God is the Closest Person to You

What is the highest embodiment of truth?

Parents, husband and wife, and children; there is nothing higher.

What then is at the center of that truth?  Love.

What is the center of the highest truth based on the principle?  We say that God is the ultimate source of truth, goodness, love and life.

They all go to the same point.  The establishment of truth requires love and life.

For this reason, God is the ultimate source of life, love and truth and He is the deepest core.

What kind of being is God?

He is both Father and Mother with dual characteristics.  The core is the parents.  When we view God from this point of view, God becomes a person.

Since God is all-powerful and all-knowing, His face will look rough when He appears to men.  

When God appears to Adam, God's face will look masculine; to women like Eve, God will have an appearance of a women can like.

If God existed before the creation of heaven and earth, how old do you think He is?

If a person can only count up to 70, then God will be 70.  When a kid can only count up to five asks God how old He is, He will say that He is five years old because they do not know anything above that.

No matter how many numbers there are, God cannot be calculated in terms of numbers. 

God is beyond numbers.  That is how our God is.

God also has a grand sense of humor.  He likes jokes very much.  Who do you think would be the greatest king of humor?  It is God.

He has a good sense of humor because He knows every aspect of existence and is all-powerful.

 Who is the great king that can get an audience to burst over in laughter?  It is God.
I am saying that this great king is God. 

Externally, God resembles men and internally He resembles women.  God is all-knowing and omnipotent, but He is also merciful with a heart that can embroider flowers on Buddha's smile.

God should also have a heart like that of the most feminine woman.  Only then can these two side have life.

God is the great Master of the universe.  He is a being that is not lacking in anything.  He has powers and is all-knowing about everything in existence.

Nevertheless, if a loving son pushed His way to God's bosom, would God ask Him How well His son knows Him?

Even if God tried to stop Him, the son would keep pressing forward to snuggle up to his own father's chest telling him that He wanted to touch His chest because he used to touch his own father's chest for so long.

Would God feel offended?  No.  Any father would be very happy.

When children reach physical maturity, they leave their parents' laps, house and leave for another area.   

When the children finally come home and put on old clothes and try to snuggle to their father's chest, would the father protest this?  Even a grandfather on his deathbed would be happy and tell his grandchild to snuggle and touch his chest.

God is the Creator. 

What more could be added to God?

If something is to grow bigger, it has to pull in and absorb something, or somebody has to add something to it.

How can God grow bigger if there is nothing added to Him and there is nothing for Him to pull in?  

This is an important question. I have not discussed it because if I did, you would talk about it carelessly and cause problems. So please research this. I am giving you this as homework. Do some research; write a paper and I will grade it. 

Have you ever thought where God originally began?

Was He born all of a sudden?  People of faith may say that it is blasphemy to speak about the holy Creator.  Haven't you ever been curious as to whether God came into being or He always existed?

How do you think the absolute God originally began? Do you think He was born all of a sudden, coming out quickly? 

We need to have a logical basis to go on.

Dr. Yoon! How did God come into being? Shouldn't someone with a doctorate in physics know this? Isn't it a shame if the holder of a doctoral degree covers his face like that? Church members can only say, "God naturally exists," but this is not the case.

God Himself also had to develop. This is the correct answer. 

What is it that has the power of the matchless beauty of creation? 

Even though God is all-knowing and all-powerful, God is a personal God.  He is a person when He relates to love.  He will want to sleep there in peaceful rest.  God would not tell you do not rest or demand that you work on restoration of the world through indemnity day and night.

This is God's Principle.  It is just like breathing.   When you exhale, you have to inhale.

God also has to rest after work because He wishes to feel the joy of rest.

Everything is connected to God through a give and take relationship.  If God exists, what kind of being is He?

He is all-knowing, all-powerful and His presence is pervading. He is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.  He can do anything.  What if God was to one day tell everyone to serve Him alone?

What if God told all of the spirit world that they must serve Him absolutely because of He is absolute, all-knowing and almighty?

What if everything was ordered to serve only God?

What would take place?  

Because of the essence of our conscience, we would not be able to embrace that in the long term.  This would inevitably cause conflict.  Your hearts would eventually conflict with that kind of law in the future.

The only partner that God can love is human beings.

Why can't God create another God among His creatures?

You may think that God could just create another God just like Himself.  What would happen as a result?  The other God would eat with God, follow Him, they would work together, and stand together.

When God sat down, then the other God would sit down together with Him.

How would life be if they acted exactly the same for hundreds of millions of years?  How stifled would they feel?

Their eyes would turn inside out in a day.  How many days do you think you could talk to each other.  They would say that everything is the same and would complain.

What is at the center of religion?  It is God.

Of course, each religion has a different name for God, but the name does not matter.

God is one.  God is not two.  When people talk about God, they use different names to refer to Him because each nation has a different nation, but the Original Being is one.

Heaven and earth did not just come into being by itself because it wanted to.  Surely, some origin and some motivation based on some source of power initiated this creation.

When we look at this from a higher level, there has to be a basic agent of power who, as a central subject partner moves heaven and earth or creates things.  This being is called God.

