Cheon Seong Gyeong: Episode 7

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 1: God
Chapter 1: God's Existence and Attributes 
Section 4: The Attributes of God, 7-26


The root of true love

(7) God is the root and origin of love.  God is also the root of life.  God is the root of lineage and the root of conscience.  We know that love, life, lineage and conscience exist, even though we cannot see or touch them.  Likewise, we cannot see or touch God, but we can come to know that He exists.  Then where is God, who is the root of life and the root of love? He is not up in the air.  He dwells in the root of our love and life.  That is why we cannot feel Him.

(8) God is the root of true love.  Elements from the root reach the shoots through the trunk, Then the branches stretch out in all directions, east, west, south and north.  The further the branches stretch, the more the shoots, the trunk and the roots grow.  This symbolizes God, the vertical Father of true love, and the human world.  God, the Creator, is our Father centered on vertical true love.

(9) The root of love is God.  God is the root of all roots.  We have to engraft ourselves to that root of love.  When we unite with it, we can connect to the root of love and new shoots can emerge and grow into a tree that eventually will flower and bear fruit.  There, the Lords hope can bloom.  New shoots have to come out and grow into branches.  A shoot by itself will perish.  A shoot wants to grow into a branch.  Multiple branches have to grow from the main trunk and then, after a proliferation of leaves, flowers will blossom.  This is the order of growth.  This process leads eventually to the stage of perfection.

(10) God is the Lord of love and the root of love.  Among all roots, there is one central root.  We need to seek the love that reaches to that main root.  To do this, we have to become just like God.

As God’s mind and body are absolutely united, we should become sons and daughters whose minds and bodies are absolutely united.

(11) The God of goodness is a God of sacrifice and love.  Love cannot exist apart from the essence of sacrifice.  When we sacrifice for the one we love, we do not think of it as sacrifice.  The more we sacrifice, the more we feel enriched.  Love has that unusual quality.  When we reflect upon our level of love, we find that we can measure it only on the scale of sacrifice.  Big or small, high or low, the extent of our sacrifice is the measure of our love.  Great sacrifice reflects great love; little sacrifice reflects little love.

(12) God is the being of absolute love.  God created human beings as His object partners, desiring to pour His love into them.  In doing so, God expected that, through man and woman, His love would return naturally.  If that had occurred, God would have felt infinite joy.  Adam and Eve would have become the perfect object partners of God’s love only when the two achieved perfect unity in their love.  But Adam and Eve had to go through a period of growth in order to become a mature couple, resemble God, receive God's love, and finally return love to Him.

(13) God created heaven and earth for love.  Who are the object partners of His love? They are human beings.  This shows us the value of human beings.  As the King of love, God desires to possess the love of parents, the love of couples, and the love of brothers and sisters.  God is the King of love.  As the subject partner whose original nature encompasses east, west, north and south, and front, back, right and left, He is ready to meet any counterpart who desires true love.

The God of emotion, intellect and will

(14) What is the nature of God's relationship with human beings? To have a relationship with human beings, He has to be a personal God.  And in order to be a personal God, He should be like us.  Human beings have mind and body.  We can deduce the concept of God's dual characteristics from the premise that God, as our Creator and original being, in order to share with us a common purpose, has to resemble us human beings.

(15) God, the Creator, would not create without purpose.  Since human beings have emotion, intellect and will, it follows that God, our Creator, has to be the original being of emotion, intellect and will.

(16) God is a personal being.  As a personal God, He has emotion, intellect and will.  Thus, God and we can communicate with each other.  For instance, when we laugh, God should be able to laugh.  Then does the absolute God, who can do whatever He wants, shed tears? Yes, God also sheds tears.

(17) Today many Christians have the view that since God, the Creator, is a unique and absolute being in the position of the Most High, a being of supreme goodness, He cannot have a relationship with human beings, that is, beings that He created.  In other words, they say that His creatures are profane, whereas He is absolute and divine.  On the other hand, from the viewpoint of love, no matter how lofty and righteous God is, and no matter how lowly His creatures are, in order to share a love relationship they need to have the same qualities of character and heart.  That is, God and human beings must be able to share the same heart.  It means God naturally must have the same qualities as human beings.  Hence human beings resemble Him, and we believers say, "God is our Father, and we are His children.” Saying this means that human beings resemble God.  How does resemblance come about? It comes through the bloodline, the lineage.  The fact that we are bound to God through lineage means that we bind to Him through love.

