Section 1. Why Do We Like the Family? Why do we like the family? Because it provides the foundation on which you
can freely exchange love and happiness. Hence, people yearn for their hometown, the place where their parents and siblings live. (38-328, 1971.1.8)
The family is a good place. Why is it good? Because your parents, siblings and your relatives are all there. Thus, everyone is homesick for their native land, their hometown. They think of their hometown more than their nation. Even while living in the Republic of Korea, the place they long for is their hometown. (23-151, 1969.5.18)
Why do you all like your families? It is because the family serves as the basis of free activity centering on parental love. By the same token, God must be able to act freely. When society becomes one that is composed of internally-oriented human beings, who have the shining core of love however shabby they may look, God will be free. Is that not so? When you visit someone’s house as a guest, do you not feel uncomfortable? Why? Because no bond of love exists there for you. You feel awkward because that love does not emanate in all directions. Thus, the path we are to walk is one of character. (99-305, 1978.10.1)
What is the best thing in the family? It is not decided by you. Then what would be the highest value of the family? It is the parents. Even for you as individuals, power, knowledge, honor or money could be valuable; yet none of them could be superior to parents. Your spouse would come next, and then your children. In fact, in your family, is there anything more precious and valuable than your parents, spouse and children? There is nothing more precious. Then why do you like your parents and why do you like your spouse and children? It is because love is there. Parental love is something absolutely needed by the children. Also, fraternal love and filial love are absolutely necessary in the family. (112-289, 1981.4.25)
Who are the most beloved people in your families? Are they not your parents? Why do you like them most? It is because they are closest to you in a relationship of love throughout their lives. Your beloved spouse comes next. If husband and wife love each other unconditionally rather than conditionally, and if this love becomes one that is reciprocated within their conjugal relationship, even if it may not be closely related to an eternal love absolutely given by Heaven, that love will be the greatest thing to bring happiness and harmony to their family. This is how I see it. Filial love, the love children have toward their parents, is next. If children can sacrifice themselves for their parents and love them with a bright and positive attitude rather than despair, while longing for ideal circumstances in which their love can sprout as the hope of tomorrow, that love will be one with pure and true value for the happiness of that family. Thus, if there is a family that is complete with true parental love, true conjugal love and true filial love, we cannot but conclude that it is the most ideal family in this world. (Blessed Family -913)
Section 2. The Family Is the Base of Eternal Happiness In our daily life, on what basis would you say someone is a happy person? Can people be called happy because they possess some external ability, power or authority? They cannot. Also, are people happy because they have enough mon- ey to keep them from envying others? No. Furthermore, can people become happy through acquiring global knowl- edge or attaining a position from which to control the world at will? It is abso- lutely not the case that people become
truly happy with just those things. (23-11, 1969.5.11)
Even if some people think they now have enough so as not to envy anything in heaven and earth, and sing songs of joy, such external things cannot be a source of happiness. External things may be a means of finding happiness, but they cannot be happiness itself. Then what has to be determined in order to be able to feel happiness? You must have beloved parents, spouse and children. Nobody can deny this. If you lack just one of them, you will feel sorrow correspondingly, and dissatisfaction will inevitably remain in your heart. (21-140, 1968.11.17)
All people on earth generally feel that the family is a base of happiness. The family must have parents. In the world, children without parents are called orphans and treated as pitiful people. The family has parents and the conjugal bond at the same time. It is pitiful to be without parents, and also to be without a spouse. However much spouses may have loved each other, there is utter misery and dejection when one of them loses the other. Not only that, it is surely a misery when a couple cannot have children. (23-11, 1969.5.11)
The family must have parents, spouse and children. Only then will it become the foundation of happiness. God’s purpose in seeking to restore humankind must also be for His own happiness. The establishment of the ideal of God’s foundation of happiness cannot take place apart from human beings. That point of convergence can only be brought about through His relationship with them. In the same way that we feel happy when all the ingredients needed for our emotional well-being are present in our family, God also wants to feel happiness in such a setting. (32-197, 1970.7.15)
