Sun Myung Moon
October 29, 2001
Hotel Riviera Yuseong, Daejeon, Korea
Korea Rally for the Nation of Cosmic Peace and Unity
Photo date and location unknown
Respected leaders, ladies and gentlemen: At this transitional point in human history, we have gathered as leaders from around the world who are concerned about the unification of Korea and world peace. The tragedies that took place in New York, Washington DC. and Pennsylvania on September 11 truly shocked the entire world. Along with our concerns over peace and safety, we have come to reflect upon fundamental and serious questions of modern civilization and the future of humanity.
The Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace and the World Association of Non- Governmental Organizations held a timely and significant conference in New York on October 19-22. These two organizations, both of which I founded, brought together more than four hundred participants from one hundred and one countries. The participants included current and former heads of state, top leaders of major religions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Confucianism, and representatives of academia and non-governmental organizations. The participants debated seriously on how to find peaceful solutions to today’s crises.
Our homeland, the Korean peninsula, remains a divided country and a trouble spot that, along with the Middle East, attracts the world’s attention. In my opening address at the New York conference, I communicated my vision for lasting and fundamental peace. Again I would like to share my view with you leaders assembled here today. The title of my address is “The Nation and World of Peace Sought by God and Humanity.”
Throughout history, people have continuously aspired to a world of peace, but we have never realized that dream. Consider the end of the Cold War, which concluded a time of fierce political and military conflicts and struggles.
Many people expected that the long-awaited era of peace and stability would arrive, supported by our highly developed science and technology.
Nonetheless, we came to realize that the seed of conflict, hatred and selfish desire embedded deeply within each of us is still alive, and is creating ever more serious disasters in new shapes and forms. Violence against innocent people is certainly an inhumane criminal act, and it must be stopped. However, what can eradicate our inner conflicts and struggles and resolve fundamental human problems at their root? Where was the seed of hatred, conflict and struggle sown, and how did it come to be rooted so deeply within us?
That seed was planted in the family of our first ancestors, Adam and Eve. The conflicts and struggles that resulted have continued from generation to generation until the present time.
Then how can we resolve those conflicts and realize peace on earth? Historically, people have attempted to overcome conflicts and pursue peace through economic, political, diplomatic and military means. However, such methods obviously do not provide fundamental solutions, as we are still struggling with many unresolved problems.
There is only one fundamental way to resolve these issues. It is clear and simple. We must restore the family that our first ancestors lost; that is, the ideal family with God at its center, the family that has achieved perfection in true love, both vertically and horizontally.
God exists as the Original Being of true love and the invisible True Parent of humankind. Nonetheless, love cannot exist alone. It exists in relationships, and it bears fruit only through relationships. That is why God created us, as His children, through whom He would seek to realize true love.
God’s first blessing to human beings, to “be fruitful” (Gen. 1:28), called God’s children to become the object partners of His true love by becoming true persons. When we love someone, we want our object partner to be better than ourselves. Thus God, as our loving Parent, wants His children to be better than He is. That is why God repeatedly invests Himself in human beings, His object partners of love; He forgets about what He has already given while constantly desiring to give infinitely more and more love. This is so because love has its origin in the desire to live eternally for the sake of others.
God then bestowed the second Blessing, to “multiply” (Gen. 1:28). Our first ancestors were to have grown to maturity as the children of God. After reaching maturity and becoming one in heart with God, they were to be blessed as true husband and wife. Then they were to become substantial True Parents to their children, inheriting and passing on true love, true life and true lineage from God.
God’s ideal of creation was to perfect true love both vertically and horizontally, beginning in the first family of our common ancestors. Since God’s love is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal, that family also was to have been the absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal family, centered on true love. Human beings were to be the substantial embodiments of love, totally united with God in heart, and obtaining perfect freedom, happiness and the realization of all ideals. Then they would have become the lords of true love whom all beings in the universe would have loved and welcomed. This was God’s third blessing (Gen. 1:28). This is the blessing to create a living environment in which we experience joy and happiness, having dominion over all of creation. This includes the care and preservation of the world’s ecological balance as true stewards of the creation.
Tragically, our first ancestors could not inherit the three blessings of God and establish the family of true love. That means they did not become true individuals, true spouses, true parents and true lords centered on true love. Because they disobeyed God, He expelled them from the garden of Eden. As fallen people, they became false spouses to each other with false love that had nothing to do with God’s blessings. They gave birth to children and those children multiplied to populate the world of today.
Since the Fall occurred at the very beginning of human history, people have not been born on the foundation of true love, in attendance to God. Instead, we have lived in a state of conflict, struggling between our minds and bodies. This conflict manifested in the tragedy of hatred and murder between two brothers, Cain and Abel, in the first family. This was the miserable reality in that family once it departed from God.
