Sun Myung Moon
September 30, 1979
Excerpt
God's Will and the World
Let Us Know Ourselves
You eat breakfast every morning, don't you? Where do the animals and plants come from that comprise your meals? In order to have food, you have to ruthlessly cut down different plants, then chew them up with your teeth and swallow them. The vegetables in your salad bowl won't protest, however, because they know the universal law and think that they are there to serve a greater purpose. With that attitude they can thank you for eating them so that you can serve the public purpose. There is a harmony of purpose here.
The food on your plate has a certain appreciation of what you live for and is willing to serve your body. That's the only way there can be harmony between you and your food. Otherwise, your food would hate you for eating it and resent hearing you laugh. The key point is that your food accepts you only because it knows you are living for the public purpose. Food will resent the laughter of a greedy person who wants to eat it.
If you are not living for a public purpose, then sometimes your food will stage a demonstration against you in your stomach. Then you get sick or even die in some cases. Under the universal law, goodness should flourish and evil should decline. Now you know precisely that the direction of goodness includes service and sacrifice, but until now that definition has been hazy in history, lacking a focal point.
Let us examine whether that definition is right or wrong. Everything in this world exists in one of two classifications, and even the tears trickling from your eyes can be either good or evil. Your ears and eyes could serve in two ways. If your eyes want to look at the world to find a person in need so that you can go and serve him, then your eyes are serving a good function. On the other hand, if your eyes are trying to spot someone's weakness so you can exploit him, they are serving an evil function.
There are all kinds of music in America, but who is it played for? Disco and rock music in themselves are not good or evil, so what purpose they serve becomes the main consideration. If they serve the public purpose, then they are good. If music and dance are used only for personal physical pleasure or for getting money from others, then they are serving an evil purpose. Is it likely that disco music is played for an unselfish, public purpose today? That's the reason I would not favor going to discos. If dancing and listening to that music will help resurrect people from darkness to light, then go right ahead, all 365 days a year. Do you have that confidence? Would it be correct to think that this. is just my idea, and that once I disappear it will no longer apply because it is not universal?
There are two great examples of how this universal law is unchanging through the past, present, and future. Jesus Christ lived a most miserable life on earth, but on the cross he could forgive his own enemies. When he died, he looked like a defeated person, in the secular sense. But his ideology has practically conquered the world in the last 2,000 years, and history is counted from the year of his birth. On the other hand, the Hitlers and Napoleons who thought they could conquer the world with military might have appeared successful temporarily, but have their accomplishments remained? No, because they, too, are under the dominion of the universal constitution, and that activity was unacceptable.
The saints in history are those who lived up to this principle and completely practiced this way of life of goodness. Saints are those who belong to God and at the same time to mankind -- people who live on the universal level. People are proud of any connection they may have with a saint, whether they are relatives or come from the same nation, and so forth. Why do they want to be proud? Because the saints exemplify the most basic principle of the universe.