We Choose Heaven or Hell

Religious people who tell those who drink that they are going to hell have no peace of mind.

“I am weary of them. When I see them saying, ‘That goes against the Bible, Matthew chapter so-and-so. You're going to hell,’ really, those rascals. If killing someone could save a nation, then don't you think they would pass a law to free the person who had killed for the sake of saving the (whole) nation?”

You decide whether you go to heaven or hell.

“I do not decide. God does not decide. You are the one who decides. If you complain, it is hell. If you go with a grateful heart to places where you would have complained, it is heaven.”

God did not make hell out of jealousy or envy. Since false people appeared, God made hell as a warehouse in which to manage them.

For example, if you bought a cabbage to make coleslaw, but while making it you discovered the outer leaves had been eaten by worms, you would dump it into a rubbish bin.

This is the concept behind the creation of hell.

Since humanity committed the crime of the Fall, therefore, to remove sin from existence, someone who is qualified must emerge to reverse this problem.

Before the Second Coming, all people who were born on earth were destined to go to hell because there was no true condition for God to save them.

The highest level was paradise which was a waiting room for the creation of heaven.

Humanity has been born of a fallen lineage.  There has not been a moment when all of humankind has bowed down and attended God with all of its heart.

Adam and Eve grew according to the ideal of creation before they fell.

But they never attended God from a relationship of the heart.  How do we know this?  Because if Adam and

Eve truly could feel God’s heart and pain, they would have never crossed the boundaries of love which ultimately separated them from their Parent.

What is hell?

Hell is a place that has no relation to God or His love, life or lineage.

No matter how well you do while on the earth, the situation after the Fall is such that you cannot establish a relationship with Heaven or the realm of the Fall.

This is a bitter tragedy we find on earth.

It is a fact that human beings who were created by God fell from a good position where they can not relate to Him.

We were to lovingly attend Him, but He was left deserted by His children who followed His servant.  No one believed in Him or knew Him.

The bitter grief of heaven and earth is that no one attended and related with God in heart.

You have to hate your fallen, imperfect self.

You should hate your body.  Your enemy’s sinful blood pumps through your very veins.  You should understand that you cannot cut this line with a knife or burn it away.

You have become a waste factory that just consumes things of the creation and cannot receive God’s complete protection.

What determines the division between heaven and hell?

Just knowing or preaching the Bible is not enough.  It is decided through acting upon the original heart.

The boundary line between heaven and hell is determined by the heart.

When you cannot conform to the ideal of love, a reaction comes against you.

No one tells you to go to hell or sends you there.  This is why the Bible states “Love your enemy!” Genuine love gives its influence on the enemy.

If one sends love to his enemy once, twice, thrice and four times, the enemy disappears or is absorbed by this love for sure.  It is because love has such a great power that Jesus said to love the enemy.

How do you think God feels when He sees His children suffering in hell?  Would He sit joyfully on the throne happy with just a few praising His glorious name?

He is desperate trying to give them eternal life.

This is the only way that His responsibility as a parent will be fulfilled.

If after the Fall God eliminated every false thing then He could not stand in the position of a parent.

This is why God even has to eventually liberate hell no matter how hard the situation.

When a rebellious child sees his parents desperately trying to save him he will recognize how much they are doing for him and shout this out thousands of times for his sins.

A son will repent till his bones melt and his flesh falls away.  The parents’ heart is such as this.

Not even Satan can accuse God for His love in trying to save humanity.

No rule prevents forgiveness for a person who repents based on the love of his parents.

From this kind of heart, hell must also be liberated.  This is the way of a true devoted child.  Therefore, members believe that we must liberate even hell.

Why?

Because God has such a parental heart for His children, for us who have suffered from the Fall.

Once one is caught in hell, it is a place one can never escape.

Despite the fact that we feel that our mother, father and relatives are going to hell, you do not really feel the desperation to save them.  You think that it will somehow work out.

However, let’s think seriously about our beloved family members going to hell.

Human nature is such that if your parents were to go to prison, you would cry.  You would do all sorts of things to get them released.

Then, if you knew that your own sons and daughter, parents, and relatives, brothers and sisters were going to an eternal prison, would you just think casually about their fate?


Return for Tomorrow’s Post: Why Do We Exist?

This post was rewritten and derived from the religious book Cheon Seong Gyeong, Book Six, Chapter two, Section 2.

A True Family is the Kingdom of Heaven

The beginning point of Kingdom of Heaven is not based on an individual or nation, but a family. 

Jesus knew this and sought to work through the relationship of a bride and a groom on earth.  

Is the starting point through an individual?  

No, it is a family.  The family is the basic foundation for the Kingdom of Heaven.

Once you visit the Kingdom of Heaven where there is only unity, you will never want to return back.  

You will never tire of dwelling there with God’s beloved.

If all of humankind wanted to live and meet there, then the world will unify quickly.

This does not happen all at once.  

First, an individual must unite his warring mind and body or flesh and extended this through the family, national and worldwide levels. 

Your family represents the sovereignty of heaven:

Parents represent sovereignty, children represent the nation and your possessions represent the land.  To be dutiful toward your parents means to be loyal to the nation and to practice being saints.  This was the original ideal world.

Instead, we have fallen families that are the origin of disgraceful behavior.  God truly believes that the family can be the sacred site to turn all of history around.

Our mission is to guide all corrupted families in the fallen world toward the heavenly path.  We do not have the right to turn away from them.

