Importance of Children Growing in Love

The most basic and central truth of the universe is that

God is the Father and we are His children.

—Sun Myung Moon

In order for a son or daughter to learn how to love, it involves the heart to develops which begins at a very young age and matures throughout the lifetime.

The toddler who clings to his or her parents' hand is decades apart from the weeping adult who must place his or her parents to rest in the grave and vow not to let their wishes go unfulfilled.

Even though the experience is different, the essence of the heart is the same: a heart of attachment, appreciation and love toward the parents that only deepens and becomes conscious and responsible over time.

A child's growth determines the person's relationship not only toward his or her parents, but also toward society in general, and ultimately God.

The East calls a child's devotion to his or her parents “filial piety” and is considered the root of all goodness and morality.

Confucius taught that a child's responsiveness to one's parents is the root for empathy. Mencius taught

that if a person loved his parents, he would be kind to people in general and caring toward everything in the world (7A45).

Jesus demonstrated how important a child's heart is when he instructed his disciples to not turn away children from him. 

“Such are the kingdom of heaven made of,” he said. Saint Paul said that a Christian’s right relationship to God was to cry out trustingly like a child, “Abba!” which means “Papa” or “Daddy.”

The child’s realm of heart is foundational to a life of true love.

The success within the children's realm of love places a person in a position to receive and respond to the love of parents and the love of the ultimate Parent, God.

On this strong foundation, a person is well-placed to learn to love others as oneself.

The Formation of a Loving Child

Before religious leaders were accepted to say so, Reverend Moon was pointing to the breakdown of the family as the main culprit in society's main problems.

Now, these assertions are widely accepted among social scientists.  Developmental psychologists widely agree

that having loving relationships with caregivers (usually a parent or parents) promote the development of empathy with others and impacts a person's relationship to the world at large over a lifetime.

Children who lack such loving relationships are left without maturing a proper heart of compassion toward others, which leaves the growing young person crippled morally. 

 Such children are prone to get involved in all sorts of risky and destructive behaviors.

When a mother plays with her child, the natural facial expressions prepares them to be able to 'read' other people's facial expressions then understand what the person must be feeling based on this. This is an example of training in empathy.

The ability to empathize: to recognize and feel another person’s pain, suffering or joy as one’s own. To have empathy is the basis of the capacity to give love, take responsibility, and have fulfilling relationships with others.

Those who develop early loving relationships are able to attain trust over mistrust. This is what Erick Erickson calls the first 'crisis' of life.

When a baby cries, someone comes to comfort. When the baby is hungry, someone brings food. When the baby needs warmth and dryness this is provided. 

When the baby needs to be held, someone's tender arms are there. When a child is lonely or frightened, someone's soft voice reassures the child.

A baby who grows up in this nurturing environment, sets the stage to grow up to be benevolent, helpful participator in the world.

A view of a larger universe and of God are imprinted firmly on the mind of a young person through these early interactions.

James M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, said, “The God to whom little boys say

their prayers has a face very much like their mother’s.”

If a mother had a smiling sympathetic face, the child will respond with a similar face to the world whenever they interact outside the family.

“We learn how valuable and worthy of love we are almost exclusively through interactions with attachment figures, especially parents,” observes Stephen Stosny, a psychologist.

A child who grew up in a loving home, assumes others are similarly lovable and worthy. He or she will behave in a manner that is just and kind toward them and treat others as he or she has been treated at home.

Operating from a core of being loved, the child is able to love others.

Studies have shown one common characteristic of rescuers of Jews under Nazism: The rescuers all have very warm relationships with one or both parents which caused them to have empathy for others in maximum proportions.

Since they were convinced of their own worthiness, it was easy for them to see others as similarly worthy and to take a stand for others' human rights.

History is laden with children who have been neglected or abandoned. They have moral impairment that can result from having a poor relationship with parents.

1940s psychologist William Goldfarb did a study of seventy children who have been raised for the first three years of their lives in institutions. He found that they were cruel to one another and also to animals.

They severely lacked an ability to control impulses, especially aggressive ones.