A family built on human relationships alone cannot become a family of the original ideal of creation. An ideal family must connect to God vertically and have a true person as its axis. Only under the true love of true parents, and among siblings who have and share a common axis, can a family enjoy relationships of ultimate harmony and peace. True love is experienced within an ideal family that bears good fruit. The family is the original and best school of love. Neither power nor knowledge can create true love.
Honorable leaders! What do you feel when you look at the reality of our society and the youth in our contemporary world? Do you feel hope for a bright future? I believe that you must agonize over the increasing rates of crime, violence, drug abuse, immorality, corruption, teen pregnancy and so forth. These arise out of a confusion of values, and portend greater darkness enveloping our youth.
How did we arrive at this point? Better school systems and social improvements might have delayed the onset of these problems, but would not address their fundamental cause, which is the breakdown and loss of our families. This breakdown is a product of the time we are living in, a time when humankind is harvesting the fruit sown when we lost the first family of true love.
It was that family’s failure to realize true love that has led to phenomena associated with family breakdown, including individual breakdown, as well as countless problems on the national and worldwide levels. Of particular concern is the emotional instability of youth, which leads to diminishing life goals, spiritual aimlessness, and unhealthy, self-destructive lifestyles. World leaders who are concerned about the future have to be very serious in order to solve the real problems of young people avoiding marriage, rampant divorce and so forth; trends that destroy the fundamental foundation of families.
Having lost the first and second blessings, humankind does not understand the importance of completing one’s individual growth, which is the foundation for sacred and eternal conjugal love. Most of our young people are not aware of the importance of keeping purity before marriage and reaching personal maturity through true love. This is why they do not understand the value of true love, which is the fundamental root of joy, happiness and all ideals.
The tendency to make light of trust and fidelity between husband and wife and to ignore the sacredness of marriage is an internal cause of indescribable disasters and tragedies for humankind. True love has been driven out by the so-called free love culture, in which people seek only sexual release as the cardinal yet momentary pleasure. The rapid spread of HIV-AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases threatens the very existence of the human race.
It is said that there is no safety zone against the AIDS virus. A greater terror than the terrorism from which the entire world has been trembling is before us. Once contracted, its victims must give up their dreams for happiness, ideals and life itself. Unless we resolve this catastrophe plaguing our planet, how can we consider ourselves leaders?
Nor have we taken responsibility for the third blessing endowed by God, to “have dominion over the creation.” This requires that we take care of all creatures with true love. What would happen if the natural world were to rebel against the abuse and misuse it suffers at the hands of human beings who lord over it? Are not those symptoms beginning to appear? Before the natural world punishes our intolerable arrogance we have to stand before nature in true love as people of restored integrity.
Respected leaders, in order to examine today’s problem at a more fundamental level, I would like to consider the relationship between the true “I” and the true “we” in the context of God’s ideal of creation.
As a result of the Fall, human beings did not achieve the position of the true “I.” For this reason, God has never been able to use the word “we.” That is to say that God has never been able to stand within the realm of the consciousness of His ideal of creation and establish a relationship that would allow him to say, “This is my creation” or “This is my child.”
So our present concept of “I” has no relationship with the original ideal of God’s creation, and it is for this reason that we have to deny ourselves absolutely.
God has conducted His restoration providence so that He could establish true men and true women, that is, His sons and daughters, whom He could freely include within His concept of “we.” Because God is the subject partner of love, life and lineage, He sought true sons and daughters who would live eternally with a complete and unbreakable standard.
To achieve that, we first have to perfect our individual character through uniting our mind and body and, on that foundation, to build a vertical parent-child relationship with God. A vertical relationship by itself, however, is not sufficient to bring the word “we” into being. We also need to create a horizontal relationship in harmony with the vertical. To do this, man and woman must form a true husband-wife relationship through a Blessed marriage, bear children, build a true family and form a four-position foundation involving three generations. Only then will God use the word “we” with reference to a family unit.
How, then, can we advance to such a position? God created all things from a position in which His mind and body were completely one. His creation was an act of total investment involving absolute love and absolute faith. There was no possibility that He would consider His own interests or situation. This was the fountainhead of love that seeks to give one hundred percent and then still continues giving. This is true for God and it is true for our families as well.
Parents, who stand in the position of God, have to invest themselves completely and absolutely with true love. In terms of the logic of origin-division-union, they give birth and rear children from the position of the origin, thus establishing a vertical axis for the concept of “we.” If the husband and wife, who stand in the position of division from the origin, become one with each other based on true love, they will establish the horizontal axis. Then the children, who are in the position of union, will align themselves automatically with the vertical and horizontal axes and become one; they will establish a new axis reaching from front to back. There will be an original family that accomplishes this, substantiating the concept of “we” that is complete vertically, horizontally and front to back.