These three, parents, children and belongings are necessary components defining the boundary of a family.

A husband’s duty is to relate to the church, and his wife should tend to the material.

Then the family members should become completely one.  This is where the Kingdom of Heaven starts at this point.

Heaven is only established if a couple becomes one centering upon God’s love.

This union can never be dissolved and it will never split.

What kind of love are you centered upon?  

If you found God’s love, your mind and body are completely one so He can dwell completely in you.

The Kingdom of Heaven is realized through a family where a father and mother are completely one through God’s love and the children love them.

“As Father did when he started the Unification Church, you must take sincere care of your friends when they visit your house. You have to make them say, "Your house is better than mine. This meal is more delicious than at my house. Can I stay here one more night?" 

“When you make your house a place where every guest or friend wants to come and live, even abandoning their own families, you have the Kingdom of Heaven of a family.”

We don't need so many people in the church. The Kingdom of Heaven starts not from the church but from a family -- namely, from a bridegroom and a bride. 

The woman was born to see a man and a man born to see a woman.

The first person on earth a baby sees when he or she is born is ‘mommy’.  A couple should treat each other in a way that the husband calls the wife the same way the baby calls their mother and vice versa.

A couple that lives in this way will not envy young couples when they get older.

The whole family should participate in worship service and learn from exemplary families and guide the families that are in a bad situation.  This way, we establish the kingdom of Heaven of the family.

The Kingdom of Heaven on earth cannot be established without the Kingdom of Heaven of the family.

Do not forget the dignity you have as a family member.

Heaven begins from the family and nowhere else.  You must think that whenever you embrace your spouse, it is in order for the men and women of the world to become one.

The family is the place where you can set the condition to love the whole of humankind.

Reach the status where you can even feel God’s mind, heart and appearance and His suffering as your own mind, heart, appearance and suffering.

This should be accomplished here on earth.

“Now Heavenly Father feels that I should teach the norm for life in the Kingdom of Heaven. People in the restoration course should learn from those who are expert in the Principle. 

“Father cannot be responsible directly for those problems. That age already has passed. The organization of the Unification Church is the organization of a family. The Unification Church is centered upon a family, not upon an individual, which has been the center so far.”

Where is the Kingdom of Heaven? 

It is not in the sky. 

It is the place where the father, mother and children experience 100% joy when they use all things for life and for ideal situations.

What does God’s ideal world look like?

It is a place where Heaven on earth is founded upon the True Parents who have reversed the fall of the first false parents.

The Kingdom of Heaven is established only through the foundation of love. 

There is no trace of such love in the fallen world or spirit world.

No one has received the love of true parents on earth and spirit world until the Second Coming of the Messiah to make a way.

In God’s original world, man’s love, woman’s love, son’s love, daughter’s love, parents’ love and God’s love were part of the original family.

When one loves parents, spouse and children in such a harmonized place leads a life of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

You are qualified to go to Heaven when you respect your spousal love and parental love.  We can create a unified house of love.

Grandparents hand love down to the parents, the parents hand down love to a husband and a wife.  The couple hands down love to children.

To deny any of these denies the establishment of Heaven.

The world is afraid of the Unification Church and owes the families that were blessed in marriages more than the Principle.  

The Messiah and the blessed families become one in love centering upon God's love. 

The Messiah, the blessed couples, and the blessed children: these three generations are connected to be one in love on earth. 

The Unification Church is the place where three generations can be linked.  When three generations live together in happiness, the ideal of creation is realized. 

Husband and wife should love one another and pray for their children with love and take sincere care of them.  This will create a harmonious family and perfect love is established.

Cousins and second cousins should become one in love and form the perfect shape of love.

The Unification Church regards the tribe as the start of the Kingdom of Heaven.

When parents, brothers, cousins and second cousins become one centering upon the grandfather, a perfect three generations are established. 

A wife must serve her grandparents-in-law and parents-in-law in place of God and her husband.  

She must also harmonize with the sisters-in-law and brother-in-laws.  When this kind of relationship expands to the society, nation an world, this becomes a world of peace and love - not crime and war.

The Kingdom of Heaven of a family is established when a man and a woman are completely one.

Husband, wife and children should center upon God’s Will for the sake of humankind.

We work for the sake of humankind’s salvation, not only for God.  God’s dreams is to find a family that has such a standard.  If we do not have such a heavenly family on earth, then God cannot save all of humankind nation and families.

Such families were raised by the Messiah of the Second Coming that center on God.  These blessed families should strive to lead a life that is connected to God’s nation.

The heavenly nation and world is established from their existence and when we work for others.  The family is responsible for organizing the world centered upon God.

The members of the Unification Church centered upon the Messiah’s word which is like a tribe and a nation following God.

The Unification Church’s role is to form a nation for God that is composed of five races that is united and can work for the sake of the whole world.

The purpose of the Messiah returning is God wants to accomplish this through his bringing God’s new truth to the earth testified in the Book of Revelations in the Bible.

Return for Tomorrow’s Post: 

This post was rewritten and derived from the religious textbook Blessing and Ideal Family Part 2 written by Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

How Bad Relationships Affect Children

There are consequences to the disorder that our culture and families have encountered.

Children are majorly affected by the downward spiral in morals and relationships.   Let’s review seven of these consequences.

