New Sexual Revolution, but For God

Primeval act of adultery is at the root of all the myriad distortions of sexual love that have plagued humanity
from the beginning: prostitution, infidelity, rape, incest, fetishes, pornography and sexual addictions.

Even though sex is an intimate act between two adults, it greatly affects culture and the family.

Woodstock was the first liberation for Americans to break away from their parent's traditions such as man and woman marriages, sex only within marriage, one partner for life.

These were all confronted and challenged in order to free one's sexually which they believed religion and marriage placed rules upon.

If one is to look in history, they will see that this event had a negative effect not only on the family, but on the whole nation.  A nation that was built upon the Puritan faith and laws written based upon the Bible by men who proclaimed God as their Creator.

We are slowly declining as a powerful nation, not by outside forces, but by forces within the four walls of individual homes.

The loosening of morals did not bring our country freedom, but brought on enslavement to selfish desires, far from America's unselfish religious beliefs.


Self-Destructive World

Humanity developed corrupt ways of loving through the first family which passed it on to the tribe, society and world levels.

Therefore, civilizations have not correctly learned or understand true love is the dominant way of life.

In the Genesis story of Adam and Eve, the two brothers try to subjugate one another.  Instead of gaining power, prestige or property naturally with love, these therefore became prizes to be conquered by those who sacrificed others for themselves.

Self-centered love spawned a self-destructive world. This is the essence of hell.

Our world went from God's ideal of Heaven on Earth to one of anguish and suffering.

The misuse of love in the first family is the basis for all sexual abuse: prostitution, infidelity, rape, incest, fetishes, porn and sexual addictions.

Great nations have been brought down by the illusive power of romantic love and lust and is the basis for the tensions that break families apart.  This spreads to the community level and relentlessly works against any harmony in society.

Promiscuous sex leaves one lonely, disconnected, depletes their spirit and afflicts the heart and mind.



Establishing a New Tradition

The misuse of sexual love at the origin of human civilization has disconnected the true relationship between the mind and body, man and woman and God and humanity.

God brought about religion in order to teach His children to stop this destructive behavior through the power of His divine Wor; through teaching about sexual morality.

God's commandment to not eat the fruit was given to the first man.  This original word has been given time and again over history through diverse religions.




When men and women uphold and preserve chastity, they are safeguarding the universe.”


Rev. Sun Myung Moon

These toxic patterns of love today must be turned around.

To redeem sexuality and true love as an object of purity, God must reside with joy in each family and marriage bed.

This is the core reason Rev. Moon focuses on the blessing of marriage as a way to bring society back to true love and the lineage of God.

Some elements to practice to reverse the Fall, human nature one must dedicate their union to their Heavenly Parent, practice chastity, promise to live for family and humanity.

In the case of young people, they should consult their godly parents when selecting a mate.

The mythical story of Pandora related the last entity to come out of Pandora's box was Hope, which represented the womb.

This implies that through love between spouses it would bring the ultimate answer.

Christianity has a similar message of a promise of a Redeemer to be born from a pure, faithful woman who is the reverse of the first mother who misused her womb.

To restore God's original way of entering into marriage, we can educate the next generation with the matters of love, sex and how to prepare for marriage.

Even in this modern day of technology, God's eternal Word is still relevant to save His children who make up this world.



Purity and Preparation for Marriage

Traditionally, parents on the whole guided their children along a clear, defined path to meet a mate and get married.

Centuries ago in the West, parents arranged marriages while their children were still teenagers.

Not long ago people started dating in order to select their own mate for marriage.  In either case, singles were expected to wait for sex until after they married.  These traditions have been lost by the modern world.

People no longer date in order to find a mate to marry, but simply to have fun and find temporary companionship in a lonely world.

There are no clear-cut correct guidelines or rules that help steer couples directly to the altar.

Sex has become a casual expression that is no longer connected to marriage.  Adolescents indulge in sex at an earlier and earlier age.

Parenthood is no longer tied to marriage and the widespread use of birth control and abortions have severed sex from the ideal of parenthood as well.

The West has become a 'divorce culture' where young people are less confident to marry.  Adults now advocate that they have to get through their first marriage and anticipate a second one from the onset.

There is no longer a stigma attached to having sex outside of marriage.  Couples live together in place of marriage.

There are many powerful forces that conspire against young people preserving their virginity.  Media, societal pressures to date and live together make it hard for young people to believe that they can give their bodies and souls to one person for life.