No matter which name He is given, the universe needs to have a center.

Although existing beings act and move around, the central being does not move around with them in their world.

Therefore, there has to be a central original being who remains forever fixed at the center of the world of relationships, which are in motion.

Photos courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net


Return for Tomorrow's Post: We are the Fruit of God's Love


This post was rewritten and derived from "True Parents and Us" Chapter One, Cheon Seong Gyeong section 4

Even Evil People Wants to Possess Good

We must always remember that daily life is a continuous struggle. There are many kinds of struggles and therefore we have to determine what kind we are going through at any particular time. Many people struggle daily in order to make a living and receive a salary.

We all face all kinds of continuous struggle in our daily life.  There are many different kinds of struggles, therefore, we must determine what kind we are going through at any particular time.

Some people struggle to earn money, but some people are more worthy of receiving their salary than other because they do better work.  Therefore, those who do inferior work can be criticized.

Then there are those people who work just for themselves and do not receive a salary.  In this case, the quality of their work determines whether they will be a success or not.  According to the work one does, they are also subject to judgment or criticism.

There are some Americans who better the country and are liked and respected, and there are the citizens that do not contribute to the country in any way.  Within every group, this kind of difference can be found.

There are the people who are looked up to and we want to emulate and then there are the people who are not well respected.  Only the person himself can criticize himself because he knows himself better than anyone else.

Each person knows where his or her weaknesses lies and he knows how he needs to change.  Within an individual, every element knows whether it is being used for something good or something bad.  Your own eyes know if you are looking at good things or bad things.

Also, your ears can distinguish between good things and bad.

You may feel inspired when you hear these words because you recognize them as true.  Someone else might think that this is too general and is not inspired.

Would you want to be on the good side, exhibiting only good qualities or would you be content to remain on the bad side of everything?

Everyone, naturally, would want to experience the good qualities.

At the national level, some nations are criticized by the other nations because they damage the rest of the world.  Each nation can judge and criticize other nations.  We see that God must be evaluating the nations of the world according to how they are performing for the total benefit of the world.

God certainly desires goodness. 

If there is also an evil god in existence, he would also want something good.

We may think that an evil god would want evil things, but an evil being desires good things.  If the evil god was not able to get good things, he would go and plunder good things from others.

The good God just wants to stay with goodness.  He wants to have good things all the time and wants to cherish them eternally.  But the evil god would try to snatch the good things away from God the first chance he gets.

Isn't this true?  This is how the fall began with Lucifer wanting to possess the good Eve for himself taking her and humanity away from God.

In all levels of life there is struggle between good and evil. 

Do you think that you are a good person or a bad one?

Truthfully, you said you are only good in a half-hearted way, you must not have much confidence.  You are right to answer in that way, because if you completely good, you would not have to struggle or restore yourself back to your original position.

If you are already a completely good person, there would be no struggle with evil.

Where there is something good, both bad and good people want it.  What do you think is the best thing in the world?

You might say 'true love', but even before true love exists a person must exist first.  If many good people exist, then there would not be so much struggle in the pursuit of true love.  It would be found freely flowing everywhere.

The main question is, did human history start from an evil or good foundation?

Is it possible that man was good in nature but gradually became evil after he was born or it was the other way around?  Were we created to be evil and then to gradually struggle to be good?  Would a perfected, good god create such a contradictory being?

This does not make sense.  If people were born to be evil, then we could never have the possibility to to improve ourselves or root it out because it would be forever part of our being.

Is there a possibility that you can become completely good, almost perfected?  Then we can say confidently that we were not born in a hopelessly bad condition.  We know for a fact we were born relatively good, but not perfected.

Even though one is born with a good nature, if he is surrounded by a bad situation, he will struggle hard to come back to his good state.  This is logical.

Therefore, we can conclude that man's original nature was created good, but something happened after he was born.  The Principle explains that human beings were created for goodness, but were corrupted and fell into a bad situation.

What is the element that influenced humans to become evil and have to struggle to go toward goodness?  Many would say 'self-centeredness'.

What is that exactly?  It is placing yourself ahead of God and everybody else.

When this first occurred, people began the path of false self-centered love.  We can surely see that self-centeredness and false love put human beings on the wrong path in history.

When mankind fell, it was as if he received injections: one was self-centeredness and the other was false love.

These evil elements began to circulate in the human body.  Have you been able to cleanse from this fallen blood?  No.  In fact, evil renews itself with each new individual.

If you were to get food poisoning, you then a need an antidote.  Therefore, because we were poisoned by self-centeredness and false love, we need an antidote to cure it.

What do you think that would be?  We easily say 'true love'.  But where do you find it?

Let's examine ourselves.

Have you been able to cleanse this evil blood from your system or is it still circulating within you?

You know it is still there and you can feel it easily.  Where are you going to eliminate this poison?  Do you just do nothing and think that it will go away automatically through time?

This is what many people of faith believe to be true.  The belief is that by simply believing in the Messiah and sitting in pews and being nice to people that their fallen blood is somehow cleansed.