This is the reason the family is so important; it is the most valuable gift given to us from Heaven. If the environment we call the family did not exist, how would we establish this absolute standard of “I?” If not for the family, we would never even dare to think of a “we” that is complete vertically, horizontally and front to back. The cradle of love, peace and happiness is nothing other than this family.
How, then, do we establish the true “I?” This is possible only through a life of true love for the sake of others. The person who denies him or herself completely, to the point of selflessness, and lives for the sake of the family, for the sake of the nation, for the sake of all humanity and for the sake of God, will automatically establish the true “I.”
We must never put ourselves forward arrogantly and use the word “I” in a casual manner. God has worked, steeped in grief in the back alleys of history, to push forward His providence of restoration. His only desire has been to establish children who could speak of the true “I.” Anyone who knows this heart of God can never claim the word “I” for him or herself in a casual manner.
When we establish God’s original ideal for world peace and the ideal families for which God has been waiting for tens of thousands of years, we will have the starting point for the kingdom of heaven on earth. Beginning there, we will be able to resolve the grief of the pitiable God.
I would like to call upon everyone here to join with me. First, let us work to establish the true “I” that can look at the sun without shame, look at the ocean with a clear conscience, and have nothing to hide before nature. Then let us establish the family to which God will refer as a part of His “we.”
In this way, we must establish a relationship of true parents and children between God and ourselves. Furthermore, God, who is the True Parent of humanity and the origin of love, life and lineage, is the ancestor of humanity and the true King who reigns over all. God lost the positions of ancestor and King as a result of the human ancestors’ Fall in the garden of Eden.
In accordance with the progress of the providence of restoration, I declared the return to the ocean, to the land, to the cosmos and to the realm of the heart of the fourth Adam. Then, on January 13, 2001, I performed the historic “Enthronement Ceremony of the Kingship of God.” Adam’s family, as the first human family, should have become the godly ancestors of humanity and set the foundation for the institution of the family. Originally, the king of the family eventually would have inherited the positions of king of the nation and king of the cosmos. Only in that way was humanity to have connected to the heavenly realm of the original ideal.
We can institute the king of the nation because the age of indemnity is ending and we are entering the age of settlement through the process of family registration. This will develop further into the kingship of the world. This is why, on the occasion of True Children’s Day, 2000, I declared that the Parents of Heaven and Earth now reign as King of the family in the Unification Church. This means that we are now able to enter the age in which families that have been registered can attend the Heavenly Parent as our King. Thus, each Blessed family must be aware of its responsibility to establish the tradition of humanity attending the King of heaven and earth. This is the reason that the age of the church has ended and the age of the Family Federation has begun.
The entire universe is linked as one connected body centered on one nucleus. Each one of our families must stand in the position of this nucleus, nurture the creation and love all creatures that God created in love. By loving God’s creation, which exists in His love, we can stand in the position of true owners.
If you can feel that your family is like one body that constitutes a realm of true love before God, your family can stand as a cornerstone of the place of settlement where you can attend the King and the Parents of heaven and earth. This is how you become a blessed family and inherit the realm of victory.
Respected leaders! Now is the time for humanity to voluntarily repudiate all pride, ignorance, selfishness and hatred. Let us follow the laws of heaven and be humble before God. Ever since God called me at the tender age of sixteen, I have committed myself totally to the realization of world peace, which has been God’s deepest wish. At this time, I would like to set forth several crucial steps that are necessary for bringing peace to the world.
First, live for the sake of others. A self-centered life not only causes discomfort, it also violates the laws of heaven. Living for the sake of others, on the other hand, is the way we can resemble God. Loving our family, our community, our nation and the world is the way to inherit God’s true love and it is the way to live in accord with the fundamental order of the universe. Only through practicing true love can we become true individuals, true parents, true teachers and true lords. Only then can we finally become the leaders who can bring about peace on earth. A life of living for the sake of others opens the gate to peace.
In this sense, the path to peace ultimately must be based on Godism, or head-wing thought. This is the teaching that can reconcile and embrace all sides in a conflict from the seed to the fruit, by dealing with the starting point of conflict in the relationship between Cain and Abel. Flow can we break the chain of hatred and violence that we perpetrate against one another? Returning hatred in response to hatred only leads to more hatred, terror and destruction; this is certainly not the path to peace. We can touch, educate and reconcile the conflicting parties only by true love.
