where they have the same stature as their parents. This point of arrival is the crossing point of the vertical and horizontal lines. Young men and women who arrive at this point have no further place to go; it is the very last point they can reach on their own. After this point, they must make a new start by harmonizing with their spouse as well as with God; there will now be three parties. Through such continuous harmonizing, there will be eternal, revolving motion in the universe.
Preparation for Love Takes Time
Until adolescence everybody holds an ideal of, and a belief in, pure love. A young man should grow up with a mind to love the natural environment, his parents, and his country. Such a mind is clean and pure. When his mind and body come together, resonating with God's will, he has matured centering on the core of love. He has perfected himself. This means the time has come when he can play the role of a man.
Before a man's beard and moustache start to grow, his sperm have no ability to fertilize an egg. The growth of his facial and body hair is a signal that his sperm have matured and can bring forth life. You cannot find this information in any medical text, but it is true according to the Principle. Women are also fertile from the time that their underarm hair begins to grow. During this time they blush easily, and their hearts throb when they hear tender love stories. These are signs that their eggs have ripened and can bear the fruit of love. Men and women should wait until this time before meeting their partners in marriage. God gave the commandment, instructing minors to wait, because the preparation for love takes time.
As the Principle explains, the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil means the fruit of love between a man and a woman. If you think that because you are blessed, the fruit of your love does not carry the potential for evil any longer, you are mistaken. You were not blessed at the perfection stage, but at the top of the growth stage. You still have to go through a seven-year course to reach the perfection stage.
If our human ancestors had fulfilled their responsibility, God would have been able to deal with them directly. There would have been no fall. Their responsibility was to perfect the unity of their minds and bodies as individuals, and they should have become a true man and a true woman with ripened sperm and ova respectively. Then, with God's blessing, they could have become one in love, releasing the seed of life and bearing its fruit.
When a man and a woman are blessed and become one in love, they form a core of expansion through their children. Such a core is eternal and is connected to the love coming from God Himself. The core of human perfection has no way to connect to the original core of love unless human beings turn to God. In being tapped in to God, love becomes circular and eternal. When these cores are connected and united, human beings cannot get out of this revolving love -- nor can God Himself!
God Cannot Deal With Imperfect Love
Originally, the vertical love core of God and the horizontal love core of human beings should have come together at right angles and formed a base of universal love automatically. However, our ancestors fell and formed a false base centered on Satan's love. God cannot deal with such a false and distorted love base. It has no connection to the absolute reference point, and it causes confusion and conflict through its wayward motion. Its orbit is imperfect and irregular and has nothing to do with the original orbit of God.
If our ancestors had fulfilled their responsibility, their children could have been born from the one love of God and they could have inherited God's own divine nature and power as owners of God's creativity. Then God's ideal world of love could have expanded through the generations.
Adam and Eve should have perfected themselves and come back to God with the whole universe in their embrace; being blessed and establishing the four position foundation would have been a culmination as well as a new starting point. Because of the fall, human beings lost the awareness of their destination. Creation now has no core or axis of love for eternal and orderly revolving motion.
All created beings are centering on the false love of Satan; their axes do not merge with the original love axis. Thus, their motion throughout the' millions of years of history has not been joined to the original motion of God.
What is blessed marriage? Man and woman are the incarnation of God's original masculinity and original femininity. Through marriage, men and women should perfect themselves as the incarnation of God and start to fulfill the ideal of relationship, harmonizing with each other as representatives of polarity in the world centered upon God's love. All created beings are meant to be connected to each other through the relationship between a man and a woman.
Since the fall, marriage has lost its original meaning and value. In the process of recreation, marriage is a union of a man and a woman which can be established only through making indemnity conditions that will enable them to become engrafted to the son of God, the Messiah.
God wanted human beings to have children so that they could experience joy in the giving and receiving of love. However, since our ancestors bore children by abandoning their responsibility to God, babies born in this world have no connection to Him.
When a true man and woman share love and give birth to children, they cannot go through such a holy process without crying tears of joy. In their love, they whisper secret words to each other: "I cannot do anything without you. You are everything to me." Their union is based on trust and absolute love. The beginning of human life was supposed to be like this, but after the fall, human beings lost this absolute standard and went astray. Union between a man and woman is now made only with the physical body, not with absolute love. Couples cannot unite in the true sense, because the motive of each person is different.
Everything Evil Must Perish
When the responsibility of Adam and Eve was invaded, they came to have another parent -- Satan. In the ideal there should be no enemy before God. No such enemy should ever have existed. The orbit of love centered on God was supposed to be eternal; however, Satan invaded this orbit. It became the orbit of fallen love. The world was begun with the original motive, but was distorted by the fallen motive. Therefore, everything evil in this world cannot help but perish in the Last Days.
As the Last Days approach, people come to forget the original meaning of love. Relationships between men and women are not based on holy love but on carnal desire. Perverted forms of love between man and man and between woman and woman are prevalent and cause a lot of confusion. Women sell their love; men freely change partners; and partners often leave each other as soon as they are sexually gratified. Children ask their parents, "Why did you bear me? You bore me not for the sake of true love but for your own pleasure, didn't you?" Sometimes children don't even know who their father is, so they eventually leave their mother, also.