Jesus died for our sins, but how do we explain that we are still born into sin and no matter how devout we are, we still bear children with the fallen blood lineage?

There are different stages of awareness.  There are some people who don't even know they are doing evil.  There are others who know when they are doing bad things and want to become good and struggle to do so.

Those who want to become very, very good must go through tremendous struggles.

To whom does love rightfully belong?

Love itself is a common possession.  True love is owned by everyone at the same time, but there should be a master or subject of love.  Who would that be?

God is the master of love.

To fulfill the purpose of love, there must be a man and woman who practice and appreciates true love.

The first two people who come into contact with love for the first time would think that they would like to have that.  There is nothing bad about that.  This is very natural.

People were born to appreciate good things.

What then is the difference between a good person and a bad person?

Both good people and bad want good things.

Everyone was meant to experience love at the proper time.  We see that love belongs to everybody.  But there is a proper order to achieving everything.  First things come first, second things come second and so forth.

The order of love was God was to receive it first, then man and woman were to have it, then it was to pass love to the angels.  This is the correct order for true love.  Any other order is false love.

Thus it is the orderliness, the right order, that made the difference in love.

When man did not abide by the right order, false love came into being and then the distinction between true love and false love came into existence.

Let's look at a family of brothers and sisters for an example.  Each are born in a certain order, one after the other.  There is the first child, a second child, a third and so forth.  Even if there is only a difference of a year in their ages there still is an order.

If it became necessary, the first-born child could take responsibility for the second-born.  The second could do the same for the third and so forth.

Suppose the elder brother said to the younger one, "Do this," and he replies, "OK, but I must do something else first." That would be the proper way for him to reply, rather than to shout, "No, I Won't do it," without giving any ounce of obedience or explanation.

Violating the rules of conduct in regard to order is wrong. 

In America, this concept is strange.  They may wonder why the elder brother has more authority than the younger one.

But when you observe more closely, even in America, it is natural to give difference to an elder.  Let's suppose there are five brothers lined up in order of age.  The eldest is first, the next one is second and so forth.

In America, would they line up at random?

What about the parents; would the parents go in line in front of the children?  No.  The parents would go first and then the children.  So, even in America, that would seem logical.

When the parents give direction to the children, they are expected to obey.

Unlike what we see in American homes today, the child shouldn't say that they don't have to listen to their parents.

This is not acceptable.

Even if the parents were to give a wrong direction, the child should say, "But if I do it now, it would create a bad situation.  Could you please reconsider?"

Then a good mother or father would think about it and answer, "I guess you are right, so you don't have to do that."  Through this mutual respect and understanding, the parent and child can come to resolve any differences properly.

In any situation, parents should not stubbornly cling to their 'authority' and demand the child do what they have to say.  If a parent did that, then any child would rightly be forced to rebel against the parent's unreasonableness.  Then the parent would have to yield to the children if the children are in the right.

When parents ask their son to do something That he is sure will turn out badly, then he should not be demanded to blindly follow their instructions.  He should explain his thoughts to his mother or father  so that the correct course of action will bring forth good results.

You may wonder how this relates to human history and mankind's problems and think this may seem too simple of analysis of the problems experienced between children and parents.

This actually describes the basic element of human history from the beginning point of mankind's problems and the solution.




Return for Tomorrow's Post:  God's Purpose Not to Satisfy Public Opinion


This post was rewritten from the speech The Victorious Person and the Defeated Person

Family Members Should Not Live For Self

Once a person reaches the world level, he must come back and make contact with the lower levels of the nation, society, tribe, family, and his spouse, then he is ready to move out toward the world level again. Such a person will be welcomed everywhere around the world, no matter where he goes. He will be sought after by all other peoples and cultures.

Reverend Sun Myung Moon


We know deeply in our minds that this principle is the true way for a person to advance to his fullest potential.

Surely, you want to go in the direction which Father wants to go, but since we cannot all go to the same place at the same time, we are spread out all over the world constantly changing positions with each other.

Why do you witness and do missionary work with such enthusiasm?

You desire to get good results, but you also want to return home with a proud report.

In that sense, you return to the reason of your activity and don't stay at the same level of result.  This is how you unite the result with the cause.

We know that man is not a causal being but a resultant being. 

Can anyone boast that they brought themselves into being?  Did they created themselves?

It would be natural that a being of result will want to know and become one with the world.  Eventually, he will desire to unite with God, who is the ultimate causal being, and report both his good and bad experiences to Him.

The resultant being wants to share his life with the causal being.

Every part of the process goes back to our cause, which is God.

Is this fact made up or is it true that returning to God is the ultimate path for all mankind?

You are right if you said yes.

Every pair in existence has two tendencies: to move toward the center and to move toward the center and to move toward the outer expression.

Nothing is randomly in motion.

Two controlling factors determine the way everything moves: one pushes the object in a certain way, the other in a certain way.

These two direction always exist to ensure the purposefulness of the object's motion. In this manner the motion of going from the causal point to the resultant point is continually repeated.

This is the way the universe moves.

Your mind and body delights in having good give and take during your lifetime.  A person that has good give and take is a happy person.