Consequences for Children

1. Impaired development and lowered well-being
2. Depression
3. Ambivalence about family and love
4. Moral and spiritual difficulties
5. Violence and crime
6. Miseducation about sexuality
7. Abuse and exploitation

1. Impaired Development and Lowered Well-Being

Children are raised in a single-parent home have less of an advantage than those in a no abusive, two-parent home.

They are affected spiritually, financially, psychologically, more likely to drop out of high school, become delinquents, and become single parents themselves.

A high percentage of adolescent patients at substance abuse centers came from a single parent home.

Children from such homes tend to have less self-confidence or self-discipline, have more difficultly to be dependable and have a hard time setting and keeping goals.

Many adult children of divorce commonly say “when my parents broke up, my childhood died.”

The absence of a father in the home makes the children become the ‘junior partner’ to their mother’s emotional needs and help take care of the family in place of their father.

This stops the child’s normal development and places a heavy burden on his or her shoulders.


2. Depression

Divorce is the greatest cause of depression in a young person.

A study of 34 countries showed that suicide rates were associated with the increased divorce rates.  This was especially true for the boys.

Yet, children from a secured home that succumbed to constant conflict and destructive arguments between the parents were angry and depressed.

In addition, the parent’s disunity caused their children to bear the brunt as one parent takes their anger against the other out on the children.

For instance, an angry mother may tell a child in her disappointment, “You’re lazy, just like your father.


3. Ambivalence about Family and Love

Brothers and sisters may mimic the serious tension between their parents and act more aggressive towards one another or their peers.

When parents reduce their involvement in their children after a divorce whether financially, emotionally or in disciplining them, the children may feel less love from their parents.

Sons and daughters of divorce frequently report feeling less affection for their parents.

Many children of divorce may see the emotional closeness they have with their parents as a burden.

Divorce can also place a pall over the brothers and sister’s relationship.  When adults experience the break up of their family, they may view their childhood with negativity and report a less fond memory for it and their siblings.

A child of divorce or a single parent can lose the sweet image of having an intact family of their own.

Divorce can leave the children believing that stable relationships are not possible.

A bad relationship between parents will cause the children to have a bad image of their own gender or the other that haunts them throughout their lives.

These feelings intensifies when they reach the marrying age.

Dr. Judith Wallerstein says that they may experience anxiety about relationships which may become part of their personalities.

Children who do not have good role models, especially children of divorce, are afraid of confrontations, loss, loneliness and abandonment.

A child who over bonded with one particular parent which was broken up after the divorce may have a fear of closeness later in life due to the prospect they may lose them.

This anxiety over commitment issues will immobilize many, especially men even though they have a natural desire to have a secure marriage.


4. Moral and Spiritual Difficulties

Parents who separate can also divide their children in other ways.

In a strong family, parents work hard to create one consistent moral code and create a home culture where the child can feel comfortable and comforted.

This is not the case for children who come from a divorced home.

Because a child will go from one house to the next, he or she may live between two worlds or more if there are stepparents.  When the child is too much like one parent, this may seem like disloyalty to the other parent or offend and hurt them.

This is related to a child losing family traditions, neighbors, and friends due to having to relocate or others not being able to relate the same way to the now fractured family.

A parent’s absence after divorce can be a stumbling block to a child understanding God’s nature and His love and truth as our Heavenly Father.

God is viewed as a loving and faithful Father by Christians in the parable the Prodigal Son which rest on the premise of having a positive experience through a parents’ constant presence and their unity.

“I’ve made progress,” reports a young man in his mid-30s whose parents split up when he was small and who barely knew his father. “At first I just got angry and cynical when I heard about ‘God the Father’ in church. Then I gave up the anger and just went blank, especially when it was time to pray.

“Now I am starting to understand who Heavenly Father is through my experiences with my own baby boy.”


5. Violence and Crime

Abel killing his brother Cain in the Biblical account foreshadows the family breakdown we experience today and the rise in crime.

Children from single-parent homes are more likely to have anti-social behavior.

Children of divorce are more likely to exhibit destructive behavior such as crimes, drug use which motivate the crimes and become prison inmates.


6. Miseducation about Sexuality

Our society with loose sexually licentious standards harms the youth and society at large.

Many societies are concerned about unwed teenagers because the young are less equipped to cope with the fallout of physical relations with the opposite sex than adults are.

Three out of four adults disapprove of teenagers engaging in sex before marriage, but they may have a standard for adults.

Majority believe that it is acceptable for adults to engage in such behavior before marriage themselves.  This contradictory standard of adults accepting sex outside marriage makes it hard to enforce a different standard for teenagers.

Is it better to set a guideline for sex outside of marriage according to age if waiting for marriage a holy union is not strong enough?

Age being the only reason to make a teenager wait for sex leaves negative ramifications that happen for older sexually active adults is no different, such as heart break, teenagers will surpass this standard when tempted.

Of course, children do not follow rules so much as they follow the example of those older than they are.

Younger children will pick up the teenagers’ seductive moves when they watch their elders’ favorite rap artist or actress.

Young boys may mimic the older brothers’ exploitation of women and sexually harass their classmates without a second thought.

When children see the celebration of adults having sex outside of marriage or the beautification of it, this diverts the youth from choosing to marry and receive the benefits of waiting for their spouse.

When young people no longer view sex as a part of a marital relationship, then the whole institution of marriage loses its uniqueness and value.

