Sow Seeds in People

“When I give sermons, I speak for five or six hours at a time. I do not do that because I like to.

“The gist of a sermon is simple and does not even require a fifteen minute talk. I speak that long because I try to make it easy for different types of people, for those who have come to hear, to understand the gist by explaining to them using many examples, and to have them participate within that sphere.

“The purpose is to sow as many seeds as possible in the spring season. If I sow many seeds, many plants will grow.”


Where must you sow the seeds, then? It must be an unspoiled place. Where is that?

The time of adolescents.

Once you sow seeds in the young people, this fruit will last a lifetime and will never be uprooted.

When is the time people are most sensitive?

In elementary school.

In the time of middle and high school, our senses become duller.  At the time of university, it is like passing a village, like an activity.

The most difficult time is during elementary school.

Next is during middle and high school. As time goes by, their senses dull. We must sow the seeds of life accordingly.

You can accumulate eternal assets for the future through teaching children at Sunday school children songs and tell them stories or such things.

Testify to God’s word every time you meet elderly people.  

Members are not doing these things well. You can witness better when you to take the bus or subway than driving your car and talk to ten people, ask them question and get to know them.

You can arrange to see them and introduce the Principle, the Completed Testament to them.  There is enough material for you to witness as much as you want.

When you commute on the same route everyday for twelve months a year, you get to recognize and know people by their faces and tap into an interactive network.  Why do you waste time when this path is cleared?

More important than eating is harvesting the citizens of heaven. 

This is our main occupation while on earth is to witness God’s word.

Among all of the works you do in your lifetime, this is more important than a job, making money or power.

Money becomes useless in the next world, things and knowledge are also unnecessary.

In the spirit world, your mind knows ahead of time everything within a week without being taught.

What is needed there is love-centered harmonizing power, love-centered influential power. 

Therefore, those who do not have love-centered influential will not be able to harmonize with the original world that move by the influence of love.

They will be repelled when they arrive to spirit world and end up in hell.

“You say you have lived and worked for the Unification Church ever since you joined it, but you should consider in what position you have worked. Always ask yourselves in which direction you are headed and in which position you are located.

“If you do that prayerfully, God will be with you. You will know it the moment you close your eyes -- even without praying.

“As you go somewhere to give a talk, the right word  just flow out of your mouth. If you come across conscientious people, you are drawn to enter their houses.”

Everything seeks relationship. 

Even flowers have the power of attraction to create relationships.

A magnet in essence is eternally unchanging.

Even if you see someone for the first time, it does not mean that you cannot relate to that person.

If you go to such a place, you feel joyful and are inspired to speak.

What will you say to God who has been working to restore us with great pains to this day find Adam?

Since the beginning of time, God has been looking for a perfect son.

“You all know the Principle. This is the weapon that can save countless people. Until now, God could not teach humankind and consequently had to guide the work of redemption amid ignorance.”

God’s words in the Principle is an enlightened path that can assemble a following of hundreds and thousands of Adams.  We must connect them to eternal life.

The topic of eternal life is a serious matter.

When you are with your contacts, have the heart that wants to convey the Principle to them all night without getting tired.  Go all out and inspire them at your first meeting.

You should not be doing anything other than finding sons and daughters whom you can take with you to heaven. 

If you had hundreds of millions of dollars and lived richly, that will all pass away in the next world.

Invest all your materials, knowledge and your very lives all at one time to create heavenly citizens.

How much you invest will be proportional to the amount of your input your input.
It is shameful for you members to proudly fancy yourselves.

How many lives have you saved from your own efforts?

The degree to which you will be praised eternally before heaven for your achievements depends on how many heavenly citizens you harvested.

There had no been a way to harvest them until now.

They could not do it because they did not know, but with the Principle  you have an A-frame carrier on your back.

You can bring in an explosive harvest once you start spreading God's words passionately.

However, because you are wasting time even with that kind of real internal power, God wants to strike you with a thunderbolt.

It matters not whether it is midnight or dawn, whether night or day. When Heaven is ready to receive you, you cannot say to Him, "Oh, I just want to sleep!" In that position, you just run straight through.
We must provide education concerning the issue of eternal life.

“From now on, assume that responsibility. I cannot curse those who oppose the Unification Church. God wants them to connect with me and commit themselves, but if they drop out that is our church's responsibility and I must assume responsibility for that.

“This world came to oppose us: because of Satan, but it is our responsibility to overcome those adverse circumstances quickly. If we do not, our situation will be all the more miserable from the resultant damage it will sustain.”

It is the same as nursing a baby. If you give birth to a baby, you have to nurse it. That is why people come looking for you.

Therefore, when they do, never treat them coldly.

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.