Researcher Selma H. Fraiberg studied children who were misplaced out of their homes. She studied abandoned babies, children raised in institutions, children shifted from foster home to foster home and children who had to be torn from their family during wartime.

She remarked, “These children who had never experienced love, who had never belonged to anyone, and were never bonded to anyone except on the most primitive basis . . . were unable in later years to bind themselves to other people, to love deeply, to feel deeply, to tenderness, grief, or shame.”

Since these children were denied the most pivotal relationship in the children's realm of heart and love, these children could never mature their heart to empathize and love others. They could not see other people as themselves.

Ambivalence in the Love Relationship between Parent and Child

In average families, there is enough ambivalence in the love relationships to produce ambivalence in a child.

Morally, this places children between great altruism and great cruelty.

The average person tends not to be cruel or or consciously try to hurt or oppress others. But the same person may have not developed empathy for instance for people in poverty and think that they are responsible for their own fate.

Freud explored the human psyche and uncovered the ambivalence of a child's relationship to the parents. He found child's relationship with their parent “contained not only impulses of an affectionate submissive nature, but also hostile and defiant ones.”

He explained that we all relate to the Father, God, with the same ambivalence we have toward our parents in general. This creates the idea in the evil Satan.

From the standpoint of cause and effect, it can be thought that a child's 'hostile and defiant' interactions toward the parent reflects a relationship with their false father Satan and evil even though they have a relationship with goodness and God.

Since the parents heart is divided between good and evil, they raise children who are similarly divided in heart.

This creates a great need for parents who have true love. These parents resemble the selfless love of God and are able to love their children in a healthy and a beneficial way.

Children raised in this ideal home, they can be true to their parents' good expectations and thus become brothers and sisters who are true to one another. These siblings can support one anther's growth and successful entry into the spouse's realm of love.

Marriages that come from adults raised in this type of environment will have peace and harmony which will become shelters for the new generation as they are guided by true parental love.

The more the parents' love reflects the love of God, the happier and healthier, and more productive the child will be.

The child will demonstrate empathy will have a more benevolent impact upon the larger world.

To have such Godly parents of true love is thus a very pressing social need to nurture and guide a child's heart.

Return for Tomorrow's Post: Children Need God, Too

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.

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.

Only One Way Men and Women Are Equal

Suppose there were millions of women on earth, but only one man?

Would the woman who marries him be able to declare that she didn't truly love her husband and she could start searching for another because of something she does not like about him?

If this was truly the last man on earth, would it matter to the women that he was crippled as long as he was a man?

If he had only one eye would women refuse to marry him based on this?  In that case, his wife would quickly remedy any problems in her heart toward him, and even though she does not like some parts of him, she would accept him.

If a woman is able to digest the negative things in her husband, then unity will come forward and then love will follow.

When unity is accomplished then God moves there to visit.

Unity is good because God dwells there, and then everything becomes love.  Therefore, any movement that creates unity everywhere and with everyone will flourish.

Only after God created both Adam and Eve did He say that the creation was good.

Women today are called feminists as they seek out the concept of equality.

No matter how much they fight for the cause, they cannot argue the fact that there are differences between men and women.  Can woman claim equality when a man needs two helpings of food and women only need one?

A woman wrestler could never defeat a man.  Men can do extra hard labor that a woman cannot do.  Therefore, can women demand equality with these physical differences and strengths?

When are men and women equal?

Only through love are men and women equal.

Is there any better equality higher than love?

During the more primitive times, a man had to work extra hard to provide for his family.  Since man was independent in this way back then and could care for the whole family, God gave woman the one ability that man could never have, which is childbearing in order to balance the differences in their capabilities.

The latest trend these days is that more women have less desire to marry and refuse to have children.

Women must know that their body was not created for themselves.  Even a child understands that the woman's hips and bosom are to nurture children.  But now women diet instead of wanting to develop their hips and breasts for their children.

Would a child want to cuddle in the arms of a woman with a bony figure, or wide hips and soft bosoms? The present trend is for women to be very thin in the Western society.    The design formerly came from the British where women were proud to show off their large hips and bosoms.

