Exodus 20:5,6
"God created humankind for a reason. Why were we necessary? God needed to create humankind in order to fulfill His love. It is for the sake of love that human beings are the supreme creations."
Educating for True Love
True love has the highest value. To give and receive love may be more vital to life than breathing or eating. Yet true love does not come to us naturally without a lot of effort. It must be taught, learned and practiced.
As children, we must spend many years dependent on our parents. As we spend our childhood in immaturity, we learn how to interact with the world and provide for ourselves within it. We attend school to obtain knowledge about the world. We go to school, libraries, university and learn the fundamentals about life from our parents.
Yet have you ever thought that there is no formal school that provides education on how to love and to be loved?
How do we usually learn about love? Through painful experiences and trial and error. Because we do not have instructions on how to love, we are lost when it comes to loving one another Science and the arts progressed through the ages, but our wisdom about love is uneven and the growth of how humanity loves is slow at best.
To love and be loved is one of life's most intimidating challenges. Humanity should turn away from this ignorance. We will never have a world of peace without remedying the situation.
How do we learn about love? What school of thought can touch the depth of how to love someone that is hard to love?
Jesus taught how to love one another through loving others as we love ourselves. But why didn't this spread all over the world like wild fire and begin a world of peace? Was Jesus' painful death just for us to enjoy peace and love in the spirit world?
People need to embrace that learning about love is the most essential aspect of life in order for people to succeed. Counselors will testify that they help high-powered intellectuals and professional people who have qualifications and accolades, but breakdown because they are at a complete loss when it comes to their important personal relationships of love.
We also witness celebrities, politicians, businessmen with power, wealth and immense talent, but when it comes to their love lives, they fail just as much as the general public.
How is this possible? Why are we on a worldwide level lost when it comes to love relationships or all levels and how can we begin to fix this situation?
When should begin studying the original way, the true way we are to live our life. It begins with the understanding of the nature of true love and the nature of human beings who can only feel complete within love.
Only after we are well versed in the nature and practices of true love will we be able to comprehend the path we are to walk. A life that actually satisfies all the human desires and fulfills life's highest aspirations. Other words, we need to study the original idea God had for love and what it was to accomplish in our lives.
How is this possible? Why are we on a worldwide level lost when it comes to love relationships or all levels and how can we begin to fix this situation?
When should begin studying the original way, the true way we are to live our life. It begins with the understanding of the nature of true love and the nature of human beings who can only feel complete within love.
Only after we are well versed in the nature and practices of true love will we be able to comprehend the path we are to walk. A life that actually satisfies all the human desires and fulfills life's highest aspirations. Other words, we need to study the original idea God had for love and what it was to accomplish in our lives.
Understanding True Love
The most precious philosophy is to live for the sake of others.
—Sun Myung Moon
In order for us to begin to live in love, we need to first understand it. We may find just by trying to define love, this may seem as a difficult task?
The ancient Greeks divided love into numerous categories and described the various features of each:
"Eros was impassioned romantic attraction; philia was friendship; eunoia stood for general benevolence or good will; physike constituted kindness toward people of one’s own race. Xenike represented kindness to the guest or stranger. Agape love, which the Greeks defined as unselfish affection for others, became the keystone of Christianity and is a recognized feature of all the faiths of the world."
Agape love is called “compassion” in Buddhism and Hinduism and “human-heartedness” or jen in Confucian thought."
The ancient Greeks divided love into numerous categories and described the various features of each:
"Eros was impassioned romantic attraction; philia was friendship; eunoia stood for general benevolence or good will; physike constituted kindness toward people of one’s own race. Xenike represented kindness to the guest or stranger. Agape love, which the Greeks defined as unselfish affection for others, became the keystone of Christianity and is a recognized feature of all the faiths of the world."
Agape love is called “compassion” in Buddhism and Hinduism and “human-heartedness” or jen in Confucian thought."
In addition, we find more categories of love within the context of a family. We have the devotion of parents toward their children and the affection that the children return toward their parents. Then the relationship of siblings who care about one another in a unique way. Then the profound love grandparent hold toward their grandchildren. Then the love shared between spouses is a world unto itself.
All these types of love have their distinctive features.
To get a clearer understanding and grasp the concept of love we need an all-around definition of love that encompasses all the forms of love. "Live for the sake of others" is the definition the author of the Divine Principle provides. This is expressed as to live in order to benefit others.
God had created each individual not for their own individual sake, but for the benefit of others and the whole. We do not see this type of society. We have grown into a society of individualism and living for myself and the need for others to live just for us. This is against principle and why the world is turning upside down in these last days.
This definition is clear as it helps to weed out the aspects of love that are not true. Knowing that we are meant to live for the whole and others, aspects of selfish love that leads to despair rather than joy will be easier to see. Knowing this is how humanity should live showcases the specific attributes of how true love looks and feels and how far we are from achieving this as a society.
Then, this definition of love raises issues:
What are the qualities of true love? Where does it originate? Who are the "others" that are to be loved? And how about the individual factor into living only for others?
True love begins with the interaction of relationships with others. Did you know God also requires an "other" to fulfill His love? He cannot have love all on His own. He needs an object in which to share His love. He needs human beings as His love partners to share in the glory of His creation. This is how He designed the world of creation. Even God needs a relationship in order to experience love to the fullest.
If God needs love, so does His creation. Everything in creation was created for the purpose of love. Every human yearns for love no matter how high in society they have come. Nature follows the order of love.
"As author Sherwood Anderson said, 'Two oddly sensitive human atoms' find one another, cling together and think, 'Here is this other'."
Love fulfills its purpose only in the presence of another person.
The Bible emphasizes that when one loves God, it is always coupled with the love of others. When Jesus showed his love for God, we see the countless accounts of how he treated and visited the sick and the lonely. We don't hear about Jesus just praying unceasingly to God only, but taking action to love God's people.
The Old Testament law and the prophets greatest commandments were to love God and to love one's neighbor.
Jesus spoke about forgiveness of others before approaching the altar and that God only forgives those who forgive others. Jesus told his followers also not to judge others, because the same measuring stick they used to judge others, God would use to judge them as well.
Also, Jesus mentioned the necessity for believers to seek communion not only with God, but with one another when he said that he would be present when two or more gathered together in his name. Loving others is always coupled with loving God well.
This is confirmed by the words (Hadith) of the prophet Muhammad:
“On the day of judgment God Most High will say, “Son of Adam, I was sick and you did not visit Me.” He will reply, “My Lord, how could I visit Thee when Thou art the Lord of the Universe!” He will say, “Did you not know that My servant so-and so was ill and yet you did not visit him? Did you not know that if you had visited him you soon would have found Me with him?”
“On the day of judgment God Most High will say, “Son of Adam, I was sick and you did not visit Me.” He will reply, “My Lord, how could I visit Thee when Thou art the Lord of the Universe!” He will say, “Did you not know that My servant so-and so was ill and yet you did not visit him? Did you not know that if you had visited him you soon would have found Me with him?”
Russian thinker Vladimir Solovyov said that love
“forces us with all our being to acknowledge for another the same absolute central significance which, because of the power of our egoism, we are conscious of only in our selves . . . shifting the very center of our personal lives.”
Reverend Moon calls this shifting of center from self to others a “revolution,” and holds that such a revolution toward true love is necessary for happiness and peace.
Today's text was taken from the Textbook: Educating for True Love, Explaining Sun Myung Moon's Morality, Family and Society.
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