A man that has this kind of harmony, wants and needs to meet a woman with that harmony.

Together they want to have good give and take that they achieve between their individual minds and bodies.

You receive direction from Father and you work hard to achieve your goals.

We have the idea within the church to achieve a good give and take relationship between the subject and object.  Then you return to Father with good result.

Through living this way, we expand the influence of goodness to the largest level.  A person may live according to this ideal for a while, but then will start to criticize and complain with the direction that is given.

We can use the illustration of baseball.

Imagine that the catcher stands behind the batter to catch every ball the pitcher throws.  Do you think that the catcher is judging which ball he wants to catch and which one he wants to let pass him?

No, he is determined to catch every ball that is pitched.

Even if the pitcher was to throw a curve ball, the catcher would still reach out and may even turn all the way around in a circle as he catches it.

There is not one catcher that would just stand still in front of a fast ball and try to stop its motion with a stiff arm.  He will catch it with a turning motion, and absorb the strength of the pitch.  Thus, his actions contains a quality of beauty.

You should change your thinking to when you make some motion, even raising your hand, that you are moving with the universe.

This principle of motion applies to everything in a person's life.

Today, many American young people think they have such a great life enjoying their time with their friends while ignoring their homes and their families.

If they were truly experiencing a great time, they would naturally come back home and have an equally great time with their parents and family.  Unfortunately, the trend is for young people not to see their parents as valuable.

They say that they are part of the 'older generation' and then ignore them completely.  Could this be called a complete and great life?

The truly natural way of enjoying life for a teen is for them to go out, have a great time and then return home and share his experience with his grandparents and the whole family.

It is unnatural to go out have a good time and then go home and isolate yourself from the rest of the family.

Would a grandparent or parent want to have such a child come back home?  To live in the family that does not interact would be a painful existence.  If the youngster lives in his own world without sharing his life in a positive way, the family will feel offended.

Most people do not understand the universal reasons why it is good for the child to share his experiences with the family.

Now you know that going out and coming back in harmony is the law of the universe, and no one can live happily in violation of this law. 

A person who lives according to this law is a person of health, and a natural person.

Others will seek him out and desire to learn from him the proper way to live.  He will naturally become a teacher to the people who don't know how to live naturally and harmoniously.  This is the principle standard for what a man should be.

Do we see this in our American families, where each are able to speak freely sharing their experiences with one another on a daily basis?

The person who lives according to the law and standard of harmony should become the natural center and leader.  He will be welcomed by everybody, not only in his own country, but the rest of the world will embrace him.

This is the criterion God uses.  It is all the standard of all things in the universe.  All creation already lives by this standard even if man chooses not to do so.

Then it is natural that those who leave this protective boundary of this principle of harmony will gradually lose power.

As we grow up, we gather and absorb all the elements of our environment.  But once we are grown and physically mature, we start giving ourselves to our surroundings.  As we age, we become physically smaller not bigger.  When a person dies, his body returns to the earth completely.

Whether it is invisible or visible, everything is guided by this cycle.

When we look in history, it is clear that those people who are still recognized hundreds of years later are those who lived for the sake of the world.  It does not matter whether the person lived in the east or the west, or if he was white or black.

The person who lives for something greater than himself becomes an eternal being.

The one who can give the most for the sake of the world is the person the world wants to remember most.  Look at a few examples before thinking that this is just a hasty conclusion.  Everything in principle can be applicable to your own life.

Even the physical world of mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms and the spirit world are all guided by the same principles which we have been discussing in this blog.  God Himself is guided by these principles.  We can begin to relate with God in an intimate way.

We can talk and have a deep personal relationship of give and take with Him.  We can even dance with God.

All men want to perfect their character and their natures because they need to come back to that cause, God.

What if there was a meeting of all of the superior people from each part of the world.  Would there be a struggle among them to figure out who is the best of the best?  Can such fighting bring about a decision?  

In fact, such a decision would have to be agreed upon unanimously by all on their own volition.
The greatest person there would be the one that everyone recognizes having something the rest of them want or lack.

Naturally, they would want him to become their leader.  A person who has an universal characteristic of every direction is the one who is acknowledged by those from every direction of east, west, north and south.  This is simple logic.

You have been trained to become such an universal person.  Even well-educated western members have willingly gone to poor countries to offer their time and effort to help the people raise their standard of living.

In the past, Western countries gave out their best people to lesser developed nations only to gain dominion over them.  We have reversed this.

We take the best person and send him to a backward country in order to live in the worst conditions.  This person though is to raise up the people to a better position instead of raising himself over them and thus keeping them in a miserable position.

Do we do this because we try to be different?

No, we go this way because this is the original, true way no matter how many people have gone in the opposite direction.

This is the law of the universe, and if anyone goes against it, he will eventually perish.

We have sent missionaries from America, Germany, and Japan because they can represent the developed nations.  They each come from nations with a history of never wanting to bow down to others.  Among them, the most willing to sacrifice for the sake of others should be the leader.