True love that places God in the center disregards national boundaries; therefore it is international. True love transcends the high walls dividing religions and races; therefore it is interreligious and interracial. True love centered on God’s ideal of living for the sake of others can generate the power to touch a person’s heart and spirit. Only by true love can the various reasons and causes of conflicts on earth be overcome, whether the confrontation is between right and left, front and rear, above and below, or inner and outer. Only by true love can we establish a world of eternal peace.
Second, the family is the fundamental unit for building peaceful nations and ultimately a peaceful world. As I already mentioned, the root of conflict originated in the first family. Therefore, until the family of the True Parents appears, it is impossible for us to enter the era of world peace.
The international Blessings that I promote worldwide are not the wedding ceremony of a particular religion, they are a movement to save all nations and the world. We teach youth to keep their purity before marriage and, when they reach adulthood, to marry with the Blessing of God. However, as a condition to receive the marriage Blessing, they first pledge to their spouse that they will maintain absolute trust and fidelity. Thus, the Blessing is a holy movement to build true families and lift up each couple as true parents who live according to the standard of true love.
Families built upon such an ideal and such an education have no need to feel threatened by the AIDS virus. For them, preventing AIDS is easier than preventing a cold or flu. If we educate the youth of the world in this vision and practice it, we will completely eliminate the AIDS epidemic and also eliminate the scourge of family breakdown.
Further, these families of true love will serve as the cornerstone for peaceful nations and a peaceful world. In particular, if individuals of enemy nations, who have lived in discord throughout history, come together in true love as in-laws, their reconciliation will bring nations and races together. It is a high wall to overcome. Nevertheless, here is the supreme formula for bringing true peace to the world: bring together children from enemy families and nations for the “exchange marriage Blessing.” These interreligious and international families can build a realm of Blessing, perfecting true families of true love that both heaven and earth desire. From that point, the world of eternal peace that God and all humankind have desired will begin.
Third, interreligious reconciliation and cooperation is an essential condition for world peace. I have campaigned tirelessly for interreligious harmony and dialogue. We have always devoted a far greater proportion of funding to that purpose than for the growth and development of the Unification Church. Do you think that practicing such sacrificial love with an unchanging heart is easy? By no means! However, we cannot expect world peace unless religious people reconcile and cooperate.
World peace is the original ideal of God; therefore religious leaders and believers need to be the guides who lead people to peace. If religions only emphasize narrow-minded denominationalism and fail to teach true love for God and the universe, we will never free humankind from the horrors of war. In the face of this global crisis, religious leaders have to practice true love, humbly following God’s Will, walking hand in hand beyond the perimeters of their own religion.
The inner power of religion touches our hearts and can recreate us as citizens of peace. It can cultivate our ability to practice self-control from within and it can overcome historical hatreds and resentments among us. This is the root from which true peace and stability arise. If religions demonstrate love for each other, cooperate with each other, and serve each other, putting the higher ideal of peace ahead of their particular doctrines, rituals and cultural backgrounds, the world will change dramatically.
Fourth, I once again emphasize the proper role of the United Nations in realizing world peace. As a representative organization for world peace, the UN has made many contributions. Last year, I presented my proposals to solve the fundamental problems plaguing this world, given that its circumstances have changed and the complex situations in which nations find themselves today are unlike those at the time of the UN’s founding.
One of these proposals was to establish a special body that would discuss and evaluate the religious, spiritual and moral dimensions of world problems. The UN must serve the world and God’s ideal of creation effectively. To do so, it has to transcend the power of politics and national diplomacy, which reflect the motives of nations ruled by self-interest. Only then can it truly protect the human rights of all peoples and nations and build world peace.
This is not limited to the United Nations. Maintaining order in the world and protecting public prosperity and peace will be impossible as long as political sovereignty operates on the principle of national selfinterest, and ignores and undermines moral and spiritual values. High-level leaders have to ground themselves spiritually and morally upon God’s ideal and govern according to universal principles. No political power or earthly authority stands above God and the laws of Heaven.
Moreover, the UN has to listen to and embrace many of the views of the non-governmental organizations. This is the reason we established WANGO. I encourage all NGOs, while not losing your original founding spirit, to dialogue and cooperate with one another. I request that you continue to be of service to the world, to be unselfish, and to stay free of corruption.
Respected leaders! A person who only talks about world peace without practicing it is not a true leader. Given the current world situation, we cannot leisurely sit back and wait for the arrival of world peace. It is a time of urgency. Each of us, the ambassadors for peace and everyone else, has to hold back nothing for the creation of world peace. Let us all take active roles as leaders in the movement for peace.
I wish and hope that, centered on the peace embassies, all international organizations including the United Nations will participate actively in the movement for world peace. It is our historic quest.
Let us be united in mind and heart. Let us become pioneers for world peace, by first building ideal families of true love and living for the sake of others. May God’s hand be upon you and bless you forever.
Thank you very much.