The Family is Road to World Peace or Destruction

The family sets the cornerstone on the road to world

peace. The family also can destroy that road. The

family of true love becomes the foundation for creating

a society, nation, and world centered on true love.

―Sun Myung Moon

It is not too much to say that the future of human society lies in the quality of the love relationships experienced in the family.

It is true that how one is raised in the family will carry over not only into their relations in society, but also how they will treat their own family.

Therefore, the family has been referred to as the school of love – a school for how one will relate to others in their lifetime.

Everyone born into sin had imperfect parents who could not love them enough beyond their own preoccupations. This causes a lot of resentments from how one was raised leaving mental and emotional scars.

The relationships children encounter in the family are 'internal working models' for how they will interact in all subsequent relationships.

Beliefs, values and habitual patterns learned through the family have staying power throughout one's lifetime extrapolating into all social relationships which impact the community, the nation and the world.

Good relationships are the cornerstone of a peacefully running society.

The future of human society lies in the quality of love relationships experienced in the family.

When Barbara Bush was the First Lady, she addressed college graduates at Wellesley and emphasized the importance of relationships, especially family ones.

She said that more important than what goes on in the White House, is what goes on in their own houses. This point makes a deal of sense when we look closely at how the way people are in their family do impact the larger culture.

One direct example is how a writer in Hollywood may have not had good relationships with their parents or only lived in a one-parent home write movies about these struggles that influence a generation of children who watch their movie or television shows.

There is a high-trend in Hollywood of broken home families. Basically, a writer can only draw from their own home life and reality.

Family Breakdown

Family is important to the stability and peace within the social environment. When we look further at the effects of the family breakdown we see that the family of a father and mother and their biological children has been a resilient baseline for the children's success

Reverend Moon says, “Juvenile problems bring on public confusion. What is the cause of these problems? It almost always has to do with emotional issues that result from not having sound parents and brothers and sisters, and from unsound man-woman relationships.

“Considering this fact, where do we look for the clue to correct these destructive problems? It is in the family.”

Linda J. Waite, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, and Maggie Gallagher, with the Institute of

American Values, say in their book, The Case for Marriage: “On average, children of married parents are physically and mentally healthier, better educated, and later in life, enjoy more career success than children in other family settings.”

Children living with one parent or in stepfamilies are more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems than are children living in two-parent families.

Single-parent homes and homes of blended families may have children with aggression, alcohol and drug use, delinquent behaviors and low self-esteem, and suicidal thoughts.

Children who are not raised in a stable two-parent home have a higher level of behavioral problems and score lower on test scores.

Another study said, “Compared with peers in continuously married families, students who were in the disruption process scored lower in all four academic tests and in educational aspiration.”

Children who are in single-parent homes are among the poorest in all major demographic groups. Experts have described women and their children after divorce a “plunge into poverty.”

In societies as diverse as England and China, the same conclusions are reached: the family as a social institution is irreplaceable.

Family Breakdown and Crime

The break down in family affects the crime rates.

There has been a link between non-stable homes and social pathology found worldwide. Homes where the father was absent found that more of the boys grew up to be violent.

Sociologist David Courtwright argues that when men and boys embrace the norm of stable family life, violence and disorder decline, as evidenced by the sustained reduction in violent death rates during the mid-twentieth century marriage boom.

Other studies have shown that crime rates in general are directly related to the numbers of divorced people, single parents and single people in communities.

Domestic violence and abuse was more prevalent among couples who lived together nines times greater than homes where the couples were married.

Children were more likely to be sexually abused by their mother's boyfriend than their biological father who lived in the home.

Family life helps channel male aggressiveness into the constructive pursuits of creating, raising, protecting and supporting loved ones.

Males that are born and raised by parents who are married are less violent and susceptible to crime.

Children raised in stable homes form families of their own and become good citizens of society. They become husbands and fathers who restrain their aggressive impulses toward other males and learn how to cooperate on the job and form healthier habits which lead to a more peaceful and satisfying life.

Family Dysfunction

Social sciences once saw the family as unit to be flawed when studies showed that even in 'intact' families they showed problems that spread to the society level.

They believed that the family institution should be done away with all together. This is understandable wwhen we look at the evidence.

The fatal flaw of misdirected love that began in the first love relationship of the first human family has plagued the family, society, and the world ever since.

The family as an institution is superbly designed and works to benefit all involved which there is no other form of living capable of providing of giving.

Family dysfunction, even without divorce, is a serious detriment to peace.

The scars that children carry into adulthood from experiences from their parents takes a toll in life.

Old wounds that do not heal can perpetuate and multiply the offenses as people re-enact their childhood traumas by visiting these demons onto others possibly to their own children. This is a difficult cycle to break.

When these abused children rise to power positions over many others, they come to menace a whole hosts of people.