Many have heard their aunts or grandmothers protest, “Why buy the cow when the milk is free?”

When sex is easily available, it may partly explain why most hate the idea of marriage in a sexually permissive society.

When sex is easily available without the responsibilities a relationship or marriage brings, it is easy to see why people would want to go the easier route.

When a society no longer honors marriage and chastity, it does not have any basis to guide children to wait for a lasting, successful love and protect them from the hurt of no marital sexual relationships.

There is a natural urge for physical union to be part of a marital companionship which is a need that can be fulfilled only in a marriage.

Despite this, we have become a society that has forgotten this principle when it is easy to come by.


7. Abuse and Exploitation

A permissive sexual attitude and the combination of single parent homes can spell disaster for children.

When children are raised by mothers who have live-in boyfriends or stepfathers not related to them, they are twenty times more likely to be physically or sexually abused than those who are raised by their fathers within an intact marriage.

During the launch of the sexual revolution, child abuse skyrocketed.

This all began when Lucifer exploited his position as Eve’s teacher and protector.

It is wrongly believed that allowing men to have free access to sex to release any sexual frustrations does not have any evidence in the present world.

One factor is that teenage pregnancy and sexual disease as the fruit of encounters not between boys and girls, but girls and older men.

The majority of pregnant girls in the United States began their sexual activity as a result of being raped or seduced by men 27 years old on average.

Even worse, when it is acceptable for people to satisfy their sexual appetites freely even in educated levels through the world becoming one community through social media and transportation, child pornography and child prostitution has exploded.

This is the darkest part of the satanic underside of “sexual freedom” outside of God.

Over a half million impoverished pre-teen and teen girls in Brazil alone have been victims of wealthy adult clients.

Virgins are chosen by adult men to protect themselves from sexually transmitted disease and are then discarded once they become infected.

Thousands of social media feed these perverse appetites.

The most innocent and vulnerable are cast into the mouths of their elders who are the very ones who are to cherish and protect them.


Return for Tomorrow's Post:  Facets of Marriage Education


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 on sex and marriage.

Children Need God, Too

Growth in the Child’s Sphere

God created the family as a school of love to naturally influence people to be other-centered and pull them away from their self-centerdness.

Each person is required to give up more and more the love of just self and give more to others in order to experience fulfillment.

The family school of love works step by step naturally to pull people out of self-centeredness into other-centeredness. This process begins in the child's realm.

A child learns to obey and control impulses, including the aggressive ones, out of love for their parents and a strong desire for their approval.

The child learns to take care of things, clean up, prevent messes, do their homework, and respect others and property.

As Fraiberg writes, “There are obligations in love even for little children. Love is a given, but it also

earned. At every step of the way in development, a child is obliged to give up territories of his self-love in order to earn parental love and approval.”

To relate well with his or her parents, children need to relate well and kindly to siblings and playmates.

A child learns that his good relationship with his parents depends in part how well he or she treats his or her brothers or sisters, classmates, and friends.

As they grow, the 'horizontal' relationship to their parents takes on a life and significance of its own, even though they are never fully separated in a relationship from them.

Adolescent Children

As children try to define their identities and emotional boundaries as they grow to adolescence, the relationship to please their parents may become stormy and difficult.

Influences outside the family hold sway as adolescence forge relationships to the larger society and world.

As their family's moorings loosen, children may become emotionally tossed around, and experience great highs and lows.

It is important for parents to continue to nourish and assert this main bond of parent/child and the values it represents and recognize the growing importance of their peers and their child's independent identities.

Parents should do this to the sacrifice of their child's peer's influence and some of their child's decision-making power. In order for them to continue to growing in the child's realm of heart this is necessary.

“Our son was succeeding academically and socially in public school,” recounts Mona, a mother of three. “It was the social success that worried us! He’s sweet and smart and a good athlete, and girls called him, asked him for dates, and to go steady with them.

“Our son knew our standard on early dating, and he tried hard to withstand the peer pressure, but it was definitely confusing for him during this vulnerable time of his life.

“When we told him we were enrolling him in a religious school where students’ families and the faculty shared our values, he was upset at first. But soon he underwent a transformation.

“He became more and more responsible and, in this supportive environment, his faith grew and grew. I thank God, for many reasons, that we as parents made that tough decision.”

One pastor, Dave, is in favor of parents taking a strong stand when their children may not be going in the right direction. “Taking a kid out of school and finding him a new one, grounding him or doing whatever else you need to do to pull him up short—that might look like shutting him down,” he says.

“But in fact, it’s giving him the possibility of a whole new life. In almost every case I’ve seen where the parents took a strong stand, it worked.”

Dave also commented that children will sense their parents deep love for them with such actions and respond with gratitude.

This is an illustration of the two points of the child's realm of heart shown during adolescence: First, it demonstrates that the relationship with parents is the primary one superseding. 

Also, directing relationships with peers and this vertical relationship with parents and their parents' values are crucially important to their growth.

Second, it shows that adolescence is a time when the young people mind questions everything and needs to be directed toward God.

When we look at adolescence from a spiritual point of view, there is more than the child forming a separate identity from one's parents in psychological terms. It involves expanding the sphere of children's love to include the ultimate Parent, God.

The fulfillment of the child’s realm of heart is to relate to God with filial piety.

This truly means to respond to God with love, faith and obedience like that of a loving, trusting, responsible child.

“We never know the love of the parent 'till we become parents ourselves.”