This is a serious matter.

If you were to ask God, would He say it was better for a woman to have small bosoms or abundant ones after childbirth?  What about a full figure that is in proportion to their overall height?  Maybe being plump does not look right for an Asian frame, because of their small height.

What about a tall Westerner?

Now, that you understand that your features must balance your height, there is no need to diet.

What is the way we must go in order to prosper?

First, you must be parallel to the purpose of creation.  If you have active love that you give out, you have the ability to observe and digest.  This is an action man and woman should do together.  If you have love, then unity will not be that difficult.

If a couple really loves one another, then it is easier for them to observe and embrace each other.  Sometimes you have to travel a wide road and sometimes the road is narrow.

When you lived the single life before getting married, you went your own way.  But after marriage, you are on the same track with another person.  Either person cannot change for their own individual desire, but they must continue to travel together.

If the goal is always changing, then harmony will be lost and conflict between the two result.  If you continue to change your direction and discard the old one, the next one will never be as good.

The reason is simple: whoever follows the law of creation will be protected by God.

He gets God's protection because He wants the purpose of creation fulfilled.

The man that goes against the laws of creation and follows Satan's law instead will be opposed by God.  This is how the fall takes place.


A rainy day is closer to Satan's side, while a sunny day is closer to God's side. Nevertheless, although it may be raining, you can feel that the sun is shining all around you. That indicates that you have observed and digested and overcome the circumstances.


It is easy to feel down on a cloudy rainy day, but if you are able to overcome and feel brighter, Satan will have to leave you.

That kind of person can go anywhere in the world and spirit world where Satan hangs out and make Satan leave.  Satan's standard is to always find ways to benefit himself.  So, when you overcome circumstances and defeat his purpose and will, he has nothing to gain by staying around.

Is the diligent or lazy man on God's side or more on Satan's side?

Satan whispers in peoples' ears to discourage them from work saying that it is too much trouble and relax.  God, on the other hand, wants to see consistency in your life.  The person who lives one day to the next just only responding to what is thrown at them leans more on the satanic side.

God would urge people to live according to heavenly law.

Are you on the satanic side or good side?

Is the person that constantly dozes off or the one who has bright eyes during a sermon on the satanic side?

The person that was able to be bright eyed because they had lots of sleep is also on the satanic side!  The person who didn't get much sleep, but is still able to have bright eyes is the worthy one.

What must you do to be on this rising side?  Which of the four saints would this worthy person most resemble?  On what foundation can you say he resembles Jesus?

Jesus, of course, abided by God's law, but more importantly, he lived love.  By living love, he went beyond the limited concept of the law.   He went beyond the concept of race because he wanted to belong to and liberate the whole world, not just his country and people.

He went beyond his own religion, and transcended the strict tenets of Jewish law.  He was faithful to bigger principles.  He not only loved the Jews, but even the enemies of his people as well as the rest of the world.

Jesus could even embrace the people who crucified him.

What did Jesus accomplish based on this foundation of faith?

We can understand precisely why Jesus was so great when we know that his goal was to bring about unity which could even include the Romans.

If Jesus was still alive in America, would he push for deeper segregation between the whites and blacks?  People may feel that they are more comfortable around other whites because they can easily digest that situation.

But God would warn such people that as long as they fail to follow their Christian ideals by failing to include Black and Mexican people and bring unity, they would risk their own survival.  We see that today.

Statistics says that if the current population continues to grow, that by 2050 the white population will become the minority.

Jesus' heart had the capability to observe and digest even the world of the Roman Empire, which at that time ruled the entire world.

This high standard of heart was the reason he was great in the human realm.  Whereas he was great because he was the only one at that time who proclaimed that God was the only Father and humanity were His children.

Jesus consistently followed the law of creation and met God's expectation. As a result, Christianity not only survived, but prospered as no other religion has done before his time.



Return for Tomorrow's Post:  The World's Future is Bright


This post was rewritten and derived from the speech The Way of Prosperity