Why Do We Like the Concept Family?

As we witness the chaos of the world, instability in jobs, and relationships, there is one relationship that never changes no matter what - family.

Your siblings, mother, father and extended family will always be tied together by blood ties.

God made this unit of relationships that teach us how to love brothers and sisters, the elderly and the young of the world.

So, why do we like the family?

It is because family provides a base to freely exchange happiness.

This is why we yearn for our hometown where we grew up.  It is the place where our parents and siblings live.

The family is originally a good place.  Why is it good?

Because your parents, siblings and relatives are there.  Therefore, we become homesick for our native land, our hometown.

People think more about their hometown than they think of their nation.  Even living in a large city like New York, people long for their hometown.

Why do you like your families?

It is because the family becomes a free activity center for their parents' love.

God must be able to act freely there.

When God comes upon a society full of people who are more driven internally, and have the shining core of love no matter how shabby they may be, God will be able to act freely around them.

Do you feel uneasy when you visit someone else's home?

Like you are out of place?  This is because there has not been a bond of love established there for you.
You will feel awkward in someone else's dwelling because the love between the people there does not emanate in all four directions but just between the family members.

This was not the original role of the family. Thus we are destined to walk a path in oneness, unity.

The best thing is not decided by you?

Then what would hold the highest value in the family?  

The parents.

You as an individual could have great wealth, knowledge, respect and power, but none of these attributes are superior to the parents' position.

Your spouse would come next and then your children.  When it comes to your family, is there anything more valuable in life than your parents, spouse or children?  There is nothing more precious.

Why do we like our spouse, our parents and our children?

Because love is there.

Parental love is something absolutely needed by the children. 

Also, fraternal love and filial love of the children are absolutely necessary in the family.

Then who are the most beloved people in your families?  Wouldn't they be your parents?  Why do you like them most?

This is because throughout your lives, they are the closest to you in a relationship of love.  Then your beloved spouse comes next.

If husband and wife come to love each other unconditionally rather than set on conditions or circumstances, that love will be the greatest thing that will bring happiness and harmony into the family.

Even if it may not be closely related to an eternal love that is absolutely given by Heaven.  If this love becomes one, that reciprocated between the husband and wife, that is the greatest love in the 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 the family that is complete with true parental love, true conjugal love and true filial love, centered on God, then we can only conclude that it is the most ideal family in the world.  A true family.

The Family Is the Base of Eternal Happiness

On what basis can we say that someone is a truly a happy person in our daily life?

Is someone happy because they have some special talent, hold any power or authority?  Do these things alone make a person happy?  They cannot.

Also, can a person that has a lot of money be totally happy because they do not have to envy what others have? No.

Could a person become happy because they obtained a global amount of knowledge or hold some control over the world at will?

As we see in today's climate that, this is not the case.  People cannot truly become happy with just those things.

Even if they do so momentarily, happiness will not be eternal by going this route.  What happens the moments that these material objects are lost?  Can they maintain that state?

Such external things will never be the source of eternal happiness even if a person acquires enough wealth that they do not envy anyone in heaven and earth and sing songs of joy.

They will still feel a gaping hole in their soul and yearn for even more.

Material things may be a means to find happiness, but they are not able to be happiness itself.

Then, what is determined in order to feel happiness?

You must have a beloved spouse, parents and children.  Nobody can deny that the original way to happiness is through the creation of a true family.

We may see that if we lack one of them, we feel sorrow and dissatisfaction will inevitably remain in our hearts.

All people on earth generally feel that the family is a base of happiness. 

A family must have parents as the head of it, like the president of a nation.

People who grow up without parents are called orphans and are seen as pitiful people.  It is pitiful for one to not have parents or a spouse.

The family has parents and a conjugal bond at the same time.

However much the spouses may have loved each other, there will be utter pain and misery when one of them loses the other.

It is the same for when a couple cannot conceive children.

The family must have parents, spouse and children in order to become the foundation for eternal happiness.

God's original purpose for seeking to restore humankind was for His own happiness.

This establishment of happiness cannot take place apart from human beings.  At that point of convergence, it can only be brought about through God's relationship with them.

When all of the ingredients needed for our emotional well-being are present in our family, God also wants to feel happiness in such a setting.

From where does happiness arise?  What kind of setting will allow us to sing songs of joy?  It is in the setting of the family.

This family happiness cannot be attained if there are emotional problems, or if there is no heart or love experienced between the family members.

If a couple cannot have children, also, there cannot be any happiness there.

This is the same for children who do not have parents.  There will be no joy for them.

Where there is a man, there will have to be a woman as his partner. 

This same truth is for the woman.

The husband and wife desire to keep their love at a higher dimension within their subject-object relationship.  Further, they must have children.

A unified family is only realized once a couple has parents above them and children below them.  A family is united vertically (spirit) and horizontally (physical) in this way.

Then upon whom does this family center?

We already know that we center the idea of unity based solely on human beings.

But this method is impossible for two separate beings to come together eternally since they alone cannot pursue a higher value.

But if there is an absolute Subject Partner of love, then the parents will want to become one with this Subject Partner as their center.

That center where all of the family members become one in love, is a place of happiness and hope.

Everything must then be brought into oneness and unified through something more valuable and stimulating.

This is not possible based on our human love alone, but only from God, the true subject partner.

Return for Tomorrow's Post: We Enter Heaven as a Family Unit

This post was rewritten and derived from the textbook, Cheon Seong Gyeong Book Four Chapter Eleven, Section 1 and 2.