From where does happiness arise? What is the setting in which we can sing songs of joy? It is the family. Family happiness cannot be attained if there are emotional problems or if there is no heart or love in the family. (23-120, 1969.5.18)
If a couple has no children, there can be no happiness there. Also, if children have no parents, there is no joy for them. Where there is a man, there will have to be a woman as his partner. The same holds true for woman. In the case of husband and wife, their desire is to keep their love at a higher dimension within the subject-object relationship. Further, they must have children. A unified family is realized only when a couple has parents above and children below. A family should be united vertically and horizontally this way. Then centering on whom are they to unite? It is impossible just with human beings. Since they alone cannot pursue a higher value, if there is an absolute Subject Partner of love, the parents will want to become one with that Subject Partner as the center. The place where parents and children attain oneness in love centering on that Subject Partner will be a place of happiness and hope. Everything must be brought into oneness and unified through something more valuable and stimulating. This is not possible just with our human love, but only from the absolute Subject Partner position. (Blessed Family -913)
Section 3. The Family Is Basic Unit to Realize God’s Kingdom Our family and God’s Kingdom have the same form. Our family com- prises parents, spouses, children, and
siblings. It can be unified through love. Here unity can be attained, life transmitted, and the ideal substantiated. Thus, you must be able to honor conjugal love and parental love to qualify to go to heaven. The grandparents bequeath their love to the parents. God’s Kingdom will not be realized if any of these forms of love is denied. The conclusion is that you must love your parents more than you love each other as husband and wife, and your grandparents more than your parents. This becomes the core and ideal motto of God’s entire kingdom. (Blessed Family -942)
The starting point of God’s Kingdom is not an individual or a nation, but a family. Hence, Jesus comes to this earth seeking to establish the bond of groom and bride. Is the individual the starting point of the Kingdom? It is the family that is the basic unit for realizing God’s Kingdom. (30-82, 1970.3.17)
God’s Kingdom is a place that once you are there, you do not want to leave; it is a place where that Being lives that you would like to see again and again even after seeing Him hundreds of times. If all people commonly desire to go there, see God, and live with Him, the world will be unified, but this is not something that happens all at once. First, the individual foundation must stand, then the family foundation must stand, and then it should expand through the people, nation and world. (Blessed Family -942)
Where is God’s Kingdom? It does not suddenly fall from the sky, but is the place where we develop the sphere of daily life for interaction between parents and children, fully enjoying the use of all creation as a basis of our ideal. (78-35, 1975.5.1)
You should know that your families are in the position of representing the sovereignty of the heavenly nation. Since the parents represent the sovereignty, the children represent the citizenry and their possessions represent the territory of that nation. Being filial to your parents leads to being loyal to your nation and that leads to the path of sainthood. These days, families have become a source of all manner of shameful things, but God is coming forward desiring that the family become a holy foundation. (35-305, 1970.10.30)
People must necessarily have families. In the family, there are parents, children and possessions. Then, who are the substantial beings that can horizontally develop all of the vertical history of the Old, New and Completed Testament Ages and represent it? They are all things, children and parents; that is to say, they are the parents, their children and their possessions. These are all needed within the bounds of the family. (29-156, 1970.2.27)
The conjugal Kingdom of Heaven is realized only through a couple attaining oneness in God’s love. Nobody can break their oneness and there is no danger that it may split or fall apart. What kind of love have you sought? If you have sought God’s love, your mind and body should attain complete oneness so that God’s love can come and dwell in them. Thus, the conjugal Kingdom of Heaven must emerge and the family Kingdom of Heaven must be realized. The family Kingdom of Heaven will be actualized when mothers and fathers completely unite in love, and sons and daughters also find spouses just like their parents. When parents become the plus and children the minus, the family Kingdom of Heaven will come into being. (Blessed Family -942)
Section 4. The Realization of the Ideal of Love Starts in the Family From where should the ideal of love start being realized? From the Unifica- tion Church? The nation? The world? Even if someone unified the world, if he failed to unify his own family, he would be an unhappy person. The ideal of love should first be realized in the family. The family is the nest of happiness. There-
