Love alone is the core of human desire.
—Sun Myung Moon
"Contemporary life is fraught with ambiguity, pain and disappointment."
Every person when they enter into this world has hope for their future. They have hope for themselves as individuals, have fulfilling relationships with others, and a rewarding meaningful role in their workplace and in society. This pathway to reach these goals may be called "the true way of life".
Yet, if this path exists, it surely is not easy to find. It would require lessons that are not readily available in the education system, correct?
School may do their job in training young people to ready them for skills for a successful career. Though, even one who has a six-figure income can find themselves wanting for people who fail to form lasting relationships and establish healthy families. The youth of today have high hopes of marriage and family life filled with love and happiness, but are often met with disappointment. They are incapable of living in the harmony in which they dream. When it comes to family relationships, pessimism abounds. This attitude leads many young people to expect that their lives will follow the pattern of "Marry. Divorce. Marry again."
The modern way of life these days has left a natural human longing for community in shambles. Normal relations between neighbors are often cold and distant and few are willing to look out for each other's family or property. "All we want is peace, " neighbors tell one another.
What happened to the community of mutual help of neighbor looking out for neighbor? When a problem arises, the citizens blame one another or politicians. When a problem arises in school, teachers blame parents and parents blame the teachers.
Yet, if this path exists, it surely is not easy to find. It would require lessons that are not readily available in the education system, correct?
School may do their job in training young people to ready them for skills for a successful career. Though, even one who has a six-figure income can find themselves wanting for people who fail to form lasting relationships and establish healthy families. The youth of today have high hopes of marriage and family life filled with love and happiness, but are often met with disappointment. They are incapable of living in the harmony in which they dream. When it comes to family relationships, pessimism abounds. This attitude leads many young people to expect that their lives will follow the pattern of "Marry. Divorce. Marry again."
The modern way of life these days has left a natural human longing for community in shambles. Normal relations between neighbors are often cold and distant and few are willing to look out for each other's family or property. "All we want is peace, " neighbors tell one another.
What happened to the community of mutual help of neighbor looking out for neighbor? When a problem arises, the citizens blame one another or politicians. When a problem arises in school, teachers blame parents and parents blame the teachers.
Even those families and communities that are able to live and function well, they should have a certain sense or awareness that not everyone lives as well as they do. How can one community live completely in peace and happiness knowing that fellow citizens do not live so well?
Such communities have a smug self assurance that others are in a lower class because they are not a meritorious, hard-working, or deserving as they are. This voice drowns out the sound of the conscience when the call comes to help out those less fortunate.
Such communities have a smug self assurance that others are in a lower class because they are not a meritorious, hard-working, or deserving as they are. This voice drowns out the sound of the conscience when the call comes to help out those less fortunate.
"On the national level, partisanship divides national policy; racism abounds, corruption festers, and issues seem unsolvable."
If you take a look at the nations, each act in their own self interest rather than in the interest of the world community. Quarrels between nations can escalate and turn into a cycle of revenge-retaliation-revenge. Each side claims that their actions are to even up the score from past conflicts. Even when one nation helps the other with generous gifts, they often come with strings attached.
If we take a quick look at the world, does it seem this is the original world which God envisioned at the beginning of creation?
Humankind exists in disharmony with the environment; often taking more than is given back, ruining delicate ecosystems, sacrificing the long-term blessings that come with care and prudence in favor of short-term profits. We are incapable of sharing equitably, even with the natural systems that sustain us.
Where can we find answers to these problems? Can we find a comprehensive approach that leads us to a true way of life, one that generates positive results on every level? Philosophy and religion have sought answers, but their answers have often created more confusion. In the field of politics and educational programs have been instituted in hopes of reform, only to flounder in the morass of half truth and superficial solutions that fail to touch the core of the problem.
In seeking objective truth, science has tried to dispel the ignorance that pervades human life and makes it “nasty, brutish and short.” While these efforts have helped the human situation enormously, they are at their best when focused on narrow and precise goals. Such as curing disease, generating energy or improving communications. They still have not effectively addressed the root of the problems that human existence face.
The Longing for Love
Even in an affluent nation as America, there is still a yearning - hunger - that all human beings have felt, but few have found satisfaction. Men, women, and children experience it. Writer John Steinbeck described it: “You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved but your yearning wanders in new fields.”
Satisfaction always seems just out of reach, just over the horizon, coming tomorrow, or next year or the next, when the ship comes in. People think they will at last find fulfillment “When I win the lottery,” “When I get a raise,” “When she finally loves me,” “When the new house is finished.” Yet even when we achieve our outward goals, the yearning remains in force.
Happiness eludes one like mercury and slips away from the pursuing fingertips. The Qur’an affirms, “The life of this world is but the comfort of illusion” (3.185).
Happiness eludes one like mercury and slips away from the pursuing fingertips. The Qur’an affirms, “The life of this world is but the comfort of illusion” (3.185).
Augustine said that the human heart is restless for God, and will always be so until finding rest in Him. A modern-day preacher said, “There is a God-sized hole inside of us. No matter how many steaks, electronics, liquor, drugs, entertainment and sex we pour down it, only God can fill the hole.”
However, to many people, God is an abstraction. Worse, He may be portrayed like a God of punishment with many rules and demands. Worse still, people have done horrible things to one another in the name of God, leading to division and hatred rather than unity and belonging.
Furthermore, in the post-Freudian era, religious yearnings have been looked at as pathologies, crutches, or self-delusion, not as a solution to the time's problems. Religion has even been seen as a tool of capitalist or colonialist imperialism and exploitation. With all of the problems that religion has created in the past, can we say that God is the answer to all problems?
The apostle John said, “God is love” (1 John 4.8).
Then people wonder if God is a God of love, why doesn't He do something to help the problem? I have heard some people state that God has predestined and is the cause of many conflicts and disasters in the world.
What people actually want is behind God and inside of God. They want the essence of God, which is love. People want to know and feel pure and selfless love, and they want that love to pervade all their relationships and their world. Such love is the key to feeling filled and fulfilled.
Paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin said, “Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.”
In every action, accomplishment, purchase, hope and dream of individuals, what they are truly in reach of is to further their experience of love. All day, everyday in every relationship, people are seeking true love. The need is universal and true for every human being. It is found in all people at all times and under all different circumstances.
Mother Teresa stated, “People throughout the world may look different or have a different religion, education or position, but they are all the same. . . . They are all hungry for love. The people you see in the streets of Calcutta are hungry in body, but the people in London or New York also have a hunger which must be satisfied. Every person needs to be loved.”
Mother Teresa stated, “People throughout the world may look different or have a different religion, education or position, but they are all the same. . . . They are all hungry for love. The people you see in the streets of Calcutta are hungry in body, but the people in London or New York also have a hunger which must be satisfied. Every person needs to be loved.”
True love is so ultimately valued that it encompasses and informs all other values. We may say it is the wellspring of value and the standard of all value. So good, so satisfying, so ambrosial and fulfilling is true love that Reverend Moon has said people are drawn to it like bees to nectar. What is more, having tasted it, they will not let it go.
He says, “If a bee is sucking the nectar from a flower, you can try to pull him away; but instead of letting go, his body will tear in half. He will never stop sucking the nectar." Selfless love is that delicious, that desperately desirable.
Return for Tomorrow's Post: What Stopped Humans From Perfect, God-like
This text is taken from the Textbook: Educating for True Love
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