If America was to continue along her current path, she will be despised by the poorer nations.  The black people of Africa who are struggling in poverty and misery will turn against the predominantly white America.

We see the trend now where all the people around the world are beginning to wish bad things would happen to America.

Recently the royal baby was condemned by many people sometimes showing side-by-side pictures of a poor child in Africa next to the royal couple holding the new baby.

When you compare this to when Prince William was a baby and was well accepted worldwide we see that the Western society is losing ground.  At that time, America and Europe were looked toward as the ideal nations.

As this resentment toward the developed countries continues to spread, the voices of negativity will become stronger and stronger.

According to the principle of the universe, if there are many, many people who wish you to decline, then there is no way to avoid that decline.

If a person, nation or entity boasts about their great success, if it does not connect itself back to its cause, that entity cannot continue to exist.  This is happening everywhere.

The once jubilant American family is breaking down in relationships between the younger and the  older generations.

Also, there is rarely a good give and take between the American president and the citizens.

Somehow people have come to use an economic standard as the measure of their success. 

Economic concerns and money are only a result.

If this nation continues to only be concerned with money, which does not connect itself with the causal element, the consequences for this nation will be terrible.  

Of course, there is nothing wrong with having money or economic success, but why is money necessary?  

If we only desire to have money so we can live well, then this is the wrong attitude.

Money is the result of a fruitful cause and is meant to serve the purpose of that cause.  The purpose behind wealth is to make God happy when He is able to look at a healthy, good world.

America needs its money only in order to make the world a better place, the way God intended it to be.

Once you understand the purpose of having money, then it is fine for you to acquire it.

Even if you were to only be concerned for the nation, you still want to use your money in order to reverse the destructive trends in America.

What if someone wanted to use their money to make their parents' lives more comfortable and easy.

Everyone will approve such a person having and spending their money for the sake of a larger purpose than just himself.

If a person clings to his money for his own selfish purposes, even his own parents will not approve of him.

A person who lives for the sake of the whole world is welcomed in any place and has unlimited freedom of movement around the world.

However, if a person wants to live in a small self-centered way, all the elements of the universe will wish him ill.

Self-made millionaires who only live to acquire their wealth for themselves will never be truly loved or welcomed by the world, especially if he hurts others in his quest for money.  Such people are violators of the universal law.

Therefore, their success is not seen as a virtue, but as a manifestation of their sinfulness.

Money is not the only thing that falls under this principle.  Also, knowledge can be used improperly depending on whether one uses it for the sake of others or just to take advantage for his own personal goals.

The same can be said of position and prestige.  All of these things listed must be guided by the principle of harmony, then there is nothing wrong with wanting to obtain them.

When a person is in violation of this principle, someone else who doesn't seem to have much power may start to criticize the unrighteous one.  Eventually, the unrighteous person will become the loser, not the one who is in a 'lesser' position than him.

Now, we have a clearer picture of how to live, we need not to criticize others.  The only thing we need to do is go the right way.

We will continue to make money and spend it for the sake of the sake of the world.

If you see that someone else does not want to spend their money for a greater purpose, just leave him alone.  Certainly, it will not benefit him to live that way.

Don't despair, it does not matter who is great, powerful and wealthy today.  Those who live by the Principle actually are becoming the great people of the future.   The way of non-Principle is the way of decline.

The way of the Principle is the way of success.


Return for Tomorrow's Post: The Power of Witnessing

This Post was rewritten and derived from the speech The Deep Desire of Our Original Nature

7 Days of Holy Sex Day 4 - Benefits of Waiting for Marriage

Contrasting the Different Standards of Sex Morality

To give credence to the timeless ethic in the present world, the prevailing permissive sex mindset needs to be refuted with arguments based upon sound reasoning and contemporary research. 

Let us consider and address five major myths of the old “free sex” perspective in this speech given by Dr. Reverend Sun Myung Moon:


1. Is Sex a Need?

"The first myth is: Sex is a need and an entitlement. All the other assumptions of the permissive ethic rest upon this premise.


This idea is central because it carries a certain moral imperative: If people need sex to be physically and mentally healthy, then it is unfair and uncaring to deny them. Marital status, age and other concerns are simply not as important.

More specifically, if a person claims he needs sex while the other simply does not want it, then there is moral pressure on the second person to yield to the first, since needs have priority over mere desires and having sex is after all always 'healthy' and 'normal'.

The past situation of sexual aggressors having to justify why their partners should give in is reversed. Now those who want to resist sexual advances have to explain themselves. Still, the belief in this need means single people and even children resist less; they pursue earlier sexual involvement and in more insecure situations than they would otherwise be  inclined to do.

Yet there obviously is no such sexual 'need'. There is not a shred of scientific evidence that sexual inactivity in itself is a threat to well-being.

No one has ever received medical treatment because of celibacy.

On the contrary, people are treated for sexual excesses and sometimes directed to be abstinent as therapy.

The real need being confused with sex is for genuine love. Though the body may desire only another body—any body—the heart needs to connect with another heart, to love and be loved as a unique, irreplaceable person.