Family Was Created as Good Place

Family was created to be a good place.  Do you feel this is true about your own family situation?  If not, it is due to the problems of the first human family that did not follow the will of God.  

Originally, God a good purpose for the world to begin based on the love shared between the family members of Adam and Eve. 

Why is it good?  It is a good place because my mother and father are there.  It is a good place because my siblings are there.  It is good because my relatives are there.

Thus, human beings feel nostalgia when they think of the original hometown where they grew up.
Isn't it true that they have more great feelings about their hometown then they do for their own nation?

It is a place everyone longs for even if they lived in a humble community.

What place do you long for even though you are living in a large city?  It is your hometown.



The Family is Our Eternal Original Hometown


What kind of place is your hometown?

It is where your heart is lifted up in four directions and three dimensions.

This heart is a place where you are tied up by love.

Upward, your mother and father tie you up; left and right, the bond between husband and wife is tying you up; downward, your sons and daughters and relatives are tying you up tight with three dimensional love.  This is the original hometown.

No matter what position they enjoy in the world, no one cannot help but to long for their original hometown.  Why?

Everyone longs for their hometown, because they see it as the original point of happiness based on love as the best.

Then where is God's original hometown?  It is earth.

If God is the God of love, He surely would have prepared a starting point for living on this earth. Where is it?

Where is the starting point where God's family can be created?  It is none other than the place where a son dwells who understands God as his real father.

The original hometown exists where the son can monopolize God's love.

It is also a place where such a daughter dwells.  It is a place where such a true son and daughter marry and form a complete family.

Who should be in this original hometown?  Those you miss should reside there.

Your parents, brothers and sisters should be there.  Those who you long to meet should be there.  When you miss someone and want to live with them, would you be satisfied to see them for just a moment?

Would you just visit for a short time?

When you meet and live with them, you should never tire even if you live with them for eternity.  You should find such a place.  This becomes the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth which today's religion pursues.

The reason why we long for such an original hometown, today, is that is where parents, brothers and sisters, and relatives, who are closer to us than anyone else.

They always guide us, welcome us as they did in the past whenever we visit them.

They sympathize with us, console us and receive us with joy when we are having difficulties.

If you do not receive this kind of welcome, even if you longed for your hometown, your desperate, longing heart would vanish.  You would go back to those feelings of deep regret.

Your original hometown has to have people who will welcome you.

The Family Is the Final Standard for the Cosmos-centered Ideology

Everything can be dived from one into many parts, which then eventually merge into a larger whole.  In other words, one divides into many and then unites again into one.

From here it divides again and becomes something even larger.

Families exist within this larger created object.  These families all have the same form as the other.

This is the place where the husband and wife relationship is established and the couple unites.  The tribe is a place that unites families.

Race is a place that unites clans.  Races combine to form one nation.  Here, families play the central role.

Once the family expands, this becomes the horizontal world.  This is why a society cannot manage without the family.

Therefore, if families cannot be restored, the world cannot be restored.  

Next, we must realize the cosmos-centered ideal through these families.

This seems far-fetched to think of the cosmos, but in the original world, once humanity had completely united with God, we would have had the knowledge to explore the whole of the universe.

As we are fallen, we are limited to the earthly plane with limited knowledge of the universe.

The word 'cosmos' combines heaven and earth.  Heaven and earth are likened to a person's mind and body.  Thus, the mind and body must become one.

Just as a subject partner needs an object, a man needs a woman.  This union of man and woman leads to a family.  God's foundation of love will not be attained without working through this family.

Cosmos-centered ideology is a philosophy that unites the mind and body and forms a family as the main body of love, and connects that idea to the spirit world and physical world.

In Korean 'cosmos' is translated into the character ju of cheonju which means house.  This is why we use the term cosmos-centered.  Cosmos combines the spirit world and the physical world.

What relationship does it have with us?

We all need a family.  If you are unable to become one in your family, you will have nothing to do with the cosmos-centered ideology.  The family is the final standard for completing this ideology.

Those who are unable to sing songs of peace and sing songs of praise for happiness while here, will be miserable people either on earth or once they pass into spirit world.

Where do you think the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth begins?

It is realized from our relationships within the family.

Then what kind of ideology do we have? This is a family-centered ideology. The word cosmos-ism in Korean contains the word heaven and the word house.  So this word means heaven's house.

This is where the word cosmos becomes clear.

If you examine closely, all of the sixty-six books of the Bible are filled with words that desire an ideal family.

Furthermore, what do all men desire?  It is to have an ideal wife.  Also, all women desire to have an ideal husband. 

No matter if she is very famous, proud and rich or a woman who has a doctorate, her desire is to meet an ideal man she can love and with whom she can have beloved sons and daughters.

This is the root of happiness.

The beginning is the family and the conclusion is the family.

So, what exactly is this cosmos-centered ideology?

It is the ideology of our house, our nation and of your individual self which makes up part of the cosmos.

If humanity had not fallen, we would live centered on the Adam-centered ideology based on a perfected Adam who laid down the true family tradition as the first parent.  This was God's original ideal for Adam to reach perfection, not for him to fall laying a tradition for sin.

Therefore it is the true parent-centered ideology.  

This ideology is the way of a true father and true mother.  There is no other ideology that is higher than this.

We should link the matters of the heart with heavenly ideology through the way of true parents within the boundary of the original ideal family.

As long as families that have been able to live this way of life of a true family remains, we will not perish.

Return for Tomorrow's Post: Family is a Training Center 

This post was rewritten and derived from the Textbook,  Cheon Seong Gyeong Book Four, true Family Chapter 3