Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 298
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 7: The World of the Culture of Heart
Speech 16: Determining the Owner of True Love According to the Absolute Value System of the True Ideal Family, pg 1099-1102
Determining the Owner of True Love According to the Absolute Value System of the True Ideal Family
July 23, 2004
Yu Gwan-soon Gymnasium, Cheonan, Korea
Address at the World Culture and Sports Festival 2004
Distinguished guests from 120 nations, leaders of religious, academic, political and civil society, youth participants from the Interreligious Peace Sports Festival, participants of the international marriage Blessing ceremony, students and youth leaders, ladies and gentlemen:
The theme and goal of the World Culture and Sports Festival, which I first proposed in 1988, is to establish a world culture of heart. All people need to come together in harmony and unity centering on God and true love, to create a world of harmonious interdependence, mutual prosperity and universally shared values. The events in this festival are meant to break down man-made walls that would prevent us from realizing these ideals. This is a cultural festival that aims for unity, transcending nation, race, and religion.
This tenth World Culture and Sports Festival is all the more significant because it comes during the providential time in history when the Era after the Coming of Heaven is within reach. In fact, this festival is opening the way for the era of the coming of God’s kingdom. The title of this speech is, “Determining the Owner of True Love According to the Absolute Value System of the True Ideal Family.” It introduces a portion of the truth that God is giving humanity at this time.
The way to become an owner of love is by living for the sake of others
Dear guests, what was God’s purpose in creating human beings? The desire of the omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent God was not to live in solitude. Thus, He created the cosmos as a part of the process of creating an environment for His children, and on that foundation, He created men and women as the object partners of His absolute love.
God created us as His children. His desire was for us, His object partners, to become even better than Himself. Even in this world, parents wish for their children to become better than they are. This is the love of a parental God, which He gives as a blessing.
God’s purpose of creation was to rejoice in seeing His children grow and perfect themselves, receive His marriage Blessing, multiply true children, and create a true, ideal and heavenly world in which to live.
We open the path to becoming an owner of love by practicing true love. This means we invest and sacrifice ourselves completely first for our partner. Before God created human beings, He first established the standard of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience and then invested Himself one hundred percent. Through this, He brought the realm of the object partner into the realm of absolute values. One cannot become an owner of love on one’s own. It is only possible through an object partner.
This love principle of absolute values also pertains to God. Just as parents can never become owners of love without children, for God to stand in the position of the owner of absolute love He must create His children, who stand as God’s object partners. In this way, God and His children form a realm replete with the values of absolute love. Perfection is reached when the subject partner values the object partner absolutely, and vice-versa.
People think that the weak are sacrificed and exploited for the sake of the strong, but when we observe the order of the universe, we can see that it is not true. The theory of the survival of the fittest and the law of the jungle are fundamentally wrong. Those who believe in this theory overlook the absolute importance of human beings working toward their perfection as owners of love. They should stand as the lords of all by living for the sake of others, investing true love in their object partners and forgetting that they ever invested. Their object partners, in turn, are meant to respond with absolute obedience to the same principle. If true love is excluded from this formula, only the concept of struggle remains. God’s principle of creating is not that existence and development occur through struggle. Rather, He seeks harmony and unity leading to the emergence of absolute values through a mutual process of giving and receiving among entities in the relationship of subject partner and object partners.
An individual may be sacrificed for the sake of the greater good; however, we must not perceive this as struggle. It must be seen as an investment for the sake of mutual development. Can we indeed define the act of an individual willingly sacrificing him or herself for his or her family, or the family willingly sacrificing itself for the nation, or the nation for the world, as struggle? Rather it is the way to form the realm of absolute values for the sake of bringing about the full realization of true love, where each strives to first set up the other in a position of an owner of true love.
Thus, we must uproot our self-centered and individualistic mind-set and the behavior that stems from it. This is the root of fallen nature and the cause of evil. This can be said not only of self-centered behavior on the individual level, but also of selfish behavior of collectives in society. Self-centeredness is directly contrary to the spirit of true love’s system of absolute values. Instead of sacrificing and living for the sake of others, self-centered people call for others to sacrifice for them. Self-centeredness causes people to be more concerned with their own interests than with the well being of others.
Self-centeredness was insidiously injected into humankind through the Fall. It induced the struggle between mind and body. Satan planted this poison mushroom in the human heart. Although embracing self-centeredness may result in a person appearing beautiful and gaining worldly fame and earthly comforts, it is a trap that once sprung will lead its victim to addiction and a life of suffering that is difficult to escape.
All beings exist for the sake of other beings
Let us think about the concepts of “front” and “back.” When we say “front,” we acknowledge as a pre-existing condition the concept, “back.” “Above” can only exist when there is a “below” and “left” presupposes “right.”
In the same vein, male denotes the prior existence of female. In other words, men were born for the sake of women, and women were born for the sake of men. Without men, there is no need for women, and without women, men cannot retain the value of their existence.
In the end, nothing is born for its own sake. All beings exist and act for the sake of their partner. This means that we were created to live in an ideal homeland within the context of relationships of mutual concern for one another.
Let us think about our five sensory organs. Did your eyes come into being for the sake of looking at themselves? Our eyes, nose, ears, mouth and hands all were created for others. What is the force that mobilizes our five sensory organs to sustain our lives and maintain our activities? It is the force that aims to perfect the values of true love. Therefore, our five sensory organs are simply tools that came into existence for the sake of practicing true love. In this way, nothing exists for its own sake. A life of living for the sake of others, giving and sacrificing out of love, and perfecting a life of love through surrendering to your partner, is a life that satisfies God’s ideal of creation. You were created for the sake of your partner. Therefore, the law of nature calls you to live for others more than for yourself. This is where the absolute values of true love emerge.
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