Sun Myung Moon
June 23, 1989
Inauguration of Rev. Sun Myung Moon as President of the Korean Association for Finding Ancestral Roots
Little Angels Performing Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Photo 2001- location unknown
Respected president, eminent guests, and head and leaders of each clan representing the Korean people:
Today I thank you for your dedicated effort in preparing this meaningful ceremony to install me as the chairman of the Korean Association for Finding Ancestral Roots.
My reason for accepting the post of chairman
As you might already know, I am the founder of the Unification Church, the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, the Assembly of the World's Religions and the World Media Association. While guiding the global Unification movement, I have been made chairman or honorary president of many important organizations. However, seen providentially, the significance of this ceremony is very remarkable. I deeply hope this movement can bring about the opportunity to find and better attend God, who is the root of all beings and of life itself.
From ancient times, Koreans have put emphasis on clans, and have regarded the ancestors and the root of their clans as most precious. Some say that such a tradition came from the fact that Korean history was the history of an agrarian society based on a collective, sedentary lifestyle, with villages whose members had the same family names. Others feel the origin of such a tradition was the Confucian teaching whose core was the family ethic. However, the ultimate origin lies in a deeper place.
From early times, Koreans respected Heaven and treated filial piety as the most fundamental virtue. God raised Korean people to worship their ancestors and to show filial piety to their parents. This was in order to make them the people in the world who best know how to attend God, the root and Parent of all human beings. Thus, Koreans have been taking care of their clans and lineages out of loyalty, filial piety and etiquette. This is based on their outstanding respect for Heaven.
All of you, as representatives of your clans and lineages, have been working to preserve your precious traditions by teaching them to the next generation. However, Korean society is going through the process of rapid industrialization and urbanization, causing the communitarian spirit to fade. The position of the family is challenged from many sides, and it is changing. We recently faced a crisis that has shaken our traditional culture and good customs. This situation is worsened by intergenerational conflict in families and confrontations between labor and management in business.
The starting point for a world of happiness
A true Association for Finding Ancestral Roots needs to develop into a movement not only for finding and attending the ancestors of each of our clans, but also for confirming that all of us are descendants from the same root. Genealogies on the clan level need to be unified into a genealogy of the entire people. Clan-level root consciousness needs to give way to the consciousness of a deeper root, which acts as the centripetal force of all humanity. Originally we were not created to live in relationships in which people could not survive except by eliminating their rivals. We are created as one community, receiving life from the same root. Our movement cannot be restricted to the individual level. The root of various races is ultimately one, and we need to educate human beings to harmonize through that one root and to live as a community of passengers on the same boat, called the planet Earth.
With the development of science and technology, human beings have come to need international cooperation, now more than at any time in history. Good global communication and joint projects for resource mobilization are urgently needed. The quality of air and water in the global natural environment must be preserved for the survival of our descendants. We in contemporary society cannot predict the future of the world. We are uneasy about the impact of ideological confrontation between East and West, mass-production of modern weapons, international terrorism and crime, the prevailing trends of decadence, and so on.
All leaders need to open their minds, cooperate internationally and harmonize for the purpose of the whole in order to solve urgent world problems. Now more than ever, we need to understand humanity as one organic community, demolish barriers between races, and harmonize and unite cultures. How can we eliminate the barriers between peoples and fundamentally remove the obstacles to peace so as to realize the ideal world?
The opinions at this meeting about lineage are so diverse, and to make harmony and unity is so difficult, even in one family. The clue for a solution must be found somewhere. How do we harmonize different cultures and traditions to make one world family without wars, and create a world of happiness? The fundamental answer can be found when we understand God, who is both the beginning and root of each one of us individually and the root of all people.
My purpose in communicating with God and wandering in search of the heavenly laws, and going through a course of spiritual discipline and practice throughout my seventy-year life, was to provide the solution for this fundamental problem. Men and women are meant to live centered on the mind, not the body. Yet our body-centered life may soon bring an end to humankind. Thus it is urgent to solve the fundamental relationship with God.
Humanity originated from one couple
Respected leaders of clans and lineages, the origin of this universe is not simply material or based on spontaneous generation. There is God, the Creator, who is the primary cause of the universe. God is absolute, eternal, and unchanging goodness.
All beings and phenomena in the universe are created according to God's basic design, the purpose of creation. The purpose of creation is to feel joy. However, one cannot feel joy alone. In order for a certain subject to feel joy, it needs an object partner. The best kind of joy is felt when a subject partner and an object partner give and receive love.