fore, God’s Kingdom begins from there. When Jesus, who came to the earth to realize God’s Kingdom, said, “I am the Bridegroom and you are the brides,” he was referring to the family level. Who makes up the family? First, parents; second, children; third, husband and wife; and next brothers and sisters. Then how are the members of the family intertwined? Through love. Therefore, what can unify the family? Love can unify it. Since love is unchanging, the grandparents’ love can become one, the parents’ love can become one, and the love of the husband and wife can become one. It is because love contains the quality of unity that they can be one. Also, it is because love contains the motivation of human life that the lives of the grandfather and grandmother can be connected, and also the ideal can be connected to it. The grandparents bequeath their love to the parents; in other words, they give it to their children. The children of our grandparents are our parents, and we are the children of our parents. The place that is centered on such love is God’s Kingdom, which will not be realized if any of these forms of love are denied. Since God is the Subject Partner of love and the one who can integrate past, present and future, you must love your parents more than you love each other as husband and wife, and love your grandparents more than your parents. Man symbolizes heaven and woman symbolizes earth. Since man is subject, he does not like to be interfered with. Woman likes being loved more than she likes to love. Since man symbolizes heaven and woman symbolizes earth, their union is identical to the universe becoming one. Since the universe can be governed only through love, you can be the subject partner of the universe only through love, and you should think of your partner as being bigger than the universe. The connection between the two worlds of heaven and earth is unchanging love. Those who have led earthly lives intertwined with love will enter heaven. The spirit world is the world of love. When God and individual people completely unite, man and woman will automatically attain oneness, and when a perfect couple appears, heaven and earth will be unified. Where does God wish to dwell? Since love arises between a man and a woman, He wants to dwell where a true man and a true woman make love. Since God is there, that love can be eternal, achieve eternal unification, and possess eternal life and ideal. Therefore, the one who has grasped that love can occupy everything. The purpose of the family that is formed through true love is not just for itself but for realizing God’s Kingdom. Based on the standard that seeks to converge with the purpose of unifying the universe, the family should be expanded to the people, nation, world and cosmos. Then once it has reached the world, it should return. (48-10, 1971.8.31)
Section 5. Heaven is a Place One What is heaven? You talk about going to paradise or heaven but it is not a place you enter alone. Heaven is a place that you must enter with your parents and siblings. (15-278, 1965.10.30) What is the secret for entering heav- en? It is not a place meant for individu- als, but rather for family units. Not only that, but also your tribe must be there with you. You are blessed if you have a big tribe for God on earth. If a family has many sons and daughters and great wealth, don’t we call it blessed? If you want to be blessed like this and enter heaven, you must do so as a family unit
and not alone. (22-166, 1969.2.2)
You can never enter heaven individually. As I found out, heaven is not such a chimerical place as believed by Christians. Originally, heaven is a place you are supposed to enter as a family unit. Families are meant to go there. Families go there. The place parents and children enter and live together with God as the center is the ideal world. Yet would you be happy because you went to heaven together with your mother and younger brother while your father and elder sister went to hell? You enter heaven as families. It is for families to go there. (22-271, 1969.5.4)
Heaven is the place that people who have not fallen, had a holy wedding on earth in God’s bosom of love, had children God likes and rejoices in as His grandchildren, and received His love, enter altogether as a family. Would it be heaven if you entered it, but your child failed to do so? Paradise is a place parents, spouses, and children enter separately, no matter how close and affectionate they might have been. It has nothing to do with the family. Would such a place be heaven? Heaven is the world in which entire families follow their parents to interact with God as the center. Would it be good if a son is desperately screaming in hell and yet his parents are living happily in heaven? Could such a place be heaven? (19-104, 1967.12.31)
Heaven as taught in the Unification Church is not a place you enter alone but together with your family. From the perspective of God’s ideal of creation, would the place men and women enter separately be heaven? No. The place they enter in twos is heaven, which is the place such that if the father enters it, so will the mother, and if the parents enter it, so will the children. As dads and moms should stay together, would it really be heaven if daddy went to heaven while mommy went to hell? (34-208, 1970.9.6)
