Cham Bumo Gyeong: Episode 308

Cham Bumo Gyeong
Book 11: Ecumenical Initiatives
Chapter 1: Ecumenical and Interfaith Initiatives
Section 2: Salvation and the Liberation of God, Paragraph 19
Section 3:  The Movement to Transcend Religion, Paragraph 05

19  Religion should connect us to the world of the heart—the world of God's heart. In this process, religion must teach us in detail that God is the most miserable being in the entire cosmos. God is not happy in His greatness. On the contrary, God feels miserable, full of pain, bitterness and sorrow. He is indignant about the countless situations when He was painfully mistreated. A religion must appear that teaches about God's heart in detail.

People who do not understand that God is sorrowful tend to think that God just brings judgment upon human beings. They do not know that He needs liberation as much as we human beings do. Therefore, God is calling for the emergence of a religion that can teach the people of this era about God's heart throughout history. When a religion emerges that is able to teach the heart of God and connect people with His heart, it will fulfill the mission of religion in the present time and for all time to come. And by enabling people to comfort God and even to represent His heart, it is certain that this religion will remain in the Last Days.

20  Religion exists at different levels and for different purposes, those of the servant, of the adopted child, of the direct child and, ultimately, of the parents.

The reason people have needed religion and a savior is due to the Fall. If the first human beings had not fallen, neither a savior nor religion would have been necessary. People would have become one with God without any difficulty. They would have dwelt in the eternal love of God while they lived on this earth. All the children and descendants of that original mother and father would have constituted the heavenly kingdom. They would have lived in the kingdom of heaven on earth and then gone to the kingdom of heaven in heaven.

Then, by what standard can we determine which is the best religion? We can do it based on the standard of the principled qualifications required for human beings to stand as God's object partners. These qualifications are what the first human beings would have possessed had they not fallen but had remained in relationship with God, the Lord of Creation, in the state of original goodness. We can identify four requisites: they would have related to God as His son or daughter, they would have become one body with God, they would have exercised His ability as co-creators, and they would have experienced the joy of inheriting His work of creation. Religions can be ranked based on the extent to which they accord with these requisites. These are the criteria according to which a religion's standing can be decided.

21  Although there are numerous religions in the world, the final religion is the religion of the parents. It is the religion which can give us rebirth and bring us into complete oneness by the principles of God's original nature. The Unification Church strives to carry out the mission of the parent religion. It is working to fully complete this mission. For this, it must first complete the unfulfilled missions of the servant religion, the adopted child religion and the child religion. 

The Unification Church has emerged in God's Will as the all-embracing religion, the parent religion. It is only through this religion that we human beings can achieve our hope. It brings the possibility of unity. Because all human beings inherited an evil lineage from the fallen parents, the good parents who can completely restore everything through indemnity must appear. After restoring everything, they will be able to return us to God's lineage, so that we can display God's original nature. Until this original standard is completely accomplished, people of innate perfection, whose mind and body are naturally not in conflict, will not emerge. 

22  Where must religions go? They must seek to make a bond with True Parents. The ultimate purpose of religion is to pass through the door of God's love and restore our original bond with God and our position as God's children by finding the original True Parents. Among religions, Christianity is most closely pursuing this goal. That is why Christianity became a worldwide religion. Nevertheless, because it has not accepted the True Parents, in reality Christianity could not become the global religion to lead the world into a global culture in the Last Days. Worse, in its midst an ideology emerged declaring that God does not exist. 

We Unification Church members strive to fulfill our responsibility by becoming original men and women centered on God's love, and by linking people, who have been lost, to True Parents. Unless we do this, no matter how much people claim that they have unified the world, it will not really be unified in the true sense. 

Our religion needs to bring people to the original man from before the Fall, who is centered on the love of God. We need to center on that man who is connected to God's inner heart and support his marriage with a woman with whom God can share joy. This is what we must do to complete the work to inaugurate the True Parents on this earth. Unless we become such a religion, we will not be able to unite all the religions in the world. Nor will we be able to unite all of humankind. 

23  The Old Testament Age was the age for making material offerings. The New Testament Age was the age for offering beloved sons and daughters. In other words, the Old Testament Age prepared the way for sons and daughters to live based on material offerings, while the New Testament Age sacrificed those sons and daughters to prepare the way for the Lord at the Second Advent. The reason True Parents have been following a path of sacrifice in their historical course is to serve and attend God in the world. For the first time, I have revealed that these are the paths that religions must go in the course of the providence of salvation. That is, on the path that religions have trod, there are religions at the level of the servant, the adopted child, the stepchild and the legitimate child. On these foundations, the religion of the parents has arrived and is advancing toward the peaceful kingdom of heaven.

Section 3. The Movement to Transcend Religion

God is one Being

Christianity follows the absolute God, but is divided into numerous denominations. The ecumenical movement says that all denominations should hold hands under the one God and focus on their shared interests. Indeed, True Parents emphasized that transcending denomination and attending God together is the essential duty and mission of all religious people. To bring this about, True Parents developed an ecumenical movement.

1  God, who created heaven and earth, is not two beings. If there is God who is two beings, then we would expect there also to be two purposes of creation. We cannot say that creation, which was made by the one God, has two different purposes. God, who is a unique being, established one purpose of creation, and created everything to complete that one purpose. He carried out the Creation while striving for that one purpose. As the one God made all of heaven and earth centering on one purpose, though maelstroms and turbulence may occur along the way, His work will advance toward the fulfillment of that purpose. 

2  The God in whom humankind believes is my God and at the same time the God of everyone. He is our God, the God of the entire world, and the God of heaven and earth. In addition, God is the universal Parent. There are many denominations in the world advocating for God. However, we no longer need the God whose only advocates are those found within the realm of denominations. The only people who can truly call God "Father" are those who transcend denomination and understand that God is the center of heaven and earth representing everything. Such people can attend God on earth. 

3  God leads the providence for world salvation by establishing religions on earth; hence religions should be universal. We should seek for the one religion which presents the teaching to realize one world. That one world cannot but be in a relationship with God. That religious teaching should enable us to realize oneness in heaven and on earth with God as the subject partner. 

That teaching should not conflict with other religions and ideologies, but must have the capacity to encompass them as the subject partner. It must have the ability to embrace people not only from one single cultural background, but also people of other cultures, even those who believe opposite teachings. It should embrace not only those people who are in agreement; its content should win the hearts even of its enemies, and advocate concern for them. God wants this kind of living religion. 

Jesus Christ came with such a teaching. Nonetheless, today's Christianity has become divided into many sects. If Christianity had been more concerned with loving and saving the entire world and the cosmos, it would not be as divided as it is today. 

4  When you pray, you must say, "Because God loves the Whole world, as God's child, I too will love the whole world." How distressing it must be for God when people pray just for their own country. To accommodate such a situation, hundreds of gods would have to exist. However, God is God of the whole world. Because God is the one who wants to embrace the world within the realm of His one love, if you say that you do not love the Republic of Korea, I will not harbor any bitterness. God will choose the world even if He must abandon the Republic of Korea. Accordingly, the person who loves the world and struggles for its sake even if his or her country perishes will be able to inherit the world and resurrect his or her country. 

5  When God saves the world, He does not save the good people and throw away all the evil people. He induces good people to save wicked people. If God spares only Christians and kills all the others, that God would be a savage and brutal God. God is the original substance of truth and is a reasonable God. Nonetheless, Christians usually think God belongs only to them. But God is not just the God of a certain group of people, He is the God of all of us.