True Education for Children
Section 1. What Kind of Education Should Parents Give Their Children? What kind of education should par- ents give their children? Not educa- tion of knowledge but of love. Children should be educated through their father and mother uniting. Parents should teach their children that God likes their mother and father, mother likes father, father likes mother, I like my parents at the same time as they like each oth- er, and they like me. Thus, at the begin- ning, Adam and Eve were to receive an education of love from God centering on His love. Then where is the origin of it? It does not start with human beings. Since God is the Parent, Adam and Eve should be educated in love by Him. Then from where do Adam and Eve establish their standard of value? It is from God’s edu- cation of love. Until when are they to be educated in love? They should grow up in parental love until they have become able to reckon the whole standard of value that their Father knows, in other
words, until they have become mature. Yet there is no record in the Bible that Adam and Eve grew up receiving God’s love. There is no mention of them receiving love, but instead their story disturbingly starts with the narration of how they fell. This spoiled everything. Then was there a standard by which Adam and Eve were to be educated in love by God? Without it, there could be no such thing as God’s ideal. The question is what the standard of education of love should be. We want to go to heaven, but we cannot receive such an education there. We must receive it here on earth before going there. If that education were not given to us on earth, it would be a big problem. What is that education? (51-171, 1971.11.21)
Heaven is the world of the heart. It is not a heaven of religious doctrines or of religious denominations, but of the heart. Why is it that God wants to find His citizens and adherents on earth? To make His sons and daughters. What kind of sons and daughters does God want to raise? Those to whom He can express His heart, saying, “This is how I feel.” (9-293, 1960.6.12)
Then, what kind of attitude must Adam and Eve have if they are to be educated? Being in a parent-child relationship, they should always follow their Parent wherever He goes. When He goes, they should follow Him anywhere and anytime. When He ascends a mountain, they should ascend it with Him, if He descends into a valley, they should descend there with Him, and if He enters a cave, they should enter it with Him. They should always be with their Parent. If God had to be separated from His children, could He be separated? Since He is the Absolute Being, He will absolutely want to see them. Since He is the Absolute Being, He likes them absolutely when He likes them. You cannot say, “Well, God, if You want to come, do come, and if You don’t, don’t. If You want to stay there, do so, and if You don’t want to stay there, don’t.” You must be absolute. (51-173, 1971.11.21)
If you are in a position of oneness with God inside and out, you will be people of erudition even without being taught. You would be even more knowledgeable than through research. How are heaven and earth structured? How is the spirit world structured? How is human life structured? Even baby insects all go and find their food when they are born; so the lords of creation do not find their food or know about life and death through being taught. They are supposed to know it at first sight. We were supposed to be such charming people, but due to the Fall we have not become such people. Although we are fallen, our original nature still operates in the relationship of subject and object partners. Since filth that has accumulated from the Fall has been covering it, its operation will be stronger when that is eliminated. When the dirt is completely eliminated, the original nature will burst out. So far, people have been pursuing the way by which this can happen. (56-131, 1972.5.14)
Section 2. What Should Parents Teach Their Children? What are the contents of the truth? However great anyone may be, they can- not stand in the place of your parents, spouse or children. What is the highest of all truths? Parents, spouses and chil- dren. There is nothing higher. Then what is the center of the truth? It is love. From such a principled viewpoint, what is the center of the highest truth? People say that God is the Original Being of truth, goodness, love and life. What does this mean? They all mean the same. The truth cannot be established without love and life. Those who want to become people who can talk about the real truth must have the will and desire for the truth within their lives. Here, desire stands in a reciprocal position to your standard of personality. So what is the nucleus? As the Original Being of life, love and truth, what kind of being is God? He is the Father and simultaneously the Mother
of humankind. Parents are the nucleus. (21-183, 1968.11.20)
What are our most precious assets that we can leave behind? God’s love and true parental love, which cannot be found in the secular world, are the greatest inheritance we can bequeath to our children. We must educate them well about God and what God’s love is like. As our children do not know about them, we have to be parents who can love them like God on His behalf so that they can find Him through us. (93-335, 1977.6.17)
What is the Unification Church seeking to accomplish? We are saying, “Let us give our lives for the sake of the highest love, and God, humankind and the world.” There is no higher education than teaching: “Such an initiative, direction and purpose started for the sake of love. Men and women, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, and everything in the universe started for the sake of love.” Those who live like this and go to the spirit world will surely not be ashamed to stand before God. (93-189, 1977.5.29)