Originally, heaven in accordance with the principles of creation is a place entered by families. You would be happy only if your parents, children and entire clan entered it. If parents went to hell and only their children went to heaven, what kind of heaven would that be? Therefore, as the Unification Church paves the way for going to heaven in the future, we must attain the family level. Otherwise, we will not be able to get into heaven. Through the family, we must escape from the level at which Satan can accuse us. We must escape from the historical level of accusation and the contemporary level of accusation. (21-62, 1968.9.1)
Originally, God did not create us so that husbands went to heaven while wives went to hell. At the time of creation, God intended that the heroes of the ideal, namely, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, form a tribe, people and nation. Shouldn’t it go this way? Yet due to the Fall, hell came into being. (16-33, 1965.12.26)
Section 6. Universal Principle of the Four-Position Foundation Why are people sad when their loved ones pass away? When that happens, they feel it immediately due to the oper- ation of the superhuman force that fills this universe. The more this force enters them, the more they feel the universal force centering on the vertical relation- ship with God. Yet when their loved ones pass away, that force leaves them, and they immediately feel the result of its departure. This is a tragic fact. Peo- ple have to be perfect products but this situation makes them weaker. Human life pursues perfection, but when people come to have an element of failure that is the opposite of it, the universal force will drive out the conditions for it, and this appears as pain. You will all need to
understand this clearly. (30-85, 1970.3.17)
Children of filial piety feel ineffable grief when they lose their beloved parents. Parents also feel grief when they lose their children. It is the same with spouses. That also holds true for our descendants. This is eternally immutable. (30-82, 1970.3.17)
You will grieve when your spouse passes on. This is because according to universal principles the three stages of parents, spouses and children are supposed to form a four-position foundation centering on God. Those who deviate from these universal principles will be expelled from the realm of success, and this is why they experience pain and sorrow. (96-28, 1978.1.1)
Why would a woman’s death cause her husband to weep? Because the path of having sons and daughters, who represent the third purpose of life, has been shattered by her death. If he fails to fulfill that purpose, he must collapse. He can do nothing but die. He can do nothing but weep. Electricity has plus and minus charges; if one of them is lost, the other cannot operate. The way of people is the same. (27-345, 1970.1.1)
Not having children causes unhappiness. Some may think that conjugal happiness would suffice despite being childless, but it is not like that. Since the four-position foundation is a universal principle, when husband and wife come together and attain oneness, they must give birth to children and form that foundation. This is a universal law. If you fail to realize a four-position foundation, you will not be considered as successful. Also, you should not just have sons. If you did, you would only have tasted the love of a son, but not that of a daughter. Can you know the taste of honey through someone’s explanation? Just an explanation would not work. Before explaining, one would have to open your mouth and feed you the honey and then tell you that this is the taste of honey. Then, why do we say that not having a son brings about disappointment and unhappiness? People with only daughters say that those having sons would have nothing more to desire. Westerners are a bit dull in this regard. Through emphasizing individualism, they have lost all such feelings. Therefore, they must regain them. Hence, they now are returning to Eastern thought in order to do so. Thus, your families must have husband, wife, sons and daughters. This way, they must attain complete oneness and go forward in sync with heavenly fortune from beginning to end, going on to live eternally, which is not possible alone. Even if you could live alone eternally, you would be carrying a bag of suffering around in the eternal world. You would not be able to receive the elements necessary for happiness. (24-223, 1969.8.17)
Section 7. The Heavenly Way People Should Go in the Family People should love their neighbors’ parents, grandparents and children just as they love their own. Only then will the relationships of above and below,
left and right, and front and back arise. Only when they arise will the vertical standard of heart be established and the heavenly way emerge. Hence, they should practice this. Since members of the Unification Church practice it, they can build ideal families. The church is the place enabling the expansion of the vertical foundation horizontally in all directions. The more the better. Why is that? Because we are crossing from the family level over into the tribal realm, and from there into the national realm. Thus, as you witness to more and more people, the heavenly foundation arises through you and the standard of value of character advances toward God. So what must we do with this vertical standard? I am saying that we should manifest it horizontally. (70-152, 1974.2.9)