No matter how humanity tries to change the dynamics of marriage, one person for life is imprinted in the heart and conscience by the Creator.

People may rationalize that they need to have sex freely with many people, not just one partner for life.

Still, those with a sexual past will feel the pangs of guilt or heartbreak after each encounter, or they numb these innate feelings with excess in alcohol or other activities.

Reverend Moon asked an audience what is the purpose of marriage? “It is in order to realize the purpose of (human) creation.”

In the modern, fast-paced world, people think that marriage is just a piece of paper or unnecessary because the divorce rate is so high.

Nothing in the world will satisfy one's yearning to live with honor and significance, to be loved unconditionally and give their children a secure union with their spouse even if they try to live otherwise.

Even the most liberal person still may find they are hurt when their teenage daughter comes home pregnant, or their child who can't overcome the heartbreak of their parent's divorce and so on.  Because God made society to be a certain way, we suffer when we go far from His original ideal world.


Desirable and Attainable?

To return to God's Will, youth and single people need to believe again in the value of purity and marriage.

They need to be sold on the beauty of reserving sex for marriage and why it is necessary.  They also need to see that they are capable of being successful in each enterprise and that they can follow the strict practices against the social norms.

One young woman sums up her sense of this when she writes, “It is sexuality dedicated to hope, to the future, to marital love, to children, and to God.”

When a young person can view matrimony as desirable, then saving sex for only marriage has meaning.

They must see it as an attainable goal that they can reach even in  society of second and third marriages are celebrated.

 Many adults do not leave a good impression of marriage to the next generation: “I want to be married, but most people I know have divorced or given up on it. I don’t know how I could do better.”

Therefore, they give up their virginity and dreams of a lasting marriage in exchange for a live-in lover as the closest commitment they think they can achieve for a long time.

Young and single people need to be taught how to be responsible regarding their strong sexual desires and how achieve the life purpose of marriage.

Lessons can be gleaned from family relationships to consider when and how to meet a godly mate, basic relationship insights and skills to inner qualities.


Education for Character, Abstinence and Marriage Preparation

When young people are ignorant about the realities of love and marriage, they are more susceptible to believe the myths about chastity and their capability to have a successful marriage.

Also, when one lacks social skills, it makes lasting love that much more an unattainable goal and makes sexual temptation that more difficult to resist.

Parents, teachers and pastors need to learn the right techniques to pass on to the single people they care for and also to enhance their own marriages and relationships.

To guide young people toward marriage and teach to guard their chastity is a multi-faceted endeavor which needs contributions from the family and community.

Young people do not have any help where traditional values in developed countries left them feeling a profound void in the love department. There has been a rise in education for character, sexual abstinence and recently  marriage and relationship education.

Character education has been a rising trend in many societies.

Elementary schools and universities, religious and non-religious settings alike, focus on moral growth of students and nurture emotional and social skills.

Some methods include ethics in the classroom teaching, creating a more caring school community, learning projects and using cooperative learning techniques.

Many see character education as a influence on society which promotes better relationships, including between the sexes.

Formal education about sexuality has been a growing trend worldwide.

The focus is moreso on the physical consequences of sexual relations; the primary purpose is not in support of purity.

Abstinence education has emerged to respond to the need to promote traditional values.  The emphasis is on reserving physical intimacy for marriage only.

Over the last 40 years, science learned what makes marriages succeed and fail.

These have evolved into programs which impart knowledge and skills that are complementary to the guidance which is offered in faith and family settings.

There are judges and clergy in certain cities that will only marry a couple who have received premarital education and counseling.

In the United States, several states and cities have mandated marriage education for all high school students.

Such courses concern personal enrichment are increasingly common on campuses as well.  Better communication skills and training one how to deal with conflict is the hallmark of such programs.


Return for Tomorrow's Post: How Bad Relationships Affect Children


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

Children Need God, Too

Growth in the Child’s Sphere

God created the family as a school of love to naturally influence people to be other-centered and pull them away from their self-centerdness.

Each person is required to give up more and more the love of just self and give more to others in order to experience fulfillment.

The family school of love works step by step naturally to pull people out of self-centeredness into other-centeredness. This process begins in the child's realm.

A child learns to obey and control impulses, including the aggressive ones, out of love for their parents and a strong desire for their approval.

The child learns to take care of things, clean up, prevent messes, do their homework, and respect others and property.