This is essential for mental and physical health. We know, for example, that infants perish for lack of attention and touch from caregivers, and spouses often die of a broken heart soon after their partner passes away. The specific need of adults is for the experience of marital love. The human spirit craves marriage for its many emotional and spiritual rewards. Sex is only one dimension of what is actually needed and desired.

This belief in sexual need and thus entitlement is a dogmatic notion arising from distortions of Freud’s ideas and the discredited claims of Alfred Kinsey.

Research in the United States, for example, shows three percent—representing hundreds of thousands—have remained celibate throughout their lives and millions worldwide have waited to begin sexual involvement until age thirty and beyond with no proven ill effects. 80 percent of Americans under age 60 have had either one or no sex partner in a given year. Among married couples, infidelity is the great exception.

When opportunity for sex is not available for long periods of time as in military service, interest in it has been known to drop off to zero. 

Many married couples find themselves needing to schedule time for lovemaking because they otherwise become so busy they forget.

This is hardly on par with the need for food or sleep, which asserts itself within a matter of hours if neglected and becomes stronger, not weaker, the longer it is deferred.  Some experts question if sex is even a drive at all since it is so dependent upon learning and will.

“Sex is a natural urge, but the role it plays in your life and the importance you attribute to it . . . is a matter of free choice,” concludes psychologist Peter Koestenbaum.

Sex researchers Masters and Johnson have stated, “In one respect, sex is like no other physical process . . . [it] can be denied indefinitely, even for a lifetime.”

Sexual abstinence then, rather than signifying a state of unhealthy frustration, can simply represent a redirection of erotic impulses. This is obviously what most people must do most of the time. Even when a partner is available as in marriage, circumstances such as illness, work, pregnancy, menstrual cycle and the demands of parenthood dictate a large measure of self-control.



Sex as a “Need” is Oppressive

The belief that people need physical gratification more than they do creates its own oppression.

Sexual compulsion and exploitation become much easier; it is harder for the immature and the weak to refuse their own or someone else’s sexual “need,” as mentioned above.

In addition, single and married people and even children begin to doubt themselves if they do not desire sex as much as they hear they should.

Thus the vulnerable push themselves into sexual involvement earlier and in more insecure situations than they would otherwise be inclined to do. Teenagers may speak of their virginity as something they are relieved to get rid of, as if it is a burden.

How tragic that innocence and the authentic need for quality and committed love are so often sacrificed at the altar of a trumped-up physical “need.”


2. Is One Partner for Life Unnatural? 

The second mistaken notion that follows from the first is:

Having many sexual partners is only natural.

This argument is made on the basis of comparing humanity to animals, particularly nonmonogamous primates, and speaking in evolutionary terms about the need to propagate the species through many sexual liaisons. Thus monogamy and marriage are seen as almost impossibly difficult, even contrary to our genetic makeup.

Yet humans differ from these and other animals in obvious ways.

First, sex among animals is a seasonal matter driven solely by instinct for the sake of reproduction. However, men and women enjoy physical union far more frequently than any animal and for far more reasons than reproduction alone.

This freedom implies certain important responsibilities, as outlined above, as well as certain higher capacities that animals do not share that allow us to fulfill those responsibilities. Second, animal coupling can be indiscriminate in regard to the partner.

In contrast, we are spiritual beings with a compelling need not only for meaningful and lasting love but also to be loved as a specific and whole person and to return love in the same way.

Third, human offspring require many years of parental investment to thrive, unlike primates. Moreover, the quality of the love that spawns and sustains a child affects his resilience and capacity for making a quality contribution to society.

Giving birth to children that are not properly cared for does not make sense even from a materialistic species-survival mentality.

Therefore, what is truly natural for men and women to do is bond for life to care for each other and the children they produce. Even many other mammals do that, too. The human tendency to get involved in temporary sexual liaisons is the result of immaturity, bad conditioning and fallen nature—especially the tendency of the body to dominate the mind— not God-given or even evolutionary traits."SMM

Return for Tomorrow's Post: 7 Days of Holy Sex Day 5 - Benefits of Waiting for Marriage part 2

This text was rewritten and derived from the Textbook: True Love, Chapter "The Meaning of Sexuality".

How to Love With God's Heart

 “Above all else, guard your heart,” says the proverb, “for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4.23).

"In any case, the heart, like a garden, needs protection and cultivation if it is to flourish and break through the forces that warp and distort its impulses."

What does it mean to "keep the heart"?  It means to keep your heart pure and polished.  How?  through cutting through the ego, pride, misperceptions and distortions that cover our hearts. 

How can we purify our hearts and delve into the intrinsically good and pure heart that mirrors the heart of the Creator, our heavenly Father?

The Heart of God

Dr. Martin Luther King said, “At the heart of reality, there is a Heart.”

Behind the human heart, of course, is the divine heavenly Heart.

God’s Heart is the wellspring of His love, the core of His being. This heart impels Him to live for the sake of His children and creation.  What may not be known about God's awesome might and majesty is a fierce concern, intense sensitivity, and incomparable tenderness.  God is the king of love.
 

