As A Peace-Loving Global Citizen: Episode 47
As A Peace-Loving Global Citizen: An Autobiography by Rev. Sun Myung Moon
Chapter 5: Loving Families Can Change the World
True Love Is Found in True Families, pg 165-167
True Love Is Found in True Families
No matter how much a man and woman may love each other, a complete and happy family must have parents who act as a protective shield around the home, and there must be at least one child for the parents to love. When a family is protected, it becomes a nesting place for happiness. Even a person with great success in society will have an unhappy family if this protection collapses.
The basis of love is the heart that sacrifices everything for the sake of the other. The reason parental love is true love is that parents are willing to give everything to their children, and when they have given everything, they want to give even more. Parents who love their children do not even remember what they have given. No parent would keep track of all the shoes and clothes he bought for his child and say, “This is how much I spent on you.” Instead, a parent gives everything he has and says, “I wish I could do more for you than I have, and I’m sorry that I cannot.”
As a child, I would follow my father around as he tended his bee colonies, and I saw how the bees behaved. When a bee flying around in a garden caught the fragrance of a flower, it would fly there, and place its legs firmly on the flower. It would then stick its nose deep into the flower, so that its rear end was pointing upward while it sucked up the nectar. If you grabbed the bee by its abdomen, it would not let go of the flower. It risks its life to keep its hold on the flower.
The love of parents cultivating a family is like the honeybee attached to the flower. Even if a parent should lose his own life, he will never let go of the bond of love that ties him to his child. Parents will lay down their lives for the sake of the child and then later forget they had done so. This is the true love of parents. No matter how far or dangerous the path may be, the parents will gladly travel it. Parental love is the greatest love in the world.
A person can live in a wonderful house and eat exotic foods from the mountains and the oceans, but if he has no parents, there will be a large void in his heart. A person who has grown up without receiving parental love has a loneliness and emptiness in his heart that cannot be filled with anything else. The family is the place where we receive true love and learn true love. Children who do not receive true love when they are young live their entire lives hungering for love and suffer emotional pain. Not only that, they don’t have the opportunity to learn the lofty moral duties they must fulfill for the family and society. True love is a value that cannot be learned any place other than in the family.
A true family is a place where a husband and wife each love the other and live for the sake of the other, as if the spouse were his or her mother, father, or sibling. It is a place where the husband loves his wife as he loves God, and the wife respects her husband as she respects God. We cannot forsake our siblings, no matter the difficulties we may face. Neither can we forsake our mothers. So the term divorce cannot even exist. The husband is in the place of the father and older brother to the wife. Just as a wife could never forsake her father or older brother, she can never forsake her husband. In the same way, a husband could never forsake his wife. A true family is a place where each spouse lives with the acknowledgment of the absolute value of the partner.
It doesn’t matter if a husband and wife come from different races or cultures. If they have formed a family after having received God’s love, then there can be no conflicts of culture among the children born into this family. These children will love and value the culture and tradition of their mother’s country and father’s country with the same love they have for each parent. Resolving conflicts in multicultural families is not a matter of providing them with particular knowledge. Instead, it is a matter of the parents of these families raising their children in true love. The parents’ love soaks its way into the flesh and bone of the children and becomes the fertilizer that enables the children to accept their mother’s and father’s countries as one and become wonderful citizens of the world.
The family is the school where love for humanity is taught and learned. When children who are raised in the warm love of their parents go out into the world, they will care for people in difficulty in the manner they learned in their home. People raised in loving relationships with their own brothers and sisters will go into society and share their caring hearts with their neighbors. People raised in love will look upon each person they meet in the world as a member of their own family. The starting point toward a true family is the heart of love that treats strangers as family and shares with them.
Another reason the family is important is that it expands to become the world. A true family is the basis for forming a true society, true nation, and true world. It is the starting point of the world of peace that is God’s Kingdom. Parents will work for their children until their bones melt away. They are not working just to feed their own children, however. A person whose heart overflows with love is capable of working for the sake of others and God.
The family is where we receive so much love that it overflows from our hearts. The family protects its members in its embrace, but its function is not to prevent love from getting out. In fact, the love in the family should overflow into the surrounding community. No matter how much love may overflow, the love in the family will never run dry. This is because it is received from God. The love we receive from God is such that we can continue to dig it out but never see the bottom. In fact, the more we dig, the more love wells up like pure spring water. Anyone who has been raised in this love can lead a true life.
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