As Fraiberg writes, “There are obligations in love even for little children. Love is a given, but it also

earned. At every step of the way in development, a child is obliged to give up territories of his self-love in order to earn parental love and approval.”

To relate well with his or her parents, children need to relate well and kindly to siblings and playmates.

A child learns that his good relationship with his parents depends in part how well he or she treats his or her brothers or sisters, classmates, and friends.

As they grow, the 'horizontal' relationship to their parents takes on a life and significance of its own, even though they are never fully separated in a relationship from them.

Adolescent Children

As children try to define their identities and emotional boundaries as they grow to adolescence, the relationship to please their parents may become stormy and difficult.

Influences outside the family hold sway as adolescence forge relationships to the larger society and world.

As their family's moorings loosen, children may become emotionally tossed around, and experience great highs and lows.

It is important for parents to continue to nourish and assert this main bond of parent/child and the values it represents and recognize the growing importance of their peers and their child's independent identities.

Parents should do this to the sacrifice of their child's peer's influence and some of their child's decision-making power. In order for them to continue to growing in the child's realm of heart this is necessary.

“Our son was succeeding academically and socially in public school,” recounts Mona, a mother of three. “It was the social success that worried us! He’s sweet and smart and a good athlete, and girls called him, asked him for dates, and to go steady with them.

“Our son knew our standard on early dating, and he tried hard to withstand the peer pressure, but it was definitely confusing for him during this vulnerable time of his life.

“When we told him we were enrolling him in a religious school where students’ families and the faculty shared our values, he was upset at first. But soon he underwent a transformation.

“He became more and more responsible and, in this supportive environment, his faith grew and grew. I thank God, for many reasons, that we as parents made that tough decision.”

One pastor, Dave, is in favor of parents taking a strong stand when their children may not be going in the right direction. “Taking a kid out of school and finding him a new one, grounding him or doing whatever else you need to do to pull him up short—that might look like shutting him down,” he says.

“But in fact, it’s giving him the possibility of a whole new life. In almost every case I’ve seen where the parents took a strong stand, it worked.”

Dave also commented that children will sense their parents deep love for them with such actions and respond with gratitude.

This is an illustration of the two points of the child's realm of heart shown during adolescence: First, it demonstrates that the relationship with parents is the primary one superseding. 

Also, directing relationships with peers and this vertical relationship with parents and their parents' values are crucially important to their growth.

Second, it shows that adolescence is a time when the young people mind questions everything and needs to be directed toward God.

When we look at adolescence from a spiritual point of view, there is more than the child forming a separate identity from one's parents in psychological terms. It involves expanding the sphere of children's love to include the ultimate Parent, God.

The fulfillment of the child’s realm of heart is to relate to God with filial piety.

This truly means to respond to God with love, faith and obedience like that of a loving, trusting, responsible child.

“We never know the love of the parent 'till we become parents ourselves.”

Henry Ward Beecher made this observation which highlights how filial love of a child evolves through growing and facing the responsibilities that come with being an adult.

A new understanding and sympathy for parent's roles come as sons and daughters become a spouse, a parent, the breadwinner, a middle-aged caretaker of others and a responsible community member.

As sons and daughters rise to the more advanced realms of heart, spousal and parental realms, they grow to appreciate those who had these responsibilities before which they now face.

When children expand to a higher level of heart, they will appreciate through understand and service to their parents.

The long accumulation of a child’s debt to his or her parents begins to be repaid with gratitude.

There may be the time when the child grows up and becomes his or her own parents caretaker.

Some parents become a child again and lean heavily on their sons and daughter's strength. At these times, they assume the parental role toward his or her own parents. 

 Changing their diapers, paying old debts, settling the family estate and becoming the patriarch or matriarch of the family while urging their parents to take a rest.

When parents become elderly, the child's world/realm of heart comes full circle.

As one woman said: 

"As a young Catholic I was inspired by the saints. I had always wanted to do things like work with Mother Teresa in India, but most of my life has not been so glamorous. After college I became a teacher in an elementary school. 

"And then my mother had a stroke and I had to drop out of teaching and help her for two years; bathe her, care for her bedsores, cook, pay the bills, run the house. At times I wanted to complete these responsibilities and get back to my spiritual life. Then one morning it dawned on me—I  was doing the work of Mother Teresa, and I was doing it in my own home.