Blessed parents tell their children to study. Your sons and daughters do not become children of filial piety and loyal citizens just because you tell them to study. There is no way that could happen. They could say, “Although our parents have suffered in the Unification Church, we will not walk such a path.” You must teach them the way of love that can assimilate that. Thus, parents should take their children around, loving the people in their village and praying and shedding tears for the nation, even if they have to skip meals. The children may think of it as bad when they are little but when they grow up they will say, “Our Dad and Mom are the best.” They will understand that their mother and father do not shed tears for them. The more mature they become, the more they will come to realize that their parents tried to love the nation, serve God’s will, and save humankind even though they had to abandon them. You should not live as you please. If you are only worried about your children, they will not succeed. Raise them by feeding them the food of love. Give them a sense of the direction they can take with love. As they grow in age and wisdom, when they discover a gold mine, they will think it is a mountain with just a small gold nugget, but as they dig deeper, they will realize that the mountain itself could be made of gold. (139-77, 1986.1.26)
Section 3. Parents Must First Set an Example In order to educate their children, parents should first put their words into practice. They should set the example of being loyal to God’s will. This way, they should create an atmosphere in which, whatever they say, their children can
revere them without ever talking back. Otherwise, their children would not follow them. (31-268, 1970.6.4)
In order for this to happen, parents should give their children a heavenly education. In teaching their children, parents should first be exemplary. Before teaching their children to practice filial piety, they should first be children of filial piety. You yourselves must be sons and daughters of filial piety according to heavenly law so that the connection of heaven’s tradition of filial piety can be established from there. Educate them to practice filial piety just as their parents practiced filial piety in the family, and to be patriots just as their parents struggled for the nation even while being driven into desperate circumstances. (30-112, 1970.3.17)
Parents do not make their children practice filial piety just by telling them to do so. Parents must have the ability to cause a heart of wanting to practice filial piety to spring up within their children. These things do not happen in one morning but after a long period of influence. What does it mean to exert influence? Parents should set the example in their daily lives for their children to follow their way. You should be experts in putting such things into practice. (29-97, 1970.2.25)
When teaching your children, do not just say, “Become great people” but rather, “Go such and such a way in order to become great people.” Fathers must fulfill their responsibilities as fathers and elder siblings should fulfill their responsibilities as elders. In other words, by your becoming people who know how to discern the connection to walk the path of true men and women, and who do not deviate from heavenly law, don’t you think that the path will emerge by which you can go through the principled course and become the citizens of the one nation? (Blessed Family -1039)
What should parents do? They should teach their children in such a way that brothers and sisters can love each other just like their mother and father. At the same time, they should teach them, saying, “As we love the nation, you should also love the nation in this way.” Then, they will not need any other education. When you pray, ask God to make your children do it this way since you are doing it this way. You can set your children up in such a position only after you have first set the standard. If you have stood in such a position, God will naturally lead your children in the same direction. Thus, if you fail to reverse the trend here, you will be called to account when you pass on to the spirit world. (13-103, 1963.11.1)
In your families, you should make your children think that their Mom and Dad are greater than any kings or queens in the world. Also, you should show them that their mother and father are close to each other in a way unprecedented in the world. You as blessed parents should establish such a tradition. Furthermore, you should plant the tradition in the innermost core of your children so that they can say, “Our mother and father make us proud, more than anyone else in the world.” If you look at parents in the secular world, they fight and make a big mess even when their children protest, crying, “Mother! Father! Why are you fighting?” If your children, who have grown up in your family without tears, witness such sights in the secular world, they will feel, “Surely, our Mom and Dad are the best in the world! They are truly great and holy people!” To bring this about, you should set them an example. You should establish a parental bond through which you can receive adoration flowing out from the innermost core of your children’s hearts and thereby establish family precepts and traditions implicitly. By doing this, their children in the next generation will say, “We will stand in the same position as our parents!” (23-184, 1969.5.18)
Section 4. Parents Are Best Friends and Best Teachers Where does love come from? Nev- er from the self, but rather from one’s partner. Without a partner, love can- not arise. Within humankind, woman complements man, and children com- plement their parents. Love is not real- ized without partners. This is called “the love of three object partners.” Those who have not experienced the love of three object partners cannot stand in a posi- tion of having substantially experienced
God’s perfect love. “Let us give birth to sons and daughters and rejoice to the same extent that God rejoiced after having created Adam and Eve.” This is taught in the Unification Church’s Divine Principle. Having created Adam and Eve, God said, “From now on, you will rule over the world. Our family will be the central family of the world. Please grow up quickly, grow up quickly.” He felt joy and satisfaction while protecting and nurturing them with hope, desiring to see the day of their marriage upon their coming of age. By the same token, fathers and mothers want to raise their children well, and find good partners for them to become good husbands and wives. When that happens, the family prospers. (57-119, 1972.5.29)
Who are your children’s best friends? Not young guys from the neighboring village. Their best friends are none other than their parents. That is as it should be. Moreover, parents should be liked by their children even more than their friends. That is how you should think. Therefore, parents must be their children’s best friends and best teachers. In educating their children, parents should not say, “Hey you, don’t do that!” and teachers should not say, “You brat, I will hit you in the calf if you don’t do what I told you. Don’t do that!” They should educate them in love. Parents should educate their children in such a way that if they are asked, “Hey, do you think you should do that?” they would reply, “Right, this is not good because if I did it my parents would be sad.” Thus, parents ought to be their children’s best friends and teachers. Do you think Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden had friends? If Adam had a friend, it was only Eve. Next, there was just God. God did not want them to be friends with the archangel, who was a servant. Yet they were ruined because they befriended the wrong person. So parents should be the best of all teachers, the best of all friends, and manifest the best of all forms of love. Love begins from God. That being so, conjugal love ultimately stems from parents. So if parents say, “Hey, you like each other not because of yourselves but because of the virtues of your parents,” their children should reply, “It would have been disastrous had our parents not raised us this way and found such partners for us.” Hence, marriages based on personal choice fail to meet that standard. By whom should children be educated in love? By their parents. They should see their father and mother love each other with great fun cooing like pigeons and learn from it. They should say, “Wow, when I see my father and mother together like that, I feel lonely when I am alone. I also need a partner whom I can love cooing like my parents.” Their parents should also teach them to be like this. Then the children will come to repeat what their parents have been doing, the world will become a world of goodness and human history will become a history of goodness. The Unification Church seeks to accomplish this. (57-121, 1972.5.29)
Section 5. Chastisement with Love According to the Revelation to John, one should be either cold or hot but nev- er lukewarm. In the world of love a luke- warm attitude will not do. If you have a heart of love you can even chastise with a stick. When you raise your children, if they fail to keep a standard even though you loved them, you should sometimes treat them coldly. If you do not scold them when they are at fault, they will lose their capacity to distinguish right from wrong. You should know that although your Teacher may look ami- able, I can sometimes be strict. I can be merciless toward evil, but toward good- ness I can be hot like a furnace at thou-
sands of degrees. (103-32, 1979.1.28)
When I heard recently that a teacher at a school in the West was in trouble with the authorities for using corporal punishment, I said to myself, “Now that nation will perish!” Students should not mind it if their teachers guide them in the right direction, even though it may mean using strong chastisement. In Korea, there is a saying that goes, “Give one more rice cake to someone you dislike, and wield a stick for someone you like.” There is no other way to ensure that the right tradition is continued. Children should be able to shed tears before the love of their parents, forgetting the pain of the punishment. (Blessed Family -1027)
The closer you are to someone, the more you can scold him, saying, “You scoundrel! Why did you do that?” instead of rewarding him. If it is some lad from the neighboring village, you can turn a blind eye to his wrongdoings; but if it is your own child, you will spank him on the calf and scold him, saying “You little scoundrel, did you do something good or bad?” The intensity of your concern for him must exceed the severity of the punishment; otherwise, it will be a sin. If the severity of the punishment surpassed your concern for him, he could become one of your biggest enemies. Even if you punish him out of love, yet the severity of the punishment exceeded the degree of your love, everything would be shattered. Nevertheless, in the opposite case, that would be all right. That is to say, on a scale of one to ten, if your love for him is at a level of ten but incurred a minus of five through the punishment, he would still be grateful at the level of five. (26-32, 1969.10.18)
If your child does not accept it well, in order to bring him to repentance, you should love him with a greater love than you have shown him in the past; then even a delinquent child would be able to repent and turn around. However, if you scold your child repeatedly, and speak loudly about how well you have raised him, he will begin to pack his bags. But if you love them with a greater love, shedding tears as if your heart would melt for them, they will turn around. Greater love tends to take the lead in assimilating and integrating all other lesser forms of love. (Blessed Family -1027)
Even in secular society, parents who tell their children not to study when they seem tired do not truly love them. They should tell them to stay up and study, even if they have to spank them. Why is it so? They are concerned with their future well-being rather than just their present. Parents do this because they have great dreams for their children’s future. (Blessed Family -1027)
When you give birth to and nurture your children, do so with true love. Through this, if your family members unite closely and learn to love their nation, they will be called patriots. Hence, parents watch over the growing process of their children and educate them and sometimes wield the stick of love so that they can grow up in the right way. Children should not complain or protest because of being scolded or even spanked by their parents for their mistakes. Taking it as a lesson, they should repent seriously and strive to make amends for their errors. Such people will be able to grow up correctly and draw near to the center where God abides. (Blessed Family -1027)
Section 6. Why Tell Children to Study? Do students go to school because they want to study? They first go to school because they are made to. In particu- lar, elementary school students attend because they are afraid of their parents
and not because they want to study. Everybody is like this at the beginning. Yet even as they do so reluctantly, they get to have a feeling for it and start going in order to learn, thereby surprising their parents. As they come to grips with the subject matter, they find it stimulating, and studying becomes fun. Fun itself is considered bad. Yet as a result of what they discover through their studies, the scope within which they can freely do so broadens. They find this stimulating, and it makes them study more. There is not even one person who likes studying for the sake of studying. They like it because it broadens the scope of their activity. (36-120, 1970.11.22)
To students going to school, parents say, “Study hard!” This is not an easy path, but a difficult one. Yet their parents’ words are an admonition for them to prepare for the future. It is also preparation for the future when professors stand on the podium and diligently teach their students. It is also preparation for the future when farmers go out into the crop fields and work hard. It is a preparation to build God’s Kingdom on earth. (147-203, 1986.9.21)
What do you go to school for? Where do you want to use what you have learned at school? It must be for happiness. There would be no way for happiness to exist if we got rid of love. Thus, we can say that we go to school in order to shorten the path of love. (Blessed Family -372)
The gate of happiness opens for people when they get married. It is very good to study in order to open the door of happiness, but if you study just to make money or attain political power, it is wrong. Your learning must enable you to practice true love. (Blessed Family -372)
Why do young women want to go to university and obtain a bachelor’s degree? They are trying to get good husbands. Nothing else can match that. Also, however great people may have become, they are miserable if their family members are disunited. (Blessed Family -372)
You young women should all say that your studies are also for the sake of meeting true men and becoming true mothers. To become true mothers, you should first study for the sake of the nation and become true wives who attend true husbands. If you fail in this, you will not be able to have true husbands nor have true children. Women should be true wives and live with their husbands until one of them passes on. If women study in order to marry good men, shouldn’t those who are university graduates all live with their husbands all the way through? But are there more people who do that or more who get a divorce? You don’t even have to check. Illiterate people live together longer and better. (25-79, 1969.9.30)
Men and women are born to go through a long period of education and become people of sound character so that they can meet their ideal partner of love and lead happy lives. In secular society nowadays, people say that they do not study to meet a marriage partner. Yet in reality, it is in order to find a good partner. If you share a beautiful love with your partner and live happily, material things and honor will follow. (Blessed Family -372)
Section 7. The Teachings of True Parents work for the sake of their children. There are no parents who work only in order to feed themselves. When poor parents with many children work hard in the fields or on worksites, car- rying heavy loads with an A-frame on their back or weeding a field with a hoe, it is for their children’s happiness to last indefinitely. The sweat of toil drip- ping from their foreheads is not for their own sake. When the fruit of this sweat mingles with their loving heart for their children, a new history of creation will unfold there. Although they may weed a field or carry a back frame on a worksite, each tread of their footsteps is carving
out a new history. (25-97, 1969.9.30)
Among the forty million citizens of our country, there are many parents who do not love their children. From their midst, if there were parents whose loving heart for their children could last for more than ten or twenty years, children of filial piety could not but appear in their family. Children will realize their parents’ hard work for them just by looking at their faces and hands. When they come to feel their parents’ love emanating from their innermost core, the profound circumstances of times long past will flow out there. Through that, parents help their children to contribute to the nation, thereby becoming national or global parents. Also, when you study with ardent hearts to fulfill your parents’ wishes, you will become the new pillars of the nation. Those among you lacking such an emotion or feeling are not studying properly. If parents educate their children with patriotic hearts by saying, “We love you, strive hard for you, work hard and sweat for you because we want you to think of this country more than yourselves,” then those children who have been educated in love by such parents will strive to become the patriots desired by them. Whenever they recall their parents’ love, they will think of their forty million compatriots. Also, they will study hard with a heart of wanting to serve their people, and if that people were to become miserable, they would feel more miserable than their parents about it. Yet they do not become patriots just by having such a heart. They must also have a substantial foundation they have established while having that heart. Only then will it be something that the people of the nation can admire forever. Otherwise, it will all pass away. It is serious when we think of all these matters. If there were teachers at your school who strive to transmit correct ideas to their students by all means, while worrying about the destiny of the Republic of Korea, they would hold their students’ hands in tears and admonish them thus: “Do not follow us, but rather follow the nation. We want you to do good things for the nation rather than for us.” Students taught this way will fulfill the purpose that their teachers could not fulfill. This way, if teachers devote themselves and dedicate their whole life for their students, and if parents devote themselves for their children, cherishing the value of the nation and the world higher than their own, the students of those teachers and the children of those parents will become the pillars of the world. (25-97, 1969.9.30)
Section 8. An Education to Live Together with the World Jong-gyo (religion) means “foremost teaching.” God’s foremost teaching is to teach and love humankind. There is nothing else. This is why true parents teach their children what the world likes
and what God likes. (Blessed Family -1046)
Human morals teach that children should love their parents, and husbands and wives should love each other and their children. Have you ever thought about for whose sake children should love their parents? Have you ever thought about for whom husbands and wives should love each other and for whom they should love their children? Human beings have lost the Lord who is responsible for love. God has spoken of infinite love. He said that what will remain in the end is love. That love is God’s love. You should all know what it is that you long for. You must have a purpose in loving. For whom do you love? It is for the sake of God. We should love for His sake. Those who love for their own sake: see what happens after you die – where you will go. You give birth to children, breastfeed them, and shower them with affection, but for whom do you do all that? It should be on behalf of heaven and earth, because of this nation and the world, because of God. The heavenly fortune following God’s love is moving beyond the world to embrace heaven and earth. Yet if you love your children who are born through that connection just because of you, this is unacceptable. Those women who embrace and breastfeed their babies should do so with ardent hearts that they are embracing God’s beloved sons and daughters on behalf of heaven and earth. (8-105, 1959.11.22)
Do you want to be blessed? Do you want to live eternally? Then you should be public-minded people. In educating your children, do not love them just as your own, but rather as those who can serve as an offering for the people of the world. Also, when you embrace and breastfeed your babies, you should do so with an attitude that you, in the position of mothers representing humankind, are breastfeeding babies who represent humankind. Furthermore, rather than loving and breastfeeding your babies only, try becoming mothers who think of other people’s children as their own. Babies who grow up on the milk of such mothers will surely become great people. It may not happen immediately, but as such families continue down the first, second and further generations, world leaders will be born among their descendants. This is the formula. It will happen this way. (31-167, 1970.5.24)
Great mothers embrace and teach their children to be able to endure in any position of difficulty in order to become beings of goodness who can move the world. This is because they have realized the heavenly principle that goodness never perishes. (13-238, 1964.3.24)
For what or whom do you think goodness moves? Not for one’s own sake. When you eat, do so for the sake of the cosmos rather than yourself. Also, when you get married, do so for the sake of the Will rather than yourself. We should go forward aiming for the world. When we experience things, this should be centered on the world. Those who do that may not seem to be cool people but actually they are. After you go beyond your life span, which passes by in the twinkling of an eye in seventy or eighty years, there is a way to live eternally, but people do not know that. If you know a way to enter the world of eternal life within the temporal realm and make a connection with that world, that eternity will become yours. (36-185, 1970.11.29)
Even if you had to eat millet rice and be dressed in rags, if you live centered on the world, becoming the source of endless and broad topics of conversation, telling your children, for instance, “When their house was like a hut, those people lived in such miserable circumstances, but later they became so successful,” your children living in such a place will be excellent people. (28-188, 1970.1.11)