Alice Miller of The Natural Child Project did a detailed study of the brutal beatings Adolf Hitler received as a child at the hands of his father.

His father's beatings were regularly bloody leaving Hitler's psychological anguished and humiliated. This meshed with the agony and humiliation that the German people felt after World War I, solutions to their problems through violence was inevitable.

Miller adds that, “Countless human beings have already been killed in wars whose instigators didn’t want to realize they were carrying dynamite which they were constantly trying to get rid of at the expense of other people in order to take revenge for old, highly personal wounds.”

How the Four Realms of Heart in the Family Affect Society

Reverend Moon has observed:

When people who experience their grandparents’ deep love in their family come out into society—for example, the streets of New York—they will feel very warm toward the elderly people there, and the elderly people will treat them as their grandchildren.

“Feeling close to each other, they will communicate with each other using any method. Young people who have served their grandparents will help old people right away whenever they are in need of aid. When children who have received love from their parents go outside and meet people their parents’ age, they will feel very close and will try to talk with them and help them.

“When people who have a beautiful relationship with their brothers and sisters in their family go into society, they will easily get along with people and have close relationships with their neighbors.

“They will feel natural even in relating with the opposite sex, regarding them as brothers and sisterswithout any sexual desire or unsound ideas. The Kingdom of Heaven is built of families where you are able to experience

such loving relationships, centered upon God.

“The love between children and their parents sets the pattern for vertical or hierarchical relationships. In society, this would be any relationship where a person is in a subordinate position to someone in a position of greater authority.

A person’s willingness to receive and follow instructions, to obey with good will, to receive guidance from and support legitimate authority are first learned in the child’s relationship with his or her parents.

Social Relations as Extensions of Family Relations

Patriotism Grounded in Filial Piety

A child who has a positive relationship with their parents are more able to know the virtue of respect and support for rules, and the authority figures that uphold the laws and social institutions.

When a child is well-loved in the home, they are able to trust and be confident in authority figures. They know that such a submission will benefit them and will not detract from them as they know they will be deeply loved.

The justice and benevolence of authority is assumed, based on the justice and benevolence of authority exercised in the family.

Therefore, good parenting extrapolates into a positive introduction for one being a citizen of their community and nation.

Those who protect and shelter children, this transfers into the larger sphere of the nation.

The child who is well-loved responds to the nation's or his or her parent's call to take on more responsibility out of love for the whole.

A child's whose heart is well-nourished is more willing to be obedient and submit to our loving Parent, God.

Such people voluntarily serve the nation with love to the degree which they served and loved their parents when they were children.

Children form concepts of God from how their parents treated them.

People can see God as a personality of wrath or even creulty and may even be hated if their own parents displayed such a personality.

Children are more able to view God as a merciful being full of grace and support if their parents displayed these qualities.

The child’s ability to trust God and others in authority stems from how much the parent’s love reflects the love of God.

A child who received a balance of parental love grows up to love and serve God, yet challenges the person to an even greater spiritual growth.

Such a person learns to have true love for others from serving God who is unconditionally forgiving and supportive.

Such people are the normal backbone of society and are willingly giving of themselves to God's will and ways. They seek to make this world for Him a pleasurable place to dwell.

A World of Brothers and Sisters

The relationship siblings have in the home are the basis for all the relationships one encounters in society between peers.

Once a person fulfills this level of sibling's realm of heart they are a good friend, co-work, neighbor, and a person that is good to do business with. The person who is well-schooled by this realm of heart through relationships in the family, they are better prepared to cope.

China has the long-standing one-child policy where majority of the children grow up without siblings. This is the so-called 'little emperor syndrome' where the child becomes the center of the family's attention and is the sole recipient of their love and resources.

The children feel very special, but the Chinese have noticed an unhealthy side effect – spoiled children who are demanding like little rulers of their family home.

The good effects of having brothers and sisters is one learns how to share the family's resources, time, attention, transportation, etc.

Learning to share equally is one of the most important aspects of the sibling’s realm of heart, and it has tremendous social and political implications.

Learning how to share between siblings early in life trains them lays a foundation for fairness and equality in society.

The Declaration of Independence refers to how men and women should treat each other based on their common parentage of God.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Human rights are derived from common origins in the love of God, the Parent of all.

In other words, if humanity was to live by those words when they were written, we could have possibly lived in a heaven on earth ideal world by now.

Since we are all created by the same Parent, then all men and women are actually siblings in this human family. Therefore, there are equal claims that everyone be treated fairly.

Those who affirm God as their Parent, feel this sense of kinship with others and refuse to hurt or opress their brethren because they feel brotherly love for them and out of respect for the Father.

This is what it means to be a true citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

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This post was rewritten and derived from the religious textbook, "Educating for True Love", written by a team of writers to explain Reverend Sun Myung Moon's philosophy on love and marriage.