A child's love which is mature may involve taking up tasks to fulfill their parent's unrealized dreams.

Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowsky, who created the portraits on Mt. Rushmore, accepted a commission in 1947 offered by Lakota chief Standing Bear to carve a massive tribute to the great Native American chief Crazy Horse out of a mountain in South Dakota.

Knowing how much the project meant to the Native Americans who had had their sacred Black Hills violated by the Mt. Rushmore project, he determined not only to do a bust, but to do a full figure of a man on horseback.

This bust was going to be ten times larger than his Mt. Rushmore project. He dedicated decades to the project, but left it unfinished after he died in 1982.

His children comforted him before his death and committed to bring his dream project to completion.

This is an example of children's love by becoming a person who makes his or her parents proud.

Confucius said, “True filial piety consists in successfully carrying out the unfinished work of our forefathers and transmitting their achievements to posterity.”

This was echoed by Thomas Macaulay, Western poet, when he wrote:

“And how can man die better than facing fearful odds for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods?”

The person the child becomes as an adult is a gift laid at the altar of his or her parents’ love.

A child's mature heart is reflected in his or her relationship with God.

“There is a common saying, 'What you are is a gift from God. What you become is your gift to Him.”

When we return appreciation and devotion to God for all He has done for us throughout our life and history this reflects His nature. 

 It also makes His dreams, concerns and tasks our own which are hallmarks of filial piety and a true child's heart toward our ultimate Parent.

Return for Tomorrow's Post:

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 family and love.

Advantages of Marriage

A man and woman will learn from each other through their union things about themselves, humanity and our Creator that can not be known in any other way.


“Man is born to meet woman and woman is born to meet man.  And man and woman together are born to combine with a higher level of love, God’s love. Neither man nor woman can touch God’s higher love by themselves.”

This means that when a man weds, his woman is a kind of savior in countless ways.  Just as a husband is like her personal messiah.  This is the where the foundation for spouses to have inexpressible gratitude for one another.

Oneness between a man and a woman is relative.  First, they have the deal with the inherited legacy of conflict between men and women.  Then there is the inherent contradiction between partner's words and their actual deeds that makes true love itself a great struggle.  This is why when masculine and feminine become one, it remains a grand challenge as uniting the mind and body.



The Rewards of Commitment

In a husband and wife relationship, research supports the power of having continual investment.  A study found that couples whose relationship was distressed that almost 8 out of 10 reported being content in their marriage after they persevered for five more years.

Those who gave up on their marriage and decided to divorce, they were not any happier the ones who stayed married in their peer group, or those who even remarried.

This information reveals the importance of sticking things through and staying commit meted.  If people remained through the ups and downs, this investment will surely yield fruit.

“One advantage of marriage,” notes author Judith Viorst, “is that when you fall out of love with each
other, it keeps you together until maybe you fall in again.”

The heartbreaks and hardships that accompany any long-term relationship can turn into an element of deep bonding.


“I did not even want to deal with all the difficulties in my marriage. It was easier just to put on a game face, have a few drinks and dive deeper into my job,” one man remembers. “But my pastor forced me to say some things to my wife that needed saying, and to face what I was doing wrong too. Now I look back at that time as a period that made us a lot closer.”

The Bible encourages couples to love each other in a proper way - as “joint heirs of the grace of life..in order that your prayers may not be hindered. (1 Peter 3.7 RSV)

The oneness between spouses is a lightning rod for divine blessing.

At the same time, when a man and woman unite in deep abiding love, the joy that is created and prosperity they share from the blessing will spread to their children, all who know them, the greater human community and the Creator Himself.


Identifying with their gender community


Societies used to have rites of initiation when a boy was transitioning into manhood aor girls into womanhood so that they youth could solidify their gender identity.

In modern society, boys and girls still participate in single-gender team sports, or clubs like the Boys and Girls Scouts, to give challenges and opportunities to win respect among their elders and peers.

The military still serves in this traditional way for young men.

Even after marriage, men and women both continue to receive empowerment and comfort when they are in the company of their same-sex friends.

When they are joking around together, this characterizes the banter of male buddies.  They give silent respect and honor one another which in turn renews them.

Likewise, the “girl talk’ between women is a reassuring reinforcement of a sense of connection and support in their lives.

This is why both sexes need to enjoy the company of same-sex company on a regular basis to ‘retreat and regroup’ to strengthen their ability to give to the opposite-sex individuals in their lives.