(18) God is a personal God, having emotion, intellect and will.  Above all, this personal God desires love, so He created human beings as His object partners of love.  Christian theology states that the Creator is sacred and His creatures are lowly, but this cannot be the whole story in light of the ideal of partnership, for the fulfillment of which God absolutely needs to find an ideal object partner of love.  Since God is divine, the object partner of love whom this divine being is seeking also has to be divine.  This is the basis for the privilege and authority of human beings.

(19) The final destination of philosophy is to find God.  What God? The God who is absolute, unique and unchanging.  But most of all He must be a personal God, because this is the kind of God that human beings need.  In order to relate to us, God has to be a personal God who shares all our Thoughts, ideals and desires, including both internal and external aspects.  He has to be the One who can relate with us deeply in all dimensions--emotional, volitional and intellectual.  Unless He can form a complete relationship with us, even Though He exists He would really have nothing to do with us.  From the perspective that God has to be a personal God, philosophers have been ignoring the most essential meaning of God.

(20) Love is what God needs, and He will love those who resemble Him.  Therefore, to share love, God needs a partner with whom He can be pleased.  If human beings are indeed God's partners, it follows that God must have a personality that can harmonize one hundred percent with the attributes of human beings.  God must be the One who can harmonize with all the elements of the body and mind.  Hence, God must have emotion, intellect and will.

(21) When we look at God, we can see He is a personal God.  Since He is the subject partner of human beings, He has the character to perfectly relate to us.  If God is like this, He surely has His own views about morality in human relationships and the rules of conduct by which we should live.  Just as we have views about morality that are based on human relationships and the human heart, God must have views about morality that are based on our relationship with Him and on His heart.  God, as the subject being, has His own love and His own rules of conduct.  Accordingly, human beings should possess love and uphold rules of conduct appropriate to being His object partners.  It makes no sense to believe that human rules of conduct, morals and heart exist but divine rules of conduct, morals and heart do not.

(22) The I Ching says, "The cycle of change is the law of heaven; benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom are supreme in human nature, " showing that benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom are important.  The I Ching explains the constant changes in nature, the cycle of the seasons, and the cyclical path of change in the universe.

But it makes no mention of a personal God.  Further, the book explains the law of yin and yang in the natural world, but falls short with respect to love, lineage and perfection.  It does not explain the being who, while existing as the harmonization of subject and object partners, and of internal character and external form, brings east, west, north and south into balance.

(23) The God who governs heaven and earth is a personal God.  This personal God wants to become the Parent of an ideal family and, in the position of a husband and wife, lead the children to form a tribe, lead the tribe to form a nation, and then unite the world as one great family of God.  Then the world will become one single people.  Jesus' proclamation that he was the Son of God was amazing.  He also spoke of the bride and bridegroom.  He taught us the highest standard that a person is to attain.  John 14 explains the essence of this.  Jesus also said he would come again.  He must come again to find the bride and the bridegroom, form the family, tribe and nation, and unify the world.

(24) We cannot talk about love unless God is a personal God.  God needs to have the same qualities of emotion and character as human beings.  Christianity, alone among religions, reveals this God.  Christians call God "Father" and "Jehovah.” That we can call God "Father" was a great discovery.

God of the Principle and the law

(25) God is the God of the Principle.  Conversely, Satan stands in an unprincipled position.  Therefore, if you are unprincipled, it puts Satan in charge; if you are principled, it puts God in charge.  When we consider the positions of the beings at the time of God's creation, God came first, next were Adam and Eve, and then the archangels.  This is the view based on the Principle.

(26) What is the purpose of a religious life? It is to realize one's original nature.  Original nature is the core of the Principle.  Since God is the owner of the Principle, He can govern by the Principle.  But God can govern only what is within the original nature.  Since the original nature and the absolute God are one, the original nature also strives to stand in the absolute position.  Because of this, the mind can command the body absolutely, and this is principled.  The Principle determines the core of everything.  The more principled something is, the closer its position will be to the center.