“Can God enjoy His life without love?” asks Reverend Moon. “No. However omniscient or omnipotent He may be, by Himself alone, He cannot enjoy happiness . . . You say you are happy because you have your parents, your husband or wife, your sweetheart. You say to someone, ‘I am happy because I have you with me . . .’ If that is true with human beings, the same applies to God.”

Jesus addressed his Lord and Creator as “Abba”—Papa (Mark 14.36).
 

More than the most devoted of earthly parents, the Heavenly Father is so passionately concerned with every single one of His children, that no one’s gladness or distress escapes His notice.

“Not one [sparrow] is forgotten before God,” we are assured, and surely each person is “worth more than many sparrows” (Luke 12.6-7).

God's heart works in relation to a partner and it does not stand to be apart or enjoy isolation.  Who can stand as God's true object partner in relation to His heart?

Philosopher Abraham Heschel speaks of a Lord passionately and personally involved with His people. The Bible has the Creator as affected by humanity as a man is by his wife (Hosea and Jeremiah 3.20).

 

God’s heart shapes His ideal, what religious traditions have called the Kingdom of Heaven, the World to Come, the Golden Age.  It is the place where “The dwelling of God is with men,” (Revelation 21.3) as He intended. Intimacy with one’s children, grandchildren and great grandchildren—does any parent desire anything more? In the same way, God’s heart wants eternal closeness with each of His children.

This parental heart means no one is outside its reach. God's grace falls like rain on the worthy and unworthy alike. There are no limits to this love; no sacrifice is too great. He “so loved the world” that He would offer everything He has, even His most beloved Son (John 3.16) that “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” and be saved (2 Peter 3.9). “Turn to me and be saved,” He cries through the prophet Isaiah, “all you ends of the earth!” (45.22-23).

Indeed, this is a defining characteristic of God’s Heart—no one is outside it. Even those who disobey Him, reject Him or even seek to destroy everything He holds dear are not excluded. His wrath and judgment are ultimately for the purpose of reconciliation, of being together with His children.

Thus there is Jesus’ saying to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” in imitation of the Creator's characteristics (Matthew 5.44). As Reverend Moon has said, no matter what state human beings are in, “God cannot but love man. You can be so confident as to say, without you, God cannot be happy.”

The impulse to seek joy through loving is too strong for any permanent rejection or estrangement between the Father and any of His children.

God's Heart has three aspects; One is joy, the spirit in which He created the universe.  This is reflected in the infinite varieties of the beauties that make up the creation.  During the creation process, the divine imagination was animated with gladness.


“It was good,” He said of His creation (Genesis 1.10). He was especially joyful in anticipation of sharing His life with responsive children and having them delight in the creation He had made. When human parents happily prepare a nursery and then tearfully welcome a new child into the world, they taste something of God’s heart of joy at the creation.

The Heart of God is the ultimate counterpart to the human heart, and deeper and wider than our own and overflowing with the purest, most profound love. Only His heart so fully, in the words of Blaise Pascal, “fills the soul and heart which He possesses" ... it alone has the capacity to completely stimulate every part of us.

 

Those privileged to have tasted of its fullness have described its intoxicating rapture.

 

“Once the heart of God dwells within you, no matter how lonely you may be you will be filled and the universe will be filled,” states Reverend Moon. “Such a person is infinitely joyful, lacking nothing.”

 

“Ah, my Lord God,” wrote Thomas à Kempis, in, “most faithful lover, when Thou comes into my heart, all that is within me rejoices!”

This is the ultimate happiness and the essence of Heaven. It has been called paradise, nirvana, bliss. Whatever it is called, it is ineffably good and satisfying— an oasis in the desert to the thirsting human heart.

Aspects of God’s Heart
 

This is why the distance from Him that has been the human condition throughout the ages leaves such an ache and restlessness.

As the psalmist expressed it: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night” (42.1-3). Conversely, when Adam sinned, God searched for him in the Garden, calling, “Where are you?”(Genesis 3.9).  This can be views as God's pure Heart could no longer see Adam's impure heart after the fall occurred.

The fall left Heavenly Father and the earthly children in need of fulfillment having lost their "love partner" of one another.  God's heart has experienced much displeasure.  Who can look at God's situation as wonderful throughout history when one peers through the eyes of God looking upon His lost children disconnected from His heart? "The agonies of the world that burden all but the most callous of souls are."

 

Joy over the Creation Hope and Commitment to Restore the Lost Ideal Impulse to Love Sorrow Over Human Suffering

This is an important aspect of the divine heart: sorrow.

God is likened to a human parent that has to endure witnessing their children suffering through a reckless act or worse, as victims of a crime.  God's heart breaks whenever he sees the torment and misery of the world;the senselessness of war, the wretchedness of hunger and poverty, the harshness of disease, the agonies of families torn apart and the devastation of spiritual emptiness.

 “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it,” said St. Paul of the body of believers (1 Corinthians 12.26); how could the Head of the body not suffer? He agonizes with His loved ones as any of His children do with theirs.