Unification through Marriage



The ultimate unification of masculine and feminine takes place in marriage and in making a family.


When a husband and wife hold each other, their children will understand and appreciate the opposite sex.

To the woman, her husband and sons represent masculinity in all phases of development.

Similarly, the man embraces all femininity through his love for his wife and daughters. Thus marriage and family life provide the fascinating ongoing adventure of bonding and integration between masculinity and femininity.

Marriage and family life thus makes men and women into a better mirror of the divine. 

“In the image of God he created him; male and female he created them,” the Bible reminds us; man and woman together echoes the Creator’s own “wedded” nature (Genesis
1.27).




Hindu scripture speaks of the original Self, the Creator, splitting in two to make man and woman. Thus each is “like half of a split pea” (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.3).

Such a couple is a full mirror of the Godhead. Indeed, Reverend Moon characterizes the married couple as the smallest unit of humanity, in the sense of fulfilling the purpose of human creation as God’s complete reflection and love partner.

The love between a man and woman can be uniquely edifying because they are complementary in physique and psyche.  They can feel ‘as one’.  They can feel knit together in mind, heart and body the same way same-sex friends never can.

When man and woman give into marriage in heart and body, their “humanity is rejoined and fulfilled,” in the words of philosopher Michael Novak.


The result is a certain “distinctive honesty, realism, and wisdom taught by each sex to the other.”19 A man and woman learn through their union things about themselves, humanity and the Creator that can be known no other way.

“Man is born to meet woman and woman is born to meet man,” says Reverend Moon. “And man and woman together are born to combine with a higher level of love, God’s love.

Neither man nor woman can touch God’s higher love by themselves.

In this sense, a man’s wedded woman is a kind of savior in countless ways, just as a woman’s husband is like her personal messiah. This is the basis of the inexpressible gratitude spouses often feel towards each other.


Potential for oneness

Because men and women are indeed made for each other, given sufficient time and effort, the unity of heart between a man and woman is to be expected. The magnetism between masculinity and femininity can overcome differences. Since their Origin is an integrated whole, they too can integrate into wholeness.

Even though such an idea is hard to reconcile with popular notions of romance, it is the ordinary experience of the millions of couples over countless generations who were strangers when married and who grew to deeply love each other.

This is captured in the memorable lyrics of the song from “Fiddler on the Roof,” when Tevye reminisces about his arranged marriage to Golde, his wife, and says to her,

But my father and my mother said we’d learn to love each other

And now I’m asking, Golde, ‘Do you love me?’

After protesting that for “Twenty-five years my bed is his; If that’s not love, what is?,” she concedes that indeed she does.

And so between two people who may not have been attracted to each other at first.

Recalls Ann Meara, half of the long-married comedy team, Stiller and Meara, “Was it love at first sight? It wasn’t then—but it sure is now.”23 This may not be the self-conscious and passionate ardor of young lovers, but it is a deeply rooted, comfortable kind of caring and unity not unlike the attachment a person has to his or her own arm.


Continual Devotion

For this reason, a sixth principle for true love is Investing towards Oneness.

Ultimately the Creator represents the highest and original purpose. Those who center their relationship upon God invite Him to manifest Himself and His beauty, truth and goodness in the partnership and its fruits.

Examples are endless, since this is the dynamic behind all productive
relationships, even in the inanimate world.

Protons and electrons have opposite charges that attract each other. They interact
as subject and object partners, driven by atomic law that contains a higher purpose, and create a new existence, a hydrogen atom.

A professor as the subject partner engages in give and take with her students as object partners, based on the curriculum as their shared purpose, resulting in an enriching learning experience for all.

A band comes together to express their common vision of music, and the members interact with one another in lead and backup roles.

Their degree of unity is directly reflected in their music. A coffee shop manager in the leader position hires counter help in the supportive role.

The manager treats the workers well and the counter servers are diligent and loyal, resulting in a productive business that realizes the shared goal of profits and service to the community.

A pastor prays with his youth ministry staff as his helpers and together they craft a marriage preparation ministry that leads many young people through purity into matrimony and a deeper commitment to God.

Implicit in this observation is that whenever any relationship is unfruitful—or destructive, as is possible in the case of human relations—certainly there is a problem with the nature of the urpose or the interaction or both.

“My high school football team was undefeated in our state,” one young man recalls. “But sorry to say, the victories went to our heads.