Henry Ward Beecher made this observation which highlights how filial love of a child evolves through growing and facing the responsibilities that come with being an adult.

A new understanding and sympathy for parent's roles come as sons and daughters become a spouse, a parent, the breadwinner, a middle-aged caretaker of others and a responsible community member.

As sons and daughters rise to the more advanced realms of heart, spousal and parental realms, they grow to appreciate those who had these responsibilities before which they now face.

When children expand to a higher level of heart, they will appreciate through understand and service to their parents.

The long accumulation of a child’s debt to his or her parents begins to be repaid with gratitude.

There may be the time when the child grows up and becomes his or her own parents caretaker.

Some parents become a child again and lean heavily on their sons and daughter's strength. At these times, they assume the parental role toward his or her own parents. 

 Changing their diapers, paying old debts, settling the family estate and becoming the patriarch or matriarch of the family while urging their parents to take a rest.

When parents become elderly, the child's world/realm of heart comes full circle.

As one woman said: 

"As a young Catholic I was inspired by the saints. I had always wanted to do things like work with Mother Teresa in India, but most of my life has not been so glamorous. After college I became a teacher in an elementary school. 

"And then my mother had a stroke and I had to drop out of teaching and help her for two years; bathe her, care for her bedsores, cook, pay the bills, run the house. At times I wanted to complete these responsibilities and get back to my spiritual life. Then one morning it dawned on me—I  was doing the work of Mother Teresa, and I was doing it in my own home.

A child's love which is mature may involve taking up tasks to fulfill their parent's unrealized dreams.

Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowsky, who created the portraits on Mt. Rushmore, accepted a commission in 1947 offered by Lakota chief Standing Bear to carve a massive tribute to the great Native American chief Crazy Horse out of a mountain in South Dakota.

Knowing how much the project meant to the Native Americans who had had their sacred Black Hills violated by the Mt. Rushmore project, he determined not only to do a bust, but to do a full figure of a man on horseback.

This bust was going to be ten times larger than his Mt. Rushmore project. He dedicated decades to the project, but left it unfinished after he died in 1982.

His children comforted him before his death and committed to bring his dream project to completion.

This is an example of children's love by becoming a person who makes his or her parents proud.

Confucius said, “True filial piety consists in successfully carrying out the unfinished work of our forefathers and transmitting their achievements to posterity.”

This was echoed by Thomas Macaulay, Western poet, when he wrote:

“And how can man die better than facing fearful odds for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods?”

The person the child becomes as an adult is a gift laid at the altar of his or her parents’ love.

A child's mature heart is reflected in his or her relationship with God.

“There is a common saying, 'What you are is a gift from God. What you become is your gift to Him.”

When we return appreciation and devotion to God for all He has done for us throughout our life and history this reflects His nature. 

 It also makes His dreams, concerns and tasks our own which are hallmarks of filial piety and a true child's heart toward our ultimate Parent.

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 Reverend Sun Myung Moon's philosophy on family and love.

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.

Childhood Relationships Needed to Mature the Heart

There is also an individual order by which individuals govern themselves, which is significant in how they relate to others.

The orderings of these relationships, affects the way the realms of heart function.

The love of a mother and child nurtures and harmonizes the developing relations between the child and his or her siblings and peers.

The harmony of the child's realm of love affects the sibling's or peer's realm of love.

For example, one Saturday afternoon, Erica's 8-year-old son, Tim, and his friend were playing with Lego blocks.

Usually Tim gets along with his friend, but this particular afternoon they were quarreling.  Tim did something out of his character.  When he and his friend disagreed over a Lego piece.  He tore apart his friend's Lego construction and threw the pieces all over the floor.

His mother recognized that this behavior came from the busy week's toll on his relationship week with her and his emotions were running on empty.

Because of her motherly instinct, she took him aside and spent time alone with him.  She spent time holding him on her lap, speaking gently to him, and getting him involved in funny little finger plays.

After only a short time, Tim became calm and happy again, and went back to apologize to his friend.  He even offered to help his friend rebuild his toy construction he destroyed.

Tim needed this vertical connection with his mother in order to relate smoothly with his peers on a horizontal plane.

Often, a family’s problems involving children can be remedied by improving and solidifying the marriage. 

Psychologist John Rosemond testifies that when he and his wife shifted the center of their family life from the children to their marriage, getting the vertical order right, their children were more obedient, more respectful, more compliant, and—importantly—happier.

Rosemond likened a happy, healthy family to the solar system:   “The marriage was the nucleus of the family, the children were satellites that revolved around the nucleus like planets to a sun.”



A Healthy Ecology of Love

Relationships between the vertical and horizontal create a greater ecological system that encompasses all four realms of heart (parent's, children, siblings, spouse).

This becomes a support system that surrounds the individual and stimulates him or her needs to internally grow.

When this ecology is imbalance, people feel vulnerable and often try to fill this need in a substitute way.

This explains why a child latches onto her cousin as her 'older sister', the widower joins a dance club, and the infertile couple adopts a son.

For example, 14-year-old Elena is in the children's and sibling's realm.

When her complementary partners of parents, grandparents, and brother and sisters and maybe cousins, she enjoys a wealth of possibilities in terms of giving and receiving love and thus develop her character.  These relationships are necessary for growth in Elena's stage in life.

