Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 241
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 6: The Role of Women in Creating the Ideal World
Speech 1: The True Love Movement Bringing Salvation to Asia and the World, pg 875-878
BOOK 6 The Role of Women in Creating the Ideal World
The True Love Movement Bringing Salvation to Asia and the World
September 17, 1991 Tokyo Bay NK Hall, Chiba, Japan
Women’s Federation for Peace in Asia Japan Convention
(True Mother’s speech)
Distinguished president of the rally, members of the Women’s Federation for Peace in Asia, and my fellow women leaders who have gathered here from all parts of Japan:
Today we stand at a turning point on the road marking great and historic changes. I offer my heartfelt congratulations to the Women’s Federation for Peace in Asia for its rapid growth in the five years since its inauguration to the point that now you are able to host this splendid rally.
In little more than forty years since you emerged from the ruins of a devastating war, your nation, Japan, has accomplished the greatest economic turnaround in the world. This feat, which may well be termed a miracle of modern times, is now the envy of people throughout the world. More laudable still is the fact that, even while achieving such amazing industrial developments, Japan has endeavored to sustain the traditional values particular to the East and has shown a great commitment and effort in family and social education. Underlying such wonderful success is what you women have done, as kind and self-sacrificing mothers and devoted wives. It is you, more than anyone else, who made your families healthy and strong while you nurtured and watched over them. Since it is your work as women that stands as the basis of this success, I as a woman also feel proud.
Leaders of the Women’s Federation for Peace in Asia! The world is now on the brink of a great historic transition period. The wartime policies of communism caused bloodshed ravaging millions of human beings. In the seventy years since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, communism came to rule more than half of the world, plunging all humanity into the pits of fear and anguish. New leaders finally have lowered that red flag, and we are watching it disappear into the mists of history.
This shows that the worldview based on atheism, with state policies that deny God, has come to ruin. The philosophy of conflict, struggle and hatred has revealed its limits, and the one-party dictatorial structure of communism is now faced with its own demise. However, this event leads to an important realization: The downfall of communism does not mean the victory of the free democratic world. Just as communism, which went forth asserting economic equality, was brought to its end by the collapse of its own economy, the free democratic world, which is crying out for the ideal of freedom, also is nearing a breakdown of society through the severe confusion of values. Corruption, sexual immorality, violence and addiction are multiplying under the shadow of so-called freedom. They are causing the dissolution of that free society.
The Cold War era that lasted for more than forty years after the Second World War is drawing to a close. It was a game with losers on both sides and no victor. It makes us realize that now is the time for a new salvation to reach both the communist world and the free democratic world.
Capitalism and communism originated from the West and were based on material values. They have revealed their limited ability to satisfy the true desires of human beings, who are made of both a spirit and a physical body. We are living in an age when the central role of eastern society, with its emphasis on spiritual values, has become absolutely necessary. Historically, the Asian continent has served as the cradle of spiritual civilization, and the time finally has arrived for the East to fulfill its global mission as the prime mover of spirituality. That is why this age has come to be called the Asian-Pacific era and why it is another great historic transition period.
Most respected women leaders! I believe that this society was able to do an excellent job of protecting its historical values during the past half century. While the industry of Japan developed and the nation became economically affluent, women voluntarily declined the opportunity for special treatment. Instead, they protected their families with devotion and sacrifice. In truth, the most important of all traditional values is the set of values centered on the family.
There is an old saying to the effect, “When one’s family is harmonious, all goes well.” What this means is that the family is the basis of peace. And the most important factor in forming such a family is true love. The word “love” has various meanings. However, I’m speaking here about true love, which refers to the absolute love centered on God. In other words, true love is to love even someone who seems impossible to love, and thus, in true love you have no choice except to love even your enemies. Furthermore, true love is the sacrificial love of even giving one’s own life for others. Therefore, in true love the antagonisms and conflicts among individuals and among societies or nations are completely transcended and dispersed. With true love we can achieve true peace.
True love is the motive and power behind creation, reproduction and development. To put it another way, physical energy, once it is invested, is consumed and finished. In the case of true love, however, the more you invest, the greater it grows, and it comes back to you with even more than you gave. Only in true love can the idea of eternal life become a reality. Families and societies that practice true love never come to ruin; they continue to grow.
In this regard, the teaching of my husband, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, to “live for the sake of others” is the basic guiding principle in the construction of a peaceful world. The origin of such true love is God and God created humankind to realize this true love.
When God created human beings, why did God create them as man and woman, each to become the object partner of the other? It was because of true love. It was so that, in the midst of that true love, the husband can share love with his wife and the wife with her husband. When the husband and wife share horizontal love with one another in this way, they come to possess the love of God, the origin of the husband and the wife.
Simply put, through the horizontal love between a man and a woman, human beings can form the connection of love with God vertically. To put it another way, a man and a woman marry, rooted in true love, in order to possess each other’s world horizontally and to possess God’s love vertically. They own the Creator and all created things because true love entails the right of inheritance. Human beings attain their original desires through the horizontal connection with each other and the vertical connection with God.
Based on this viewpoint, only man and woman together can encounter God’s love. Man and woman have equal value in that they possess God’s love only as a married couple that is united as one body. They stand in the position of the object partner of God’s true love. Human beings and the Creator thus come to have equal value centering on true love.
FFWPU, USA