We lost our focus on doing our best and got complacent.

At the same time, a lot of us starting worrying about showing off for the college scouts and we forgot about the team.

When we got to the regionals, we blew every game.”

In other words, the team lost its vertical purpose and the horizontal interactions also deteriorated.



Return for Tomorrow's Post:

This post was rewritten and derived from the religious textbook “Educating for True Love” written by a team of writers to explain the philosophy of Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

Four Worlds of Heart in Family

All the evidence from the previous posts show that there is something important for human development in the very structure of the family.

Reverend Sun Myung Moon summarizes that roles in the family create a certain 'realm of heart'. This heart fostered between the relationships between mother-father, parents-children, siblings, and God and family becomes a school for love.

People learn about love through being sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers.

“The family teaches by its form,” as educator Gabriel Moran explains it.

Each realm of heart reflects an aspect of God's love.

God is the Parent of all parents. He has the absolute love that surpasses the love of even model parents. With that love He can embrace all the parents of the world. In fact, God created man from His parental love.

Without that love from God, we die.

God is always ready to give the type of love that is best suited for the person who is seeking a relationship with Him.

If we are ready for parental love from God, He is prepared to give it. If we want brotherly love, conjugal love, or the love of a friend from Him, He is ready with these.

It is so amazing and wonderful that God who is a God of love protects us in every possible relationship

When we fulfill each realm of heart (children's realm, siblings realm conjugal realm, and the parent's realm) we grow to resemble God's many-faceted love.

Each type of love that is exhibited in the family forms a world of experiences and responsibilities that becomes a matrix for the growth of heart.

Lessons in Loving Others

The family works to school people to have other-centered love through providing crucial relationships to learn from. Each realm of heart involves relating to significant others or partners in love.

In the child's ream of heart, the parents become their most significant other. The sibling's realms of heart, their brothers/sisters and peers are increasingly significant. Within the spouse's realms of heart, one has a relationship with the opposite sex who are emotionally and physically committed for the rest of one's life.

Children are the significant other in the parent's realm of heart.

True love begins with the infant responding to a parent in the child’s realm of love.

A baby is not alone in the universe. He or she is compelled to bond with others by all the forces within.

Many theorists conclude that a baby's attachment to their parent is a necessary building block of relating to others with empathy for the rest of their life.

The quality of the interactions between a parent and child is an essential love relationship that gives each a lifelong perspective on others.

When brothers and sisters interact with their siblings, this realm of heart offers a new territory where the growing child must accommodate others. He or she now shares the parents' universe with their sibilings.

One learns they must not hurt their sibling but must wait their turn and share.

In turn, the relationship of brother and sister in the family can offer joy of companionship and expand each child's love into new dimensions.

When a child must cooperate with their playmates or children at school, issues of fair play, justice, and honesty come to the foreground as he or she learns that there are yet others who need respect and accommodations.

Through experiencing the sibling's realm of heart, a child begins to relate to the world of their peers. The repertoire they obtain through these relationship expand dramatically, as well as their heart for others in society as they mature.

Maturity brings the world of the opposite sex into sharp focus.

A newlywed couple often feel that they are the only two people in the world.

This is how rich the world or realm they occupy together. It is an exclusive, intensely exciting, deeply affecting circle of relationships in which each will learn to love someone who is truly their 'other'. 

They will experience a different emotion and mental make-up than with others they encounter.

When one becomes a parent, he or she enters a realm of relationship with a child that opens up a whole new world of loving and caring.

The parent's realm of love is perhaps the most transformative relationship that resembles the heart and love of God the most closely.

With their children, parents have a dependent 'other' who needs and demands more than anyone else has demanded in a lifetime. They must be attendant to their growth. As a parent, rewards and blessings are enormous as well as anxieties and emotional taxes.

The heart grows here earnestly through other-centered love.

Grandparent's love is an extension of the parent's realm of heart. This love has its own special gifts to bestow and receive from the grandparents.

When we grow and understand the inner workings of the family through experiencing these four realms of heart, we grow to appreciate the brilliantly designed vehicle of emotional, moral and spiritual growth.

The impact of your family does not stop within its own relationships either. The lessons one learns from their interactions in the family is profound and far-reaching. It extrapolates into a person's orientation toward the rest of the world.

Ethicist James Q. Wilson said, “The family is a continuing locus of reciprocal obligations that constitute an unending school for moral instruction . . . . We learn to cope with the people of this world because we learn to cope with the members of our family.”

