Cheon Seong Gyeong: Episode 119

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 5: True Family
Chapter 1: True Families from the Viewpoint of God's Will
Section 4: The Family Is the Base of Happiness, 01-11

 

Section 4.  The Family Is the Base of Happiness

1  We cannot live apart from heart. Even if you were the president of a country or possessed unsurpassed authority over the world if you did not have a place to express your heartfelt joy, what good would it do you? You would not feel life's deep joy from those whom you command—your cabinet members or followers. But in your family, this is something you can feel.  When you return home from work, you should be able to feel this from your spouse and from your children. You need to be able to share it with pride in the company of others. It is the same with God. Even if He were to restore the entire world, without a family God cannot feel joy. So we do ultimately need to have a family.

The family is the foundation for joy

2  The family is a good place. It is good because our mother and father, our older brothers and sisters, and our younger siblings are there. Everyone, without exception, feels nostalgic for their hometown, and ultimately longs for their original homeland. People tend to think of their hometown more than their nation. Even Though we may live somewhere in the Republic of Korea, we long for our hometown. Our hometown opens and elevates our heart. Love binds us to our hometown in multiple dimensions and in all four directions. That is, we are bound to our father and mother above us, to our spouse on the right or left, and to our sons and daughters below us. Our utmost desire is for happiness centered on love, so we cannot help but long for our original hometown. Then where is God’s original hometown? The basis of His original hometown is the recognition by His son and daughter that He is their Father. That is, it is the place where His only son and only daughter, who possess His love exclusively, dwell. It is the place where that son and daughter marry to form a perfect family.

3  In the Unification Principle and in the book of Genesis, it is written that everything was created for the sake of human beings. The ideal world we long for exists for the sake of human beings. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is the world in which we live for the sake of others, knowing how to love people. The kingdom of heaven does not exist apart from us. The world in which we know how to serve and love others is the kingdom of heaven.  Where is that place? When we think of this question with reference to our own life experience, we see that it is in the family, where we love others, and where we are uplifted. When parents look at their child, even one who is immature and mischievous, with a zero score on a scale from one to ten, and nothing to be proud of, they still love him or her more than anyone else. The family is where love is abundant. It is the place where you are elevated to manifest your infinite value. It is the place where happiness dwells.

4  The family is the eternally unchanging origin and foundation. It cannot be changed even by parents, much less by siblings or national policies. Nothing in the world can change it, not even God. Therefore, in relation to the family, the term revolution is eternally unnecessary. If the family is a place of love, there is no need for revolution. With regard to love between man and woman, our grandfathers and grandmothers in their youth experienced the same heart of yearning that young people feel today. Our hearts are the same; the feelings of youth are the same. However, the framework of the family is changing and this is creating all sorts of structures and shapes. A loving heart is a loving heart, but the shape of the family is changing. This eventually will bring ruin upon humanity. The family that stands on a solid foundation cannot be swayed by any ideology or Thought. On the contrary, such a family transcends and governs every ideology and teaching. Once we establish the family with this standard it will never change, not after ten years, one hundred years, a thousand years, even for eternity. It will instill order in a people and a nation.

5  Neither your nation nor the world is the base for your happiness. Your family is. Therefore, your ultimate ideal should not be the world; it is your family. Ideal individuals have to dwell in the family. Your ideal itself has to dwell in the family as well. If such a family were to exist, the father of that family would be an ideal father and the mother an ideal mother. The sons would be ideal sons, and the daughters would be ideal daughters. Then each one of them would be the base of an ideal family. Thus, we are all meant to realize ideal families.

6  What could be considered a happy environment? A happy environment exists when people are positioned to receive love from their parents, experience the love of their siblings, share conjugal love with their spouse and love their children. People can bring about the advancement of a nation and the world only when they know all these kinds of love. Thus the foundation of happiness is love, centered on harmonious parents, couples, and children in a perfected family.

7  We absolutely need a home. Without the home as the base of perfect happiness, the nation and world cannot fulfill their purpose. We have to become parents, spouses, and siblings centered on the home God would desire to see. Happiness and discontent both begin from homes and spread out to the nation and world. The home is the beginning point and settlement point that God desires. However, we have not been able to realize the home of God’s ideal. Instead, the home is sometimes a place of bad feelings and unhappiness. No one knew that the home, which was to be the base of the greatest happiness, could become the base of despair and distrust. God has been working until now to reverse this through indemnity. Unhappiness in the family began from the time of Cain in Adam's family.

8  When we have something good, we like to boast about it and advertise it.  Wanting to advertise something means that we want to draw other people into a relationship with it. What is it that we like most? First, we like our parents most, then we like ourselves, and then we like our children. This is what we have seen in history. Then through what are all these integrated? The family is the base that connects us to each other's lives. Based on the environment that connects our lives together, the family is the basis upon which relationships of love can bloom.

9   The family should be a place where we model all relationships on every level. All people without exception determine their life path within their families. They are born in a family, go out from their family to all directions and return to their family from all directions—north, south, east, and west—and encounter ups and downs in their family. This understanding tells us that a person who cannot experience happiness in the family should not expect to find happiness on the national level. Even if he were to recover his nation, where would he live in that nation? He would be unhappy, with nowhere to go. Only in the family can we find our parents, our spouse, and our children.

10  Some people may say that they are satisfied with their work and need nothing more, but that is not true. There may be some fulfillment there, but the workplace connects people through material things. Politics is where people pursue their rights and interests.Even in religion, people seek God in different ways, from all directions. Though they may be able to find God, they will not find love. True love can be found only in the family. Someone may be successful in his company, earning vast sums of money and being recognized by many, but if he does not have a loving family, he is an unhappy man. Even if someone goes into the field of politics, becomes a member of parliament, and even the president of his nation, if he has no loving home to which he can return, he will be an unhappy man.

Even if someone becomes a famous pastor and a great spiritual leader who is genuinely loved by the members under his or her wing, that love is not enough.  We look for a deeper and more central place of love than that; that place is none other than the family.

11  Even if someone has unified the entire world, he or she will be unhappy if there is disunity within the family. The realization of the ideal of love has to begin in the family; the family is the haven of happiness. Thus, the kingdom of heaven begins in the family. Jesus, who came to this earth to realize the kingdom of heaven, spoke of the day when a bride would be prepared for him. He based this statement on the standard of the family. The family is interconnected in love and is united through love. Love does not change, so it can unite everyone. That is why the love of grandparents, of parents and of husband and wife can be one. In love, all can unite, because the nature of love includes unity.  Further, loves motive is to create life. The lives and ideals of a grandfather and grandmother are connected in love, which they bequeath to the parents. In other words, they bequeath everything to their children. Our parents are the children of our grandparents, and we are the children of our parents. The environment that revolves around such love is the kingdom of heaven.