We cannot find the true order of love in the Western European countries or in America. America today is a hell of love. There are a lot of broken families, illegitimate children, and betrayed lovers, all resulting from the collapse of family order and ethics. As Unificationists we should change this situation. Neither money nor power but only God's love can work to create new relationships and expand them into a unified world of true love.
Up until now, God could not own anything in the created world. Since the rise of the Unification Church, however, God has begun to reclaim His ownership. Liberation will come through the True Parents by the formation of a unified realm centering on the love of God. When people meet me, they come to feel soaring happiness and joy r, suiting from the power of true love. Everywhere I have been, established Christian churches have come to unite, and different races have begun to harmonize.
When human beings fell, they fell into the position of servant; therefore, in God's providence of salvation all religious leaders and spiritualists have been men. [Editor's note: Father may be referring to the fact that the central figures of the Old and New Testaments were always men. He may mean here that because angels, who have been only male, were created to be servants of God, only men can restore Lucifer's position. This is only a suggested interpretation.] The age of the Unification Church will bring about the liberation of women centering upon men and the formation of true families. After this liberation, centered on His own love, God will be willing to be owned by human beings.
God Can Now Reclaim Ownership
This reclamation has been made possible through the True Parents. I entered the realm of common ownership together with God. Therefore, that realm is mine as well as His. My ownership is also Mother's ownership, since she and I are one centering on love. Our children can also claim common ownership when they are one with me and Mother in love. And once God can reclaim the ownership of His children and all things centered on His love, He will own them forever.
Love has unifying power. Therefore, no one dislikes love. Yet before marriage, no one can claim ownership of love. To claim ownership, you must become one with the realm of God's love; and to enter heaven, you, as couples, must be authorized as being owned by God through His love.
In the Kingdom of God, ownership is based on God's love. You should ask yourselves if you can belong to God in any situation. You should be able to assert that you belong to God in such a way that nobody can deny and everyone can recognize. You should also consider if your ownership of your children is based on God's love or not.
In order to return to God, you must start in the position of servant of servant, then go to the level of servant, then adopted son, and finally true son. You cannot belong to God fully unless you come to stand on the level of Adam who did not fall. The same is true for me, as well. It has taken my entire life to attain the level of the original Adam and to be accepted into the realm of God's ownership. Without going through this process, no one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
You must not forget that because of the fall you are false olive trees. As a false olive tree, you must be grafted onto the true olive tree; you must meet the Messiah and be saved. You must walk the path to become God's children according to His love and Principle. You can do this only by becoming one with the Messiah through belief and love. He will restore the love which was lost and bequeath it to you.
I have passed through suffering, persecution, and imprisonment in order to belong to God. I could endure suffering because I knew that the joy of belonging to the realm of God's love would be great enough to offset any difficulty or hardship. I was destined to gain recognition as one belonging to God on the individual, family, society, nation, and world levels. Therefore, I could not sleep when I was tired; I could not take a break. I could not even kill myself. I could only go one way. Now I have to teach to those do not yet know, how to belong to the realm of God's love.
Victory Has Not Been Won Easily
Ever since I started the Unification Church, the world has been trampling upon me as if my character were not worth one penny. Standing in the vanguard to save humankind and liberate God, I have passed through persecution in a position which attracted no sympathy. People have just pushed me and pulled me in all directions, and I have had to persevere through all kinds of pain. Through this bitter process I could be recognized as a son of God. When I received that recognition, God and I were so happy that we could not say even a single word. But it was a moment of sorrow and defeat for Satan.
As my recognition was sealed on the levels of the family, society, clan, and nation, God became happier and happier, while Satan was overcome with sorrow. As Satan tried harder and harder to maintain the dwindling sphere of his ownership, my path inevitably became increasingly difficult.
I started on the way of God's will in 1945. The year 1985 marked the fortieth anniversary of my beginning point. I asked the blessed couples to participate in mobile witnessing activities from 1983 on because I knew that all of the mistakes throughout the entire history of the universe could be indemnified during the last three years of this 40- year period. The purpose of having you offer yourselves in such a way on the altar of the True Parents was so that your entire families -- including your parents, your children, and even your belongings -- could be recognized as belonging to God.
You did not understand the meaning of this period, and only complained. Many of you, if not all of you, disobeyed and went your own way. I even heard that some of you behaved in a shameful way. What do you think about that? I never expressed my anger or resentment, and I pretended not to know. Now, after fulfilling my responsibility and freeing myself from all burdens, I want to teach you clearly: From now on you should realize what is right and what is wrong, what should be done first, and what should be done last. Since Korea is my country, I came back, and I am patiently telling you about the bitterness in God's heart. You should become the ones to resolve for me all the insults and the bitterness that I have suffered on the way of God's will.
Ever since I was called by God, my life has been a succession of one suffering experience after another. It has been a lonely fight to bring light into the world of darkness. In America I had to enter Danbury prison to establish a realm of victory on the worldwide level, and I even had to offer my beloved son, Heung Jin, to connect the victory on earth with the spirit world. His sacrifice was based on love, and is eternally valuable. It brought about a day of victory on earth. Thus the Day of Victory of Love could be declared.
The victorious foundation of the Unification Church has not been won easily; it has been won only through sacrificial love in the midst of persecution. But I have never shown my frustration or disappointment. Now you are responsible to create the Kingdom of Heaven by attending and protecting your True Parents. When you fulfill your responsibility, you will be connected to the true realm of ownership of parental love.