Photos courtesy of : freedigitalphotos.net 

Return for Tomorrow’s Post:

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.

A Loving Family Expands to Loving World

The ideal family alone can serve as the building block of the Kingdom of God.

—Sun Myung Moon

What if every human was raised in a godly, ideal home? 

Where brothers and sisters respected each other, mother and father were devoted to another and were the examples of true love? Abuse, fighting and separation did not exist?

We can easily see that this would mature into the Kingdom of Heaven. Such people raised in a family would understand how to love others in the world based on the teachings of exemplary love within their own family.

When they encountered younger people their sisters and brother's age they would treat them just the same. When they encountered the elderly who are their grandparents' age, they would treat them just like their own flesh and blood.

The family is the primary means through which most people learn about love.

Unfortunately, this is also how evil entered the world.

Through the first family of Adam and Eve, thousands of generations later followed in their footsteps. What if Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel were to have followed in God's ways? 

What kind of society would we be born into in this day and age?

In order to cultivate true love over a lifetime, we need to establish loving relationships and family. The family packs a double punch in a life of love more than any other relationship.

The way one was raised in their family trains him or her in love as a child and sibling. This leads them to their own personal growth and maturity. 

Then, each individual based on their upbringing, takes what they learn to cultivate love in a new family with a spouse and children.

All of these experiences come full circle to educate a person in true love.

Many religions and moral traditions equate a loving relationship in the family as a template for a person's relationship with God.

In the Talmud, for instance, it is written, “When a man honors his father and mother, God says, ‘I regard it as though I had dwelt among them and they had honored me” Kiddushin, 30b

Jesus was the first to encourage his followers to think and relate with God as their father.

Confucius said, “Surely proper behavior toward parents and elder brothers is the trunk of goodness,” Analects 1.2 and “Filial piety is the root of all virtue” Classic of Filial Piety

Hinduism, Shinto, Buddhism, Islam and the traditional Native American and African faiths also echoes this sentiment.

Family life may be seen as a vocation for growing closer to God and allowing Him/Her to manifest and dwell in true love.

A Buddhist master stated that the family is demanding of members responsibilities as any monastery.

From this viewpoint, the family can be a vehicle of holiness and an instrument of salvation.

People within a community of faith refer to one another as 'brothers and sisters' or 'brethren.' Priests lead the members of the Catholic Church and they call him 'Father', and the title of the head of the Catholic Church is the “Holy Father.” 

Such communities are led by nuns who are called 'Sister' and sometimes 'Mother'.

The importance of the family in raising good human beings is corroborated by the findings of social scientists.

Family enhances human and moral development in numerous and positive ways.

Social scientists and policymakers uphold the family as the crucial factor in the physical as well as the mental, emotional, and moral well-being of the children. Therefore, the family is the backbone of social order.

Unfortunately, the status of the family in society in our times have come into question.

Even though times have changed, the fundamental patterns of father, mother and children are still in place showing that the members of the family has basic need for its structure.

Couples live together and raise their children even if they are from previous relationships. Even though there are are the non traditional relationships of same-sex couples, there is still a masculine and feminine role in each relationship. 

Many still want to have their union recognized through a traditional marriage and even adopt children.

Those who do not have a family form surrogate and substitute families. Gangs are joined by youngsters in order to get the same strength and protection they get from the feeling of a family from their 'home boys'.

A convicted criminal leader of the L.A. Crips notorious gang had said in an interview that he turned toward the streets because he did not have a proper family upbringing. 

The same with homeless children, or teenagers of the street, they also form 'families' and band together.

Still, none of these substitutes for the missing qualities in their own homes can fulfill the same benefits as a basic family structure of a father, mother with their biological children.

As far back as our knowledge takes us, anthropologist Margaret Mead affirmed about the centrality of the traditional family, human beings have always lived in families. There is no period where this was not so.

Even though modern society has made proposals for change and there have been actual experiments to dissolve the family or displace the traditional roles, human society still reaffirms their dependence on the family as the basic unit of human living. This is a family with a father, mother and children.

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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 the philosophy of Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

Center on Higher Purpose for Unity

The previous two posts spoke about finding unity through working toward a greater purpose. It is not easy to live our lives for a purpose that is beyond ourselves.