Jon, on the other hand, who is 27 year old may have different relational needs than Elena who is still a teenager.  He may be more challenged and fulfilled to mature by being invested in the spouse's and parent's realms.

He thrives best by having a good friend and children as reciprocal partners to relate with.

But this is in addition to the parents and siblings with whom he continues to have a relationship.  Jon's ecology of love includes all the four realms of heart.  The absence of any of these aspects will make Jon feel an emptiness in his life.


Ecology of Love

In an ideal world, people would progress naturally from realm to realm, nurtured by their partners in the realm and nurturing them back in turn.

We would achieve the necessary level of heart that resembles God's heart.

The reality of course is that humanity is far from the ideal.  There are forces that seem to prevent people from attaining the growth of heart they need in each realm.

A daughter who is becoming an adolescent may need her father's reassurance and support more than ever before, but he is struggling with finances and turns to alcohol to cope.

A mother who just gave birth to twins, may not be able to stretch her love resources to her husband and her babies which causes the marital relationship to breakdown just when she needs her partner the most.

An older sibling may say something to a younger brother or sister that was biting and stay with the children for years affecting his or her self-image.

We see that people are imperfect in their ability to love.  Yet, the realms of heart march on.

The abilities of other-centered love or love others than yourself are still too underdeveloped to cope with the demands of the realms.

This causes many difficulties.

Because of this, divorce, domestic and child abuse may result.  This inability to love can emerge as more subtle problems such as a mother who rather be her daughter's best friend and live vicariously through her

Many people may feel that they lack the heart to have concern and compassion, and do not have the ability to be refreshed from naturally giving true love.

Then people find themselves depleted.  This pattern of people who are immature in relationships raising immature people has multiplied ever since the disastrous interruption of the love relationships of parents, spouses children and siblings in the Garden of Eden.

Reverend Moon has said, “The Fall was initiated when one person claimed self-centered love. 

The one who proclaims love centered on himself, they deny the value of all other relationships in his desire to make himself the center of the universe.

Such a person seeks to bring benefit only to himself, and the disease began when this desire entered ther ealm of love.

The first parents were thus cut off from God and from one another and started a negative pattern from their brokenness and immaturity.

We see these patterns continue and proliferate to this day.

People who are not able to fulfill the earlier realms of heart, they must perform the later realms of heart and do so badly.

Psychotherapist Arthur Janov writes, “The major reason I have found that children become neurotic is that their parents are busy struggling with unmet infantile needs of their own . . . In this way the sins of the parents are visited on the children in a seemingly never ending cycle.”

The family needs great infusions of God’s love in order to repair the brokenness and restore health. 

A society that had families who exhibited true love, this would be a world of peace and harmony – a true Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

Religious history has been one of God and humankind desperately seeking to repair and restore the original love relationships where individuals, families and societies from.  Thus, they can be healed and made whole.

Therefore, it is important to understand how the four realms of heart in the family work and need mending.



Return for Tomorrow's Post: Importance of Children Growing in Love


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

Advantages of Marriage

A man and woman will learn from each other through their union things about themselves, humanity and our Creator that can not be known in any other way.


“Man is born to meet woman and woman is born to meet man.  And man and woman together are born to combine with a higher level of love, God’s love. Neither man nor woman can touch God’s higher love by themselves.”

This means that when a man weds, his woman is a kind of savior in countless ways.  Just as a husband is like her personal messiah.  This is the where the foundation for spouses to have inexpressible gratitude for one another.

Oneness between a man and a woman is relative.  First, they have the deal with the inherited legacy of conflict between men and women.  Then there is the inherent contradiction between partner's words and their actual deeds that makes true love itself a great struggle.  This is why when masculine and feminine become one, it remains a grand challenge as uniting the mind and body.



The Rewards of Commitment

In a husband and wife relationship, research supports the power of having continual investment.  A study found that couples whose relationship was distressed that almost 8 out of 10 reported being content in their marriage after they persevered for five more years.

Those who gave up on their marriage and decided to divorce, they were not any happier the ones who stayed married in their peer group, or those who even remarried.

This information reveals the importance of sticking things through and staying commit meted.  If people remained through the ups and downs, this investment will surely yield fruit.

“One advantage of marriage,” notes author Judith Viorst, “is that when you fall out of love with each
other, it keeps you together until maybe you fall in again.”

The heartbreaks and hardships that accompany any long-term relationship can turn into an element of deep bonding.


“I did not even want to deal with all the difficulties in my marriage. It was easier just to put on a game face, have a few drinks and dive deeper into my job,” one man remembers. “But my pastor forced me to say some things to my wife that needed saying, and to face what I was doing wrong too. Now I look back at that time as a period that made us a lot closer.”

The Bible encourages couples to love each other in a proper way - as “joint heirs of the grace of life..in order that your prayers may not be hindered. (1 Peter 3.7 RSV)

The oneness between spouses is a lightning rod for divine blessing.

At the same time, when a man and woman unite in deep abiding love, the joy that is created and prosperity they share from the blessing will spread to their children, all who know them, the greater human community and the Creator Himself.


Identifying with their gender community


Societies used to have rites of initiation when a boy was transitioning into manhood aor girls into womanhood so that they youth could solidify their gender identity.

In modern society, boys and girls still participate in single-gender team sports, or clubs like the Boys and Girls Scouts, to give challenges and opportunities to win respect among their elders and peers.

The military still serves in this traditional way for young men.