“In all their distress, he too was distressed” (Isaiah 63.9), say the Hebrew scriptures of His relationship with His people; He “could bear Israel’s misery no longer” (Judges 10.16). He was even agonized as a mother in labor: “Now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant” (Isaiah 42.14).  Muhammad likewise felt God’s misery, saying in a Hadith, “I see what you do not see and I hear what you do not hear; heaven has groaned, and heaven has a right to groan.”

Not only does God feel the pain of every person, but this is ever amplified by His understanding of what could be, like a dreamer who is far from his ideal, His unrealized vision for the beautiful world He intended. A parent grieves even more painfully over a child’s mistakes and suffering than the child does, because the elder also knows more fully all the potential and hopes and dreams that have been lost.

God had envisioned a Heaven on Earth and higher ideal than the current situation of the world.

Besides His pain arising from compassion, God’s heart aches for the broken communion with His loved ones. He feels the pangs of joys lost, unable to fully share the lives and the loves of His myriad sons and daughters. This frustrated hope is what Asians call “han,” the basis of what theologian Andrew Sung Park calls God’s “wounded heart”.

Yes, God's heart has been broken at the disobedience and suffering of His children.
 

Scriptures reveal the pain of the Parent who has given all yet cannot connect with His children enough.  His love is largely unrequited. “The more I called Israel, the further they went from me...” (Hosea 11.2). This Hebrew verse captures the poignant lament of a heartbroken Father.

"How often I have longed to gather your children together,” He confesses to a rebellious world, “as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matthew 23.37).

The parent is willing to give without end for the sake of her child, but joy is incomplete when love is not returned. Indeed, He is described as “grieved” over the wickedness and faithlessness of His children (Genesis 6.5-6).

A Christian from California recounts I’ve never really been very good at sharing my faith with people. Then one day I was walking down the street in Berkeley, California, and I saw this big poster of a missing child. 

That poster seemed to speak to me. I realized that God is missing all kinds of children. Day after day, He watches His children killing each other, robbing each other, crumbling down in loneliness and then going to hell. When I thought how I’d run around searching if my own child was missing, I realized I had to testify to my faith with more fervor to help God find His missing children.
 

God is the fountain of hope. This is the third primary aspect of God’s Heart—there is hope that God's ideal which was lost in the beginning can be restored.

This hope gives power to overcome the sorrow, disappointment, and grief.  This force sustains His awesome perseverance, which has been laboring painstakingly and patiently through His representative for the day of the great homecoming.

He fervently seeks among the multitudes of every child who does not know Him. The Bible offers metaphors for the almighty Lord of the universe.

One is the image of a poor woman desperately searching for a lost coin (Luke 15.8-10), as if the omnipotent One forgets all dignity in His urgent efforts to save His children. Another is that of a shepherd, leaving all of his flock to track down the missing one and rejoicing when it is found (Luke 15.4-7).

If a parent's child was taken captive, that parent would sacrifice and offer anything and any amount of ransom if it meant the liberation of their children held in bondage.  God does the same with more intensity using His whole heart and effort toward liberating man from the chains of ignorance and the force of selfishness.

God cannot rest until even those who have committed the most heinous of crimes repent and begin to cultivate their own hearts of original goodness which emulates God's great heart.

Maybe the best poignant image of the tender Creator is the one painted by Jesus in his story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15.11-32).  The patriarch's aching heart is revealed for his wayward son's return when he stays waiting at the window hoping for the day he returned.  The father forgets everything when he first sights his son walk back to the land and runs forward to greet him. He is beside himself with joy to have his son back, no matter what pain the young man caused. One could say the father is a willing slave to parental love.
 

Since man is made in God's image, God's heart is essentially the same. 

God has fashioned Himself to be vulnerable to His children and to be captive the the same love that captivates them.

“He is the Lord omnipotent, the Lord of all beings, the controller of all,” the Hindu scripture reads, “yet he permits himself to be controlled by those who love him” (Srimad Bhagavatam)—and by love itself.

Because of His unfailing faith in His people and His vision, God can endure the agony of seeing His faithful ones scorned and persecuted and to keep on working until every part of the original plan is realized.  This means, God will not cease His work of restoring His children and world until everyone is back into His bosom.

“He will not falter or be discouraged,” the prophet Isaiah declared, “till he establishes justice on earth” (42.4).

With the heart of the Father yet in the shoes of a servant, God perseveres to save His children, driven by His heart of hope.  The father who pays for his son’s careless damage to another person’s car, the mother who goes to the principal to ask for one more chance for her daughter, the father who stands with his boy in court and offers his own respectability as a hope for leniency, the mother who apologizes to a child her daughter has shared the sorrow of God over the misbehavior of His children.

All share the same hope: if they pay enough, pray enough, love enough, and try hard enough, eventually their children will respond to their sacrifice and love and will become responsible people in their own right. This is the hope of every parent. God, the Parent of all, is the same.

Photos by: freedigitalphotos.net
 

Return for Tomorrow's Post: How to Grow the Heart

 

Textbook: Educating For True Love Chapter, Foundation of Character Foundation based on the teachings of Dr. Rev. Sun Myung Moon as more of an understanding of the Heart of God.