Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 30
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 1: The Principles of True Peace
Speech 8: View of the Principle of the Providential History of Salvation, Pg 108-112
Human perfection includes the responsibility to love
Ladies and gentlemen, could the Fall have been the result of eating the fruit of a tree? The Fall of Adam and Eve was an immoral sin against the ideal of the true love of God. The fact that Adam and Eve needed to obey the commandment shows that they fell in a stage of immaturity, that is to say, during their period of growth. The archangel, symbolized by a serpent, tempted Eve to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and she fell spiritually. She later tempted Adam, who was also too immature to eat of the fruit, and they then fell physically.
The only possible sin that could have been fatal in the garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve were in communication with God and living in joy, was the sin of illicit love. The first consummated love of the human ancestors, because it was supposed to have been the perfection of the love of God Himself, was to have marked the beginning of a celebration that would continue throughout history, filled with the never-ending intoxication of joy and blessing for God, Adam and Eve, and the universe. It was supposed to have been a joyous occasion through which the love, life, and lineage of God would have been established within humankind.
To the contrary, Adam and Eve covered their lower parts and hid themselves among the trees, trembling in fear. By disobeying heavenly law, they established an immoral relationship as the basis for false love, false life, and false lineage. As descendants of Adam and Eve, all human beings are born with original sin. The Fall gave rise to conflict between the mind and body within every person, thereby causing our societies to be filled with tainted love and with people who do things that contradict the desire of their original minds.
According to the ideal of love, all love relationships in the animal and plant kingdoms are for reproduction only. Human beings are the sole exception. Humankind enjoys freedom in the conjugal relationship of love, which is humanity’s special privilege as the lord of all creation. God gave the blessing and infinite joy of love to His sons and daughters. However, the true freedom that God allowed requires human responsibility. When an individual insists upon and practices freedom of love without responsibility, how much confusion and destruction takes place! Achieving the highest ideal of human love is possible only when one takes responsibility for love.
We can think of this responsibility in three ways. The first is for one to become the master of true love, truly free, and thanking God for the freedom of love, wherein one knows how to cultivate and control oneself. This responsibility for a love relationship is not to be taken merely because of law or social convention. Instead, a person needs to establish responsibility through his own self-control and self-determination within a life-committing, vertical relationship with God.
The second is one’s responsibility toward the object partner of love. By nature, people do not want their spouse’s love to be shared with others. Horizontal conjugal love, which differs from the vertical love between parents and children, loses its potential for perfection the moment it is divided. This is because the Principle of Creation requires husband and wife to become one in absolute love. Each spouse has the responsibility given by love to live absolutely for the sake of the other.
The third responsibility of love is toward children. The love of parents is the basis for children’s pride and happiness. Children want to be born through the total and harmonious unity of their parents in true love, and they would want to be raised in that kind of love. The most precious responsibility of parents is not only to rear their children externally, it is also to offer them life elements of true love that can bring their spirituality to complete fruition. This is why the family is so valuable. The daily experience of the heart of true children, true brothers and sisters, true spouses and true parents cannot be acquired in any place other than the true family.
The Messiah is the true person who brings the seed of new life
If Adam and Eve had become a couple of true love centered upon God, God could have dwelt in Adam as His substantial body and thus loved Eve. What is more, Adam and Eve together could have become True Parents who substantially embodied God and thereby could have become the origin of the love of goodness, a life of goodness, and a lineage of goodness.
Due to the Fall, however, Adam and Eve became the substantial body of Satan and ended up becoming the original fallen couple, fallen parents, and fallen ancestors. Their union became the root of fallen love, fallen life, and fallen blood lineage. Because human beings originated from this root, they descended from the adulterous Satan, who is the enemy of God, and inherited this lineage of fallen parents.
Ladies and gentlemen! How great God’s pain must have been when, by the Fall of humankind, our human ancestors destroyed His ideal of true love! Humankind was to have been the sons and daughters of God, yet they do not know God as their original Parent. Yet even though His sons and daughters serve Satan, God has worked for the providence of salvation. Because He is an absolute being, and the ideal of creation is also absolute, He has carried out the providence of salvation even amid great sadness. God’s providence of salvation is the providence of restoration, which means to recover the lost purpose of creation, centered on true love. The providence of salvation is also the providence of re-creation.
Based on this understanding, the root of the providence of salvation is the re-creation of the seed of the original child, the human being who will fulfill the ideal of creation. That which God abhors, the life and blood lineage that began with the false love of the adulterer Satan, must be cleansed. The essence of the providence is the task of setting up the birth of the True Parent, the Savior united with the true love, life, and lineage of God.
Since the ancestors of humankind failed to fulfill their responsibility, inherited the immoral lineage of Satan, and came under the dominion of Satan, God could not directly intervene and return human beings to their original position. Furthermore, God can neither unconditionally accept humankind, who chose to go to the side of the evil archangel, nor punish them. Rather, God uses the strategy of placing a central figure on the side of the good archangel. Then, by being struck first, that figure fulfills the indemnity condition to recover what was lost. Satan strikes first and, as a result, must take the losing position. The First, Second and Third, or Cold War, World Wars are good examples of this. That is, the side that struck first lost.
From the overall perspective of the providence of restoration, the foundation of cooperation between mother and son is very important. This was so at the time of Jacob, Moses, and Jesus. God was working His providence to separate people from satanic life and lineage by establishing the foundation of cooperation between a mother, who needed to fulfill the responsibility of Eve, the originator of the Fall, and the second son of the family.
God cannot directly relate to the first son because he stands in the position of having a direct blood relationship with Satan, who, through the Fall, was the first to dominate humankind. By having the second son, who represents the side of goodness, fulfill a condition, God has been restoring the blood lineage of goodness. Then God has had the first son, representing the side of evil, take a position subordinate to the second son.
In the family of Adam, God carried out the providence of recognizing the second son, Abel, and having him subordinate the first son, Cain. Even though Eve had fallen, as a mother, she could have made an effort to foster unity between the two brothers. In the end, however, Cain murdered Abel, and the providence of salvation was not fulfilled in Adam’s family; it was prolonged. There was also a required formula of cooperation between mother and son at the time of Noah, but that formula of meaningful cooperation was not realized until the time of Rebekah and Jacob.
The Fall was committed by three beings: Adam, Eve, and the archangel. The archangel seduced Eve, causing the spiritual fall, and later, fallen Eve seduced Adam, causing the physical fall. As a result, they turned their backs on God, and the fallen archangel became Satan. Since the providence of salvation is the providence of restoration, the principle of restoration can be carried out only by going in a direction one hundred eighty degrees opposite that of the Fall.
God lost Adam, who had the seed of true love and true life. So God needed to find a son with the new seed, free from satanic accusation. Just as God created Adam first at the time of the creation, God must prepare a son first who has no relationship to the Fall, according to the providence of restoration, which is the providence of re-creation. This is the basis for the idea of the coming of the Messiah. The Messiah rejects the sinful lives of those with a fallen lineage under the dominion of Satan. He comes as a true person who engrafts fallen humanity into the seed of new life. The Messiah has his roots in God and comes as the Second Adam, who wipes away all that was committed by the first Adam. This is the reason God cannot send a superman Messiah who will work only through miracles.
FFWPU, USA