Even though it seems that it would be naturally perfect for members of a family to favor their family over other, employees to put the company ahead of themselves, citizens work for the needs of the community and countries put the whole of humanity ahead of themselves, unfortunately, we are beings who are not governed by the impulses of our original godly heart.

We witness harmony in nature, but seldom see it within human life. Even though we are God's greatest creation, people are self-destructive.

When an individual is abused by the collective, this aggravates the fear. 

Unfortunately, unlike nature, people needs constant reminders and incentives in order to maintain the right priorities. On the other hand, the impulse to give to the greater good is also strong.

There is a natural fear to give too much and thus being used, this is counterbalanced by the fear of being useless. It is horrible when one feels they are not needed for beauty, goodness and truth in the world.

Being of service to others, being allied with an important end is a fundamental need.

A person feels their value is derived in general not only from personal integrity and the affection of loved ones, but also from having an 'objective worth', a value that comes from benefiting the public good.

Eleanor Roosevelt commented about citizenship:

“When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.”

Many have come to realize this truth from experience through combating sadness or stagnation. Therefore, they actively reach out to help someone else instead of wallow in their own world.

Such people know that as long as they pursue happiness or personal growth it will elude them; only when they give to service to a greater goal do these blessings find them.

The heart and conscience pushes each of us to give our time, energy and heart for a worthy purpose. They push us to be like the wax of the candle that gives itself to sustain the light and warmth of the flame.

Humanity has too often denied God's concerns and welfare of the whole for its own petty interests.

To reverse this wrong direction, sometimes the heart and conscience call people to deny themselves to an extraordinarily degree.

Who can explain the course which Mohandas Gandhi gave of himself? Such a sacrifice of sacrifice of self confounds worldly thinking.

There is clearly a deep joy that rewards those who have killed their smaller selves in order to become a part of a greater endeavor.

Relationship as Higher Purpose

The most basic shared projects is the relationship itself.

Members of the family, teammates and business partners often wisely sacrifice for the sake of their alliance, for the 'we-ness”.

This 'we-ness' has a vitality that depends on how much the participants favor the interest of the relationship over their own personal interests to reach their personal goals and meet the individual needs through the relationship instead of around or in spite of it. Any sports team that is good, understands this.

“In order to have a winner, the team must have a feeling of unity,” says legendary University of Alabama Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant. “Every player must put the team first—ahead of personal glory.”

People who have been married for a while know this too. They make many sacrifices for the marriage. When a couple makes love within a caring marriage, this is a metaphor for such an idea.

Each partner seeks to satisfy the other and ultimately come to surrender to their higher union.

Rather than lose anything in this surrender, each person gains deep joy and a meaningful connection through it.

In families that are resilient, researcher and counselor Ross Campbell fond that there is an overarching moral or spiritual purpose that binds the members together.

It is a paradox that centering on something higher than the family also strengthens the bonds within the family itself.

A family finds they have a rapport with one another when they give their time and energy to others through altruism such as helping out the neighbors, hosts guests or volunteering for the community.

Such families build 'social capital' as Robert D. Putnam, Harvard University, states is the connection with and good will of neighbors which enhances the family's well-being and helps, supports, and gives strengthen when they are in need of it.

Daniel and Lai-Cheng's family is bound through a patriotic purpose. They are oftentimes hundreds of miles apart. Daniel is in the British Royal Air Force which calls him to leave for about nine months out of the year. Even though Lai-Cheng struggles like all military wives to care for her three young children on a budget and alone, she shares her husband's commitment to her country just as if she was in the service.

She is proud of the example Daniel is setting for the children, to live for something beyond themselves.

She understands that in order for her husband to be happy, he has to have the kind of work he loves.

When he is home, he cares for his children and gives his wife a break from her strenous routine. When he is away, they stay in regular contact.

Lai-Cheng remarks, “I think it works because even though we are often apart and do different things, I know we

are both willing to do whatever it takes to achieve what we want: a family that cares for each other and serves our country.”

Family has become its own island for many, a haven set apart from the wider world. This position impoverishes both home and community and places impossible demands on the nuclear family to meet all the members' needs.

Also, the Western viewpoint of romantic love is too thin for a foundation of lasting love and care for children.

There is a constant questions of “Am I happy? Is this meeting my needs?” This strains the bond and places the cart before the horse.

When the relationship itself and the public purpose is ideally honored first, this nourishes and fortifies the participants' attachment to one another.

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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.