Human beings are God's sons and daughters, whom God created in order to feel joy eternally through loving them infinitely. They are the closest object partners to God. God created a son and a daughter as the first ancestors of humankind. In the Bible they are called Adam and Eve.
This first son and daughter were God's object partners of true love. God, who is absolute, cannot make another original strand of true love besides them. Human beings, the object partners of God's true love, originated from this one ancestral couple, no matter who they are called.
What kind of world would have been realized if our ancestors, Adam and Eve, had completed their growth in God's love, gave and received true love with each other, and multiplied good descendants? They were supposed to build an ideal family to attend God as their vertical Parent, and then become horizontal parents. If, originating from that true family, a prosperous clan, Adam's clan, had been formed and developed into a people, nation, and finally a world population, that world would have been happily filled with God's love and goodness.
Such a world is none other than the kingdom of heaven. Through this kingdom God's purpose of creation would have definitely been realized on earth. All humanity would have lived in the earthly kingdom of heaven and then later would have gone to the kingdom of heaven in heaven. In this way, God's purpose of creation was to realize a great family centering on God, making all of humanity one family.
The good family laws of Adam centering on God would have immediately become a tradition handed down from generation to generation. It would have been a unified world with only one language, coming from one root, one culture and one heavenly sovereignty. Can we imagine evil, injustice, ideological conflict or wars in such a world?
What is the reality of today? We ended up with a world that is the opposite of God's ideal. In the individual, mind and body are in conflict with each other. Such individuals form families, lineages, clans, societies, and nations where that contradiction, disunity and struggle continues. This, world perpetuates the misery stemming from immorality, decadence, inequality, violence, wars and massacres, and the confusion of values. Yet the conflicts between cultures and traditions that result in ideological confrontations ultimately stem from the mind-body conflict within each individual.
I don't have enough time for a detailed explanation. However, in order to restore this world to its original state, Heaven sent saints to light the heavenly way and educate humankind through various religions. It is not easy to practice goodness in an evil world. That is why so many righteous people have been sacrificed and why the true way has been that of self-sacrifice and unconditional offering.
The true origin of the movement to find ancestral roots
If through the movement to find our roots we seek to find our real root, we will reach our ancestors' progenitors, even the ancestors of humankind. To find the root of goodness, we must overcome a million different kinds of evil and injustice. To find the true root, we must know God and the heart with which He created the human ancestors.
Seen externally, a tree is constantly changing its appearance and color. Yet, if we eliminate each of the changing elements one by one, what remains are the seed and its life. These are the fundamental roots. In the same way, a true root-finding movement has to digest and resolve all elements of evil by following the path of restoration; then it will return humankind to its origin. We must become purified sons and daughters of God by being engrafted to God's life and God's true love.
It is not accidental that Korea is proud of its wonderful, time-honored genealogical records and has become a center for genealogical research. To modernize, become rich, and live well externally cannot be the only goal for Koreans today. God is counting on the Korean people and the land of Korea to realize a new heaven and earth of true love and to make a foundation for the happiness of all humankind.
I have brought to this people a miraculous blessing. The revelations from God that I have received, shed light for the first time throughout human history on God's heart and the purpose of creation. They constitute a religious ideology of true love, by which I am guiding the Unification movement. It is a world-saving movement beyond East and West, cultural spheres, nations and peoples.
Giving rise to spiritual and moral revolutions, it is spreading like a prairie fire in 137 countries. I am not just preaching a theory of true love. I am talking to you on the foundation of practicing true love globally through the way of suffering and risking my physical life because of global misunderstanding, extreme persecution and religious prejudice. I could build this foundation because I was motivated by God's true love and life force.
This should become a movement to practice true love
Respected representatives of clans and lineages, this movement to find roots needs to become a true love movement based on God. In our lives we have to inherit the teachings of the saints, particularly Jesus, who is the embodiment of true love. All of us have to become heroes who relate to each other through God, our root. We have to extend our love relationships to overcome the conflicts of this age, demolish barriers of age-old conflicts, and realize a harmonious world. Especially, I understand that unification of North and South Korea has to be accomplished on the foundation of our homogeneity as one people, through activating a movement to find the roots of true love.
Now is the time when everyone should humbly return to the root and through love become one with each other. We cannot sacrifice the whole to benefit the individual. The global situation is such that we cannot hesitate any longer. We must substantiate the blessing that God gave to our people by practicing love. Let us all generate a movement to realize the ideal of the harmony of humankind through the true Root, the lighthouse of true love, and connect all peoples to it.
May God's blessings be with you and your families!
Thank you.