Cheon Seong Gyeong: Episode 117

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 5: True Family
Chapter 1: True Families from the Viewpoint of God's Will
Section 3:The Family Is the Training Ground of True Love, 01-14

Section 3.  The Family Is the Training Ground of True Love

1  God's love appears in the place where the three types of love—the love of parents, of husband and wife, and of children—manifest as one.  Where these come together, God is absolutely present for eternity. God is always present where unchanging parental love, unchanging conjugal love, and unchanging filial love dwell. The teaching of the four-position foundation in the Unification Church appears on this foundation.

The family is where true love settles

2  Ideal love is achieved in the family. However, God was unable to have true sons and daughters, to know true husbands and wives, and to become their Parent. Therefore, it remains God's Will that He achieve all these; where that occurs is where love can dwell. Abandoning all their possessions, people will flock to the place where such love is realized. Love is the most important thing.

3  You must have heard the words, "God is love." Where does that love manifest? All people want it to manifest within themselves. However, if that love were to manifest in only one person, it would end with that person. Whether that person was a man or a woman, if God's love were only to manifest in that one person, everything having to do with that love would become extinct within a century and that would be the end of it. In other words, if that one person were unable to bequeath that love to another before his or her death, it would end after a single generation. Then how will we establish the standard of love that lasts? It is through an eternal lineage. Eternal love will emerge if God can plant His love in sons and daughters through the blood relationships within a family. This has to begin with the manifestation of His love in one man and one woman. Thus, the beginning point from which the love of the incorporeal God manifests substantially would emerge. Ultimately, the foundation upon which we can realize God's love is the family.

4  Adam exists for Eve, Eve exists for Adam, and Adam and Eve exist for their family. They do so based on love. To form a nation, a world and the kingdom of heaven means to establish, based upon a single model, a training ground where this pattern can be reproduced, in order to expand what people feel and experience on the horizontal level.

5  We have to live with three generations vertically and three generations horizontally. In a household, three generations should live together, connecting both vertically and horizontally. When you look for a spouse for your son or daughter, ideally you have in mind a harmonious family with a grandfather and grandmother, a father and mother, and sons and daughters. When a man looks for a wife, he naturally looks for one who comes from such a family. All men want a wife from such a family. Thus, a man can learn how to relate to people in all positions, how to manage relationships with people above and below, and all around him. In this way, a husband and wife mature and become well-rounded in heart and character. This training in love is what makes the heart grow.

6  You need to build bonds within your family that will empower you to broaden your love for one another inside and outside the family. Your love within your family is the encapsulation of your love for your nation and the world. Thus, within your family, you need to receive training in heart. The way of the heart will become your essential way of life, and you will assimilate the heart that is eager to fulfill God’s Will. Then you can apply that heart to your tribe and to your nation.

7  You first have to love your parents and your siblings more than anyone else does. If you have a family, you should love each family member in the best possible way. Through this, you become the most beautiful of flowers, with the most pleasant fragrance. You need to secure strong bonds of oneness with everyone in your family. Only by doing this can you germinate a perfect seed and bear fruit that represents the universe. Original life comes from such love, and your original value also begins from this indwelling love.  In this respect, your loving relationship with your partner determines your value as a person.

8  A fruit comes forth from the condensing of elements after a tree has gone through the hardships of nature for twelve months of a year. Then how docs love bear fruit? Because people have not known the answer to this question, this world has become wicked and the family has broken down. Parents are not just somewhat necessary. From the viewpoint of love, they are absolutely necessary. It is the same with children, with siblings, and with a wife or husband. A spouse is absolutely necessary. The family is where people are trained in their ability to love one another, and this love is realized in the kingdom of heaven.

9  The Unification Church asserts that God wants to experience the greatest joy together with our families. The place where we learn to give and receive love, the place where we create joy through harmony, nurture it, and experience it, is none other than the family. This is the core of our faith. Without being nurtured with love in the family throughout our infancy and adolescence, we cannot develop the capacity to love our spouse or love our children.

10  The family is absolutely indispensable to bring love into the universe. It is through learning in our families how to love our parents that we become capable of loving people of the same age as our parents. It is when we have the experience in our families of loving our grandfathers and grandmothers that we become capable of loving people of their age. It is only when you love your husband's sisters that you can love people similar to them; and only when you honor your husband's younger and older brothers that you can honor people similar to them. That is the only way that you can come to love all people.

11  Where is the ideal training ground of love? The studio in which we are trained to build the ideal framework of true love is none other than the family. Where did your father come from? You need to think of your father as having come from heaven, from a world larger than the earth. You must treat him as though he were from heaven. At the same time, you must also remember that he has come from the world and from a nation. Besides that, he has come from a specific clan. Keep in mind how your father came to be your father. You may think the same way about your mother.  Where is your mother from? You may think, "My mother is a representative of heaven. She is a representative of the world, and of my nation.  She represents my clan.  That is why she was sent to my family."

12  The family is the training ground and textbook that enables us to enter the kingdom of heaven It includes our grandparents, parents, spouse, and brothers, and sisters. Humanity covering the globe is the extension of the relationships we have with our grandparents, parents, and children. Hence, only the families of the people who love each member of the human race as they love their own grandfather or grandmother, their own father or mother, their own husband or wife, and who can serve them as they would their own children, can inherit the kingdom of heaven. There we find the privilege to inherit all the power and authority of heaven and earth created by God. Even in the secular world, particularly among the ancient noble families of Korea, although they had many levels of hierarchical order, the son who worked the hardest, served the most, and loved his family the most became the heir. His principle is the same, regardless of time and space. This is a privilege granted by love. We may think God is so high, being infinite and eternal. Yet once we establish a loving relationship with God, we immediately have the right to participate in God's work at a level and rank equal to His. Not only that, we have the right to inherit the universe.

13  Unless a husband and wife can establish horizontal love between them, there is no way for them to find God's vertical love. If the first human ancestors had not fallen, the kingdom of heaven would have started from their family. This is because humankind on the world level is the extension of a family. Therefore, the family is the training center of love that enables us to enter the kingdom of heaven. Only those who possess the love of God have the privilege of inheriting the authority of heaven and earth. When we ask whether life comes first or love comes first, the answer is that love comes first. In the family, sons and daughters are born through the love of the parents. Therefore, children come to have the privilege of inheriting life as a result of their having participated in the love of their parents. Those who forge bonds of love stand in an equal position, at an equal level.

14  The family consists of a grandfather and grandmother, father and mother, husband and wife, and sons and daughters. When you extend this family, it becomes a nation and then the world. The vertical relationships of the family are extended horizontally to the nation and the world. All of this is gathered and knitted together, vertically and horizontally, into one place; that is the family. Therefore a home in which three generations live is a microcosm of the world. When we look out into the world, we can see people who are similar to our grandfathers and grandmothers, our father and mother, our husband or wife, and our sons and daughters. A family with three generations is thus a collaborative training center where we can learn to live in harmony with all people of the world. The family is the training ground where we can achieve a subject-object partnership with the authority to harmonize and create oneness by forging bonds of heart with the whole world, transcending nationality and race. This training takes place centered on love.