A Loving Family Expands to Loving World

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

—Sun Myung Moon

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

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

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

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

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

Unfortunately, this is also how evil entered the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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