On the day of union between mother and father, the family progresses, and on the day of union between children and parents, it progresses to a higher dimension. Then what will happen on the day of union between family and tribe? A new spirit for the race will emerge. We should not forget that when we are prompted to go toward a higher dimension, everything will be integrated at the national level and we will be able to live as the kindred of loyal subjects. (Blessed Family -913)
Now even I will become a grandfather before long. This is the same for you: when you get old you will become grandfathers and grandmothers. We are born as a son or daughter, get married to become a father or mother, and then become a grandfather or grandmother; that is the course of our life. Thus, because grandparents, parents, spouses, and children constitute the formula course of life, the failure to love them runs counter to the heavenly way. If they are not fundamentally bound together, there would be no way to bring the world into order. If you go to the West, you will see that grandmothers and grandfathers are pitiful. You do not know how much they long for Oriental customs. They are saying, “Oh, Oriental thought reveres grandparents like God, and sons still go to consult their aged parents even when they are in their seventies and eighties. So how wonderful it must be!” Thus, those who do not know how to love their grandparents cannot love God. Who is the oldest grandfather? He is God. Since God is older than all grandfathers and younger than all babies, without loving people as a whole, you cannot love Him. So if you say God is old, He is the oldest person, and if you say God is a youth of the future, He is a youth more than anyone else. As we want to love Him, we have to love all the people in between, and since people of the past in the spirit world also want to find hope and live within that realm, we must love them as well. It is only logical that we will then be able to go the way of following and loving God. (70-152, 1974.2.9)
Section 8. The Unification Church Seeks to Realize the Family Kingdom of Heaven There is a reason why I have not been building churches until now. It is because we do not need many people in the church. God’s Kingdom is realized not from the church but from the fam- ily; that is to say, it starts from bride and groom. Woman was born in order to see
man, and vice versa. The first cry a baby makes when it wakes up from sleep and opens its eyes is “Mommy!” Husbands should call their wives more than babies call their mothers. Those who do not do that are wretched people. Also, wives should call their husbands even more than that. They should relate to each other as a couple who can call each other like this. They should live like that as a couple in the joy of conjugal harmony. If they live like this eternally, they will not envy youth even when they get old. (23-54, 1969.5.11)
The day that we meet the Messiah will come only after we have passed through the age of the word and the age of substance. Only after that day has arrived can we begin our lives in the Kingdom of Heaven. On the day of that meeting, you will have to attain such a state that his mind will become your mind, his heart will become your heart, his form will become your form, his difficulties will become your difficulties, and his wounds will become your wounds. Only when you attain such a state and feel that his mind is your mind and his heart is your heart can you become families of the Kingdom of Heaven. Only when you can complete this on earth can the families of the Kingdom of Heaven be established. (19-250, 1968.1.15)
What is true love? It is parental love, conjugal love, and filial love. Love is bound to be shattered before long without a tradition of sacrificing for one another. The bond of parental love is not shattered because parents make sacrifices for their children. Also, children who have grown up receiving genuine love from their parents can never lose their devotion to them. Furthermore, as the realm expands in which spouses serve and sacrifice for each other more and more in the position of saying to each other, “You have lived for my sake,” blessing will come to that family. Such a family constitutes the hallowed spot upon which God can descend. (43-308, 1971.5.2)
From where does the life of the Kingdom of Heaven start? From the family. It does not happen anywhere else. The Kingdom of Heaven is just a threedimensional expansion of the family, and not something transcending that form. Thus, when you embrace as spouses, you should think that you are thereby uniting all men and women of the world. The place where you can establish the basis of having loved all humankind like this is none other than your family. (30-82, 1970.3.17)
Now, I feel that I must teach you the norm of the family, a norm of daily life that a family of the Kingdom of Heaven should have. The Unification Church is a family structure. It puts the family first. (22-333, 1969.5.11)
Henceforth, our worship service should proceed not in the format of a sermon, but rather a report. That report should contain something families can be proud of. Thus, entire families should worship together, and families who are performing well should serve as examples to guide those who are not. Let us therefore build a family Kingdom of Heaven. We should clearly know that until this is done, God’s Kingdom on earth will not be realized. (23-62, 1969.5.11)