Even after marriage, men and women both continue to receive empowerment and comfort when they are in the company of their same-sex friends.

When they are joking around together, this characterizes the banter of male buddies.  They give silent respect and honor one another which in turn renews them.

Likewise, the “girl talk’ between women is a reassuring reinforcement of a sense of connection and support in their lives.

This is why both sexes need to enjoy the company of same-sex company on a regular basis to ‘retreat and regroup’ to strengthen their ability to give to the opposite-sex individuals in their lives.



Unification through Marriage



The ultimate unification of masculine and feminine takes place in marriage and in making a family.


When a husband and wife hold each other, their children will understand and appreciate the opposite sex.

To the woman, her husband and sons represent masculinity in all phases of development.

Similarly, the man embraces all femininity through his love for his wife and daughters. Thus marriage and family life provide the fascinating ongoing adventure of bonding and integration between masculinity and femininity.

Marriage and family life thus makes men and women into a better mirror of the divine. 

“In the image of God he created him; male and female he created them,” the Bible reminds us; man and woman together echoes the Creator’s own “wedded” nature (Genesis
1.27).




Hindu scripture speaks of the original Self, the Creator, splitting in two to make man and woman. Thus each is “like half of a split pea” (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.3).

Such a couple is a full mirror of the Godhead. Indeed, Reverend Moon characterizes the married couple as the smallest unit of humanity, in the sense of fulfilling the purpose of human creation as God’s complete reflection and love partner.

The love between a man and woman can be uniquely edifying because they are complementary in physique and psyche.  They can feel ‘as one’.  They can feel knit together in mind, heart and body the same way same-sex friends never can.

When man and woman give into marriage in heart and body, their “humanity is rejoined and fulfilled,” in the words of philosopher Michael Novak.


The result is a certain “distinctive honesty, realism, and wisdom taught by each sex to the other.”19 A man and woman learn through their union things about themselves, humanity and the Creator that can be known no other way.

“Man is born to meet woman and woman is born to meet man,” says Reverend Moon. “And man and woman together are born to combine with a higher level of love, God’s love.

Neither man nor woman can touch God’s higher love by themselves.

In this sense, a man’s wedded woman is a kind of savior in countless ways, just as a woman’s husband is like her personal messiah. This is the basis of the inexpressible gratitude spouses often feel towards each other.


Potential for oneness

Because men and women are indeed made for each other, given sufficient time and effort, the unity of heart between a man and woman is to be expected. The magnetism between masculinity and femininity can overcome differences. Since their Origin is an integrated whole, they too can integrate into wholeness.

Even though such an idea is hard to reconcile with popular notions of romance, it is the ordinary experience of the millions of couples over countless generations who were strangers when married and who grew to deeply love each other.

This is captured in the memorable lyrics of the song from “Fiddler on the Roof,” when Tevye reminisces about his arranged marriage to Golde, his wife, and says to her,

But my father and my mother said we’d learn to love each other

And now I’m asking, Golde, ‘Do you love me?’

After protesting that for “Twenty-five years my bed is his; If that’s not love, what is?,” she concedes that indeed she does.

And so between two people who may not have been attracted to each other at first.

Recalls Ann Meara, half of the long-married comedy team, Stiller and Meara, “Was it love at first sight? It wasn’t then—but it sure is now.”23 This may not be the self-conscious and passionate ardor of young lovers, but it is a deeply rooted, comfortable kind of caring and unity not unlike the attachment a person has to his or her own arm.


Continual Devotion

For this reason, a sixth principle for true love is Investing towards Oneness.

Ultimately the Creator represents the highest and original purpose. Those who center their relationship upon God invite Him to manifest Himself and His beauty, truth and goodness in the partnership and its fruits.

Examples are endless, since this is the dynamic behind all productive
relationships, even in the inanimate world.

Protons and electrons have opposite charges that attract each other. They interact
as subject and object partners, driven by atomic law that contains a higher purpose, and create a new existence, a hydrogen atom.

A professor as the subject partner engages in give and take with her students as object partners, based on the curriculum as their shared purpose, resulting in an enriching learning experience for all.

A band comes together to express their common vision of music, and the members interact with one another in lead and backup roles.

Their degree of unity is directly reflected in their music. A coffee shop manager in the leader position hires counter help in the supportive role.

The manager treats the workers well and the counter servers are diligent and loyal, resulting in a productive business that realizes the shared goal of profits and service to the community.

A pastor prays with his youth ministry staff as his helpers and together they craft a marriage preparation ministry that leads many young people through purity into matrimony and a deeper commitment to God.

Implicit in this observation is that whenever any relationship is unfruitful—or destructive, as is possible in the case of human relations—certainly there is a problem with the nature of the urpose or the interaction or both.

“My high school football team was undefeated in our state,” one young man recalls. “But sorry to say, the victories went to our heads.

We lost our focus on doing our best and got complacent.

At the same time, a lot of us starting worrying about showing off for the college scouts and we forgot about the team.

When we got to the regionals, we blew every game.”

In other words, the team lost its vertical purpose and the horizontal interactions also deteriorated.



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.

Where is the School of Love?

Why is it that something as love which is vital to human life as breathing, the ability to give and receive does not come to us naturally?

Rather, true love must be taught, learned and practiced. Humans spend many years as immature, dependent children who have to learn how to act in the world and then provide for themselves.

Schools, teachers, masters of trades and parents teach them skills, but there is no formal school or system that teach people how to love and be loved.

