How to be a True Parent

It has been said millions of times that the toughest job in the world is that of a parent, most particularly the mother's position.

There is probably no other time in history where the children were as collectively rebellious as in the Last Days.  Because of Adam and Eve's mistake, which they made while they were still teenