Cham Bumo Gyeong: Episode 306

Cham Bumo Gyeong
Book 11: Ecumenical Initiatives
Chapter 1: Ecumenical and Interfaith Initiatives
Section 2: Salvation and the Liberation of God, Paragraph 04-11

4  The purpose of religion is salvation. It is to save us from the state of conflict. Salvation means to go beyond the world of conflict into the world of peace. Since the root of the word "salvation" means "save," we can understand that originally human beings were not meant to be in a state of conflict. If you are admitted to the hospital, when you recover your health and are discharged you say, "I am healed." Healing someone means restoring that person from a damaged condition to their original condition. Accordingly, because humankind fell, we must recover our original unfallen state. What happens when we return to that position? The relationship between God and us can be formed anew.

5  God established religions to transform the fallen people of the world, who are wild olive trees. The mission of religions and religious people is to transform those wild olive trees into true olive trees that can attain perfection. Since human beings fell away from God and became sinners, religion strives to bring us back to God.

In fact, religion's role is to bring all humankind back to God. This is salvation. Thus far, religious people living a life of faith have thought, "It is enough if I believe in religion and gain my salvation." However, the correct path for people of faith reaches farther than this; it is to save all humanity, and help all people return to God. Thus, true religious people should think, "The reason I believe in religion is to return my nation to God and return the world to God. Before I save my own sons and daughters and descendants, first I will save my nation and the world."

By doing this, once our nation receives salvation, our family will also be saved. Likewise, once the world receives salvation, our own nation will also be saved. That is why a true religion seeks to save all humankind, and people of true faith return to God while striving to bring all humanity with them.

6  Is it God's desire and hope to lift up Christianity to Himself and sweep away all other religions like garbage? Those who think that way misunderstand God's view of salvation. God wants to save the entire world, not only Christianity. Therefore, once God unites Christianity with Himself, He will strive to unite all other religions with Himself as well.

More than that, God's providence of salvation is to save not only the earth but the entire cosmos. He wants to save all the people of the past, present and future. He wants to save all the people who once lived on earth and are now in the spirit world, even the people who went to hell. If God is the true owner and subject partner of true love and compassion, then after uniting all religions of the world, He would go on to bring the entire world into oneness and save every single soul without fail.

7  Religion seeks God's kingdom, the God-centered nation. In the course of history, human beings also have been seeking God's kingdom, which must be built in this world. To accomplish this, we must place God at the center. We were born to build such a world; we are meant to live for it and die for it. If we do this, we will truly be the patriots of God's nation. Not only that, we will be filial children before the Heavenly Parent. We should live by this teaching, so that we can provide for humankind a shortcut that everyone can take to enter God's kingdom. We are pioneering the path that the world's people will universally yearn to follow. It is the path by which unity will begin.

From individual to family salvation

True Parents declared that the fundamental unit of human society is the family, not the individual. They taught that we must establish God-centered families, and then expand the scope of salvation from the family to the whole world. Therefore, religions, that up to now have been concerned with saving the individual, must take up the work of saving the family. This is how they can take the lead in restoring the world.

To emphasize the importance of family salvation, 40 years after the church was founded as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC), in 1994, True Parents changed the name to the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU).

8  Religions until today have served mainly the purpose of pursuing salvation for individuals. Religions have sought to go over that one hill, individual salvation, ever since the beginning of history. However, having gone over the hill of individual salvation, we have come to the next hill, the hill of family salvation.

The Unification Church is not a church that pursues the goal of saving the individual. Religion has focused on individual salvation for 6,000 years. However, religion's purpose should now be changed to the salvation of the family. This is the historical task that the Unification Church has undertaken and is addressing.

Until now, no religion has arisen that made family salvation its goal. Because the goal of the numerous religions that have arisen and developed in history until now was saving the individual, they could not rise to the level of establishing God's nation. They did not have the salvation of society and the nation as their goal.

Thus, the Unification Church has taken on the challenge of saving the family. No individual can go over this hill of family salvation alone. Inevitably two people must go over it together. While a husband and wife are going over this hill together, they should have a relationship of left and right, not front and back. This is because the Fall occurred when Eve followed the Archangel and Adam followed Eve. Therefore, a husband and wife should stand side by side with the same rank. In that way they will be able to save each other within their mutual relationship.

9  Until now in the age of the church, the focus has been on saving the individual. Now, however, the providential age has begun wherein the focus is on saving the family, led by families that have received the Blessing. When families are united with God, we will move into the providential age for saving the clan and the nation. Then, when the leaders of the clan receive the Blessing, the entire clan will be saved. In the next age we enter, if the head of a nation receives the Blessing the entire nation receives salvation. The level of salvation will take a leap. The age of the church is passing.

The fall of two individuals, Adam and Eve, turned the family, the clan, the nation and the world upside down. We must restore all of it. The mind and body must become one in God, the family must become one in God, the nation must become one and the world must become one. All must be united as one in God's love.

In Adam's family, everything was pulled apart when it became connected to Satan's lineage, a deviated lineage. Yet now with the emergence of True Parents, we have arrived at the age of unity when the world will move toward equality. On the foundation of True Parents, families can come to be under the leadership of husbands and wives who have each established mind-body unity, and on the foundation of those families the whole world can be restored.

True Parents have brought the true lineage whereby the individual's body and mind can be reconnected with God. On that basis, a man and a woman who have perfect unity within themselves can form a perfect union in their marriage and family life. The world that expands horizontally from these perfect families is the kingdom of heaven where God reigns.

10  With individual salvation as their goal, existing religions have been teaching individuals what they need to do to be saved from evil. However, the religion the world needs in the future is not a religion that focuses on the individual, but one that saves the family. For this, it will need to prepare a foundation. The new movement to save the family that must appear will have to endure and overcome all manner of trials in order to stand in the position that is secured within the will of heaven and publicly recognized by humankind. Both God and human beings must be united in recognizing it. Once this happens, the movement will grow and expand worldwide.

The movement for the salvation of the family will not be limited to a particular nation, Korea for instance; rather the ideal it promotes for the family will transcend any particular nation or people. The religion that arises to engage in this kind of movement will definitely become the religion that the world needs from this time on.

11  It is not our purpose to work for individual salvation. We are here to set up the foundation for family salvation. Godly families are the cornerstone for building a godly society and a godly nation. That is why true families have to appear.

Beings whose nature is true unite with others that are true, even if they are told not to. On the other hand, no matter how much we try to unite what does not have the nature to unite, oil and water for example, they will not unite but remain separate. In fact, the more we try, the more they resist. If we become families with the essential quality that can attract other families to harmonize and unite with us, we can become their role models, and we should be able to form a tribe sharing the same essential quality.

The family that I am talking about is different from families that live according to the habitual ways they inherited from their forebears. It is different from families that conform to present-day society and its norms, and who plan their lives and take measures according to their circumstances in the world. I am talking about becoming model families that do not conform to today's society and environment, but transcend them.