Left without instruction on the proper way to love centered on God, people are left floundering, having to learn about love through painful trial and error.

We have witnessed science and the arts flourish rapidly throughout the centuries, yet our wisdom about love and relationships grows slowly at best and unevenly.

Pitirim Sorokin, a sociologist at Harvard, expressed his chagrin at “our enormous ignorance of love’s properties, of the efficient way of its production, accumulation, and distribution.”

We are living the era to remedy all the love ails by studying about and educating for true love.

Even though to love and be loved properly is one of life's most daunting challenges =, it is essential more than any other aspect of life people work hard to achieve.

Psychiatrists have been visited by high-powered professional people who break down in their offices because they are at a complete loss when it comes to their most important personal relationships. 

Despite all of their qualifications and accomplishments politicians, business executives and celebrities find that their wealth, power and talent fail when they are faced with the demands of love.

Therefore, to study the true way of life begins with a life lived in true love. Only after people are well-versed in the nature and practices of true love will they find a path to follow that will satisfy the human longing for true love.

The most precious philosophy is to live for the sake of others.

—Sun Myung Moon

For people to live in love, they need to understand it.

It is utterly difficult to define love.

The ancient Greeks divided love into different categories, describing features of each.

For example, 'eros' was an impassioned romantic attraction; 'eunoia' stood for general benevolence or good will; 'xenlike' represented kindness to the guest or stranger; and 'agape' love which defined as an unselfish affection for others. 

Agape love became a keystone of Christianity. It is recognized by all the faiths of the world. Buddhism calls agape love 'compassion', Hinduism and 'human-hearedness' or jen in Confucian thought.

Additionally, there are all kinds of love found within the family:

There is devotion of parents toward their children, the children's affection which is reciprocated. Siblings care about one another in a unique special way, and there is the love between spouses which is a world in itself.

Grandparents have a profound regard for their grandchildren.

All these types of love have their distinct features.

There should be an all-around definition for love that encompasses all types of loves and form.

Reverend Moon states that true love is to live for the sake of other people. Within this definition, love that is not true is weeded out. Love that is deceptive and lead people to despair rather than joy are left out when defining what true love is.

True love is other-centered.

Why was humanity necessary?

We were created to completely fulfill His love. Love is the reason that humanity are the supreme creation.

True love only happens in relationship to others. Even God required an 'other' in order to fulfill His love.

God created humanity as His love partners who will share in the glory of His creation.

Even though God is almighty, He needed an object, someone to share in the creation with. God also needs a relationship in order to experience love fully.

If God is so, so must be His creatures.

As author Sherwood Anderson said, “Two oddly sensitive human atoms” find one another, cling together and think, “Here is this other.”

A love that satisfies is only possible when in the presence of another person. The Bible emphasizes the love others in the presence of others. The Old Testament testifies to the greatest commandments which were to love God and love one's neighbor as one loves themselves.

Jesus echoed this truth by telling his followers to not come to the altar of God if they quarrel with their brother in their heart. They had to set things right between their 'brother' before approaching God.

Jesus later pronounced that God only forgives those who forgives others.

Jesus told his people that when two or more were gathered in his name he would be present. He was implying the need for believers to seek communion not only with God, but with one another as well.

Loving others is always in couplet with loving God well.

The prophet Muhammad stated that on the day of judgment, God the most high will say, “Son of Adam, I was sick and you did not visit Me.” 

The son replied how could he visit the Lord when he was the Lord of the Universe. God replied, “Did you not know that My servant such and such was ill and yet you did not visit him? Did you not know that if you had visited him you would have found Me with him?”

Russian thinker Vladimir Solovyov said that love “forces us with all our being to acknowledge for another the same absolute central significance which, because of the power of our egoism, we are conscious of only in our selves . . . shifting the very center of our personal lives.”

Reverend Moon refers this shifting of center from self to others as a 'revolution'. He holds that such a revolution toward true love is necessary for happiness and peace in the world.

Modern culture says that love is a spontaneous feeling within a person's heart toward one another when in fact, ethics figure prominently in successful and loving relationships.

Upon further examination, it is shown that ethics enable true love and love that is based on feelings alone is dangerous.

If a man feels that he has truly fallen in love with another woman, he will leave his wife and children for her. He will leave emotional devastation in his wake in the pursuit of false feelings.

A teacher may feel that they are romantically attracted to a young student and end up causing psychological damage to the student for life when they approach them sexually.

Psychologist M. Scott Peck points out, “Many, many people possessing a feeling of love and even acting in response to that feeling act in all manner of unloving and destructive ways.”

In order to benefit the other, true love adheres to ethical principles.

Even though a truly loving person does not feel benevolent feelings toward another person, he will behave benevolently to someone based upon principles.

Such a person will be kind to a spouse even when the other is being surly because the person believes in kindness even when the other is not evoking such feelings.

Such a person believes in preserving and protecting marriage itself.

A person who helps a homeless man on the street is a person who believes in treating one's fellow human beings with compassion even if society does not see such a person as reputable.

To love a person who has harmed others means having a belief that all people can be redeemed, including the reprobate.

Return for Tomorrow’s Post: True Love is ...




This post was rewritten and derived from the religious textbook, Educating for True Love, Chapter 1 written by a team of writers to explaining Dr. Rev. Sun Myung Moon's thoughts on morality, society and Family.