Cham Bumo Gyeong

Book 9: Activities in the Media, Education and the Arts for the Culture of Heart
Chapter 3: World Media Conferences and Media Outlets
Section 1: The Purpose of Education, The meaning of education
Section 1: The Purpose of Education, Paragraph 12

Chapter 3.  World Media Conferences and Media Outlets 

Section 1. The Purpose of Education

The meaning of education

True Parents have poured passionate energy throughout their lives into the work of education. From the position of true parents, true teachers and true owners, they labored day and night to awaken human beings. They taught about true love, while continuously practicing this love themselves.

1  Goodness cannot be realized in an instant. If you are going to become a good person, you must inherit from the past. For this reason, education is a necessity. You go to school to learn. But what do you learn? In order to prepare the path of goodness, the people who sacrificed throughout the course of history did not live comfortably. We need to inherit the history of such people, those who sacrificed and endured.

2  The function of education and ethics is to adopt goodness as the standard. The path of setting the standard of goodness is not an easy path. It is a path of suffering. It is an irrational path that is, in its essence, contradictory to everything my body desires. If we do not go that path in our life in society, we find that we cannot bring good results. Thereby, social life indirectly teaches us the standard of morality.

3  Nowadays, problems in schools are being recognized as pressing social issues in America, Japan and the whole world. The teacher should represent the parents and teach the pupils with love. He or she should educate in the context of true and eternal love. When the teacher and pupils become acquainted in the classroom, this is only the beginning point of their relationship. A teacher should never forget his or her pupils. You should form such ties of love. In other words, true teachers are those who connect all their knowledge with love. You should become a true teacher, but not just to earn a monthly salary for your livelihood. 

You should be a person who, out of love, cannot help but teach your pupils, feeling compelled to teach even while grappling with the hardships of daily life. You need to realize a relationship of teacher and disciple, in which you convey all your knowledge with love, whether by day or by night, while your disciples' desire to learn exceeds even your desire to teach. Such a teacher is a true teacher, and such disciples are true disciples.

4  There are three critical requirements for a society or nation based on true love. First, it is essential to have parents. Parents are the ones who must bear and raise children and set them on their life path. Second, teachers are indispensable because education is crucial. Finally, owners are required. Teachers must teach love. They should raise people who are compassionate and astute, people who can exercise ownership over re-creation as God does. Knowledge disappears in a single generation, but love lasts forever. A true teacher must have the heart to educate students to become good parents, to be the next generation of teachers, and to be responsible owners for the family and the nation.

5  A true teacher should love the pupils, standing in the position of their parent. If one student cannot afford the tuition fees, the teacher should contribute toward that student's support. The school must be able to supply those tuition fees through a fundraising campaign. If enough money cannot be raised through such a school-sponsored campaign, the teacher and the parents of the classmates must collaborate and ponder deeply on how they can educate such a student. People who only want to take care of their own family affairs will sink into ruin. They will not be able to enter the kingdom of heaven.

6  Educating children is not only about loving your own sons and daughters. You need to become parents whose love for your children is an offering for the world's people. When holding your children at your breast and nursing them, feed them in the mother's position representing all mothers, with the heart that you are giving milk to an infant who represents all humankind. Please strive to become a mother who treats other children with the same heart as you do your own. A child who is fed and raised by such a mother will become a great person. Even if this does not happen immediately, by the time one or two generations have passed, a person who is able to govern the world will certainly be born among her descendants. This is the formula.

7  God could not educate Adam and Eve, His children. God could not teach them about the duties of children. He could not teach them how to love as siblings. That has been God's bitter sorrow. Furthermore, God could not teach them how a husband and wife should live, explain the heavenly law of marriage, or the way of living in and taking the perspective of God's love. Finally, He could not educate parents who could represent Him on the earthly plane.

Adam and Eve were the son and daughter of God and brother and sister to each other. As that brother and sister grew older, they were to become husband and wife. When they gave birth to their own sons and daughters, they would have become parents. Because Adam and Eve could not receive that education, their family could not mature in true love to realize the ideal of creation, which was God's Will. So, by means of true love, God has to teach His children the relationships among siblings, between husband and wife, and between parents and children, so that they may realize a true family.

The purpose of education

The reason True Parents established so many educational institutions, and continue to concentrate on this area, is that there is nothing more important than educating leaders who can care for their nations and the world. It is the way to create a world rooted in the culture of heart, God's ideal of creation. True Parents established the motto, "Love Heaven, Love People, Love Your Country" as the common founding philosophy for all of their educational institutions. They did not hold anything back, and educational professionals recognize their efforts to elevate human character.

8  The question is, how can we save the world? We know clearly that education is important, and that a thorough education is necessary. Our challenge is to create an educational system rooted in the Principle that can perfectly unite husbands and wives in blessed families, unite parents with their children, and then unite and connect seven generations of relatives with those children.

Such an educational system has two primary aspects: internal education and external education. Internal education begins in the family, starting with character education and going through values education. Families providing internal education need to be complemented by schools providing external, family-friendly education, which we must create. This is the reason I founded Sun Moon University and support the University of Bridgeport. We should create an educational system that supports both internal and external education, even if all the other schools in the world try to oppose us.

It is not enough to have just one university. Based on a unified standard for education, our vision of the future should be more magnificent than that of any one university. Through this standard we seek day and night to guard against the problems that impoverish society. Our challenge is how to create an environment that does not arouse criticism but instead engenders support.

9  The time has come when young people should be able to speak more than three languages. Therefore, we are busy. Parents, offer your sons and daughters the opportunity to participate in the areas you could not accomplish in during your lifetime. Standing in the position of True Parents who bear responsibility for the whole, I address all people from this perspective. This is why we must create global universities.

We have plans to build a supra-religious theological seminary in Cheongpyeong. We will build a global cultural center in conjunction with an international folk village, so that people visiting from around the world will be able to feel the atmosphere of their hometown, as if they were in their homeland. When they come to this headquarters, they can receive education and training from the palace of the heavenly nation. Then they must return to the world.

10  If parents show a patriotic heart when they educate their children, and say, "I love you and I work hard for you. The reason I am sweating and taking great pains for you is not because I am thinking about myself, but in order to love our nation more than myself." Children who are educated with such love will endeavor to become the patriots their parents tried to become. Each time they reflect on their parents' love, they will think about the 30 million people in their nation and will study with an attitude that they are doing so for the sake of the people. While doing so, when their people are suffering in misery, they will feel it far more than their parents did.

Nonetheless, a person does not become a patriot just by saying that he or she stands in that position. They must make a foundation and, in doing so, become a key figure that people of all ages can admire. If you do not undertake this challenge, all your efforts will eventually pass away and be forgotten.

For example, consider a teacher at a school who makes great effort to convey a righteous teaching to his or her students, and does this while being anxious about the destiny of the Republic of Korea. That teacher would seize the hands of the students and, while weeping profusely, give this advice, "Do not do this for my sake, but do it for the nation. Rather than doing well for my sake, do well for the sake of the nation!" Students who hear such an exhortation will later realize their teacher's unfulfilled desire. If a teacher gives his or her life in this way, in devotion to the students, and if parents devote themselves to their children, teaching them to value the nation and the world more than themselves, then the students of this teacher, the sons and daughters of these parents, will surely become the pillars of the nation.

11  For what purpose did God set up the educational institution called the church? The responsibility of the church is to teach and train people of all races. It is a training camp, a spiritual training camp protecting the families and citizens of the future. The church must accurately teach the path that the family, the tribe and the nation will follow. By focusing on the church, God endeavors to create the family, tribe and people of the future.

12  Education should not be only for the benefit of one's own nation. Education should transcend national borders as it embraces and leads all people. You should think, "The world is one, and we study for the sake of the world." In any case, the world must become one. After all is said and done, it will become one.

Looking from that point of view, from the entire spectrum of education, what is needed is religious education, because it is able to transcend national borders. Next, philosophical education is also needed, because it too can transcend national borders. In other words, we must realize a form of global education that combines philosophical and religious content. In the future, any nation that does not support an educational philosophy that serves to benefit the world cannot stand before the world and humankind.