Cheon Seong Gyeong: Episode 148

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 5: True Family
Chapter 4: The Education of Children and the Kingdom of Heaven in the Family
Section 6: The Kingdom of Heaven in the Family, 15-25

(15)  The love of parents, husband and wife, and children are what motivate us to forge eternal bonds of oneness. These bonds of love transcend laws, systems, all contexts and circumstances, and even ourselves. No social system or nation that ignores this can endure. The Unification Church's purpose is to attain family salvation in addition to individual salvation. This is what makes the Unification Church different from other religions.

True families and God's kingdom

(16)  Our view of life is centered on the cosmos; the "cosmos" here refers to heaven and earth. From this viewpoint, each person has a mind that symbolizes heaven and a body that symbolizes earth. These two, mind and body, are to unite with God inwardly and outwardly. In the original state in the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, each with united mind and body, should have united with each other, making God their center. Had they completed a family centered on God, God would have dwelt in that family.

(17)  Culture drives history's development. The world of culture is driven by the purpose of seeking one embodiment of true character. That is, it is seeking one being with a character that embodies truth. Therefore, history seeks truth, true words and the true way. Then what is ideology or philosophy? In the beginning, there was no need for such concepts. If you nevertheless want to name it, you would call it "Adam's philosophy," "Adam's way of thinking" or "Adam’s thought." Adam’s Thought is neither communism nor democracy. It is the parent-centered way of thinking.

(18)  Godism is what we can call the way of thinking Adam and Eve would have developed had they not fallen, but attended God as their Father and grown up as His son and daughter. This way of thinking accepts and assimilates the whole, centered on God, and draws all people to harmonize with the subject partner. It encompasses both the individual and the whole. Therefore, we accept one another, and no divisions come about. Nonetheless, because of the Fall, that philosophy did not emerge. We have had to recover it. This is Godism, which is the philosophy of sons and daughters centered on God. The Unification Church also introduces "cosmos-ism," which refers to the way of thinking based on the cosmos—heaven and earth. It advocates that sons and daughters become couples and establish families centering on God. This is a cosmic worldview. In the word for cosmos, cheonju (天宙), the second Chinese character, ju (宙), means house. I chose the character meaning house because a house is a place where a family, with a husband and wife, dwells.

(19)  To really love the world, you first have to love people. To really love people, you first have to love your spouse. A man must love a woman, and a woman must love a man. That is a couple, husband and wife. Those who are bonded as a husband and wife will be able to love the world with the heart of love they have for their spouse. In other words, a woman who loves her husband should honor all men of the world as she honors him. She should likewise love and honor all women of the world, recognizing that they are loved and valued by their husbands. It is the same for men. Each man should honor all women of the world as worthy to receive the love he has toward his precious wife. He should also honor all men as worthy to receive the same quality of love he receives from his wife. We should go forward on the path of love like this, step by step. It must not be ambiguous. Therefore, the family is the standard for the formation of a nation.  It is the standard for the whole world, no matter how big. For this reason, the Unification Church advocates a world-view centered on Heaven's family. We call it the cosmos-centered worldview, because cheonju (the cosmos) signifies Heaven's home.

(20)  Unification Church members have to live according to cosmos-ism, a way of thinking centered on heaven and earth, Heaven's home. This means to build God’s home, which should be maintained based on Godism. God is the King of the world, the subject partner who maintains the households of the world. He should be able to lead everyone to do so, based on Godism. Therefore, Unification Church blessed families, who live where this worldview is taught, should live for others, not just for their husband or wife. We were never meant to live that way. This is different from the past. We move forward based on the family. We must be saved, but salvation is not for the individual alone. We absolutely cannot go to the kingdom of heaven alone. The Unification Church has introduced this new teaching on earth. Who will be the owner in the future?The family will be the owner, the family of God’s tradition.

(21)  The teaching of the Unification Church is the way of thinking centered on the cosmos. For the fallen world, a teaching is like a ship in which we can cross the waters. It is a means that can guide us through a certain time and process only. When we talk about the cosmos-centered way of thinking, the word cosmos means something like a house. Why a house? It is because we cannot build the kingdom of heaven without the family, which dwells in a house. To become the Third Israel, we have to go through the house; in other words, we have to go through the family. To build the kingdom of heaven in the garden of Eden, we have to go through Adam's family. When the members of that household honor the law, the order and the teachings of the family, and their descendants for thousands of generations inherit these practices and expand them horizontally to the worldwide level, the kingdom of heaven will come about.

(22)  The cosmos-centered way of thinking is based on True Parents. It is rooted in the idea of the Parents. This should be the outlook of your home, your nation and yourself. Whose view of life would the world have embraced had there been no Fall? It would have been Adam's view of life, the way of thinking centered on True Parents. It is the way of thinking centered on the Father and Mother. There can be no ideology higher than that. That is why the Unification Church strives to resolve matters of the heart based on Heaven's viewpoint, within the framework of the original ideal family based on True Parents' worldview. As long as we apply this teaching and system in our families, the Unification Church will not perish.

(23)  Where does the kingdom of heaven begin? It begins from the family. Then what is our ideology? We have a family-centered ideology. The word cheonju ju-ui (cosmos-centered way of thinking) contains cheon, meaning Heaven, and ju, meaning house, so it means the philosophy of Heaven's house. Only this explanation makes the meaning of the word cheonju (the cosmos) clear. The sixty-six books of the Bible are filled with words that express the desire for the ideal family. Furthermore, what is it that all men desire? It is to have an ideal wife. The greatest desire of all women is to have an ideal husband. Consider a woman who earned a doctorate. No matter how proud and famous she is, her deepest desire remains to meet an ideal man she can love and bear children with. This is the root of happiness. The ideal of the Unification Church does not lie anywhere else. It begins and ends with the family.

(24)  God's ideal is not something vague that exists only in His mind.  It is not intended to remain a mere concept, but is to be realized in the actual lives of people on earth. It refers not just to the personal daily lives of men and women as individuals. God planned to realize His ideal based on the foundation of family life. When the ideal is realized in the family, children who are true and ideal will appear.  Those children will bring forth the tribe, people, nation and world that will eventually realize God's ideal world. God's ideal is to realize this world, which begins not from the individual but from the family.

(25)  What is the way for a man and a woman? It is the family. The foundation of the family is a man and a woman in complete unity. That is where it begins. Without harmony in the family, everything will be shattered in confusion. Man and woman should not have different ideals. They should have one ideal in accordance with God’s ideal. That is, these three, God, man and woman, create a family in which God’s ideal begins centered on one man. By doing so, the ideals of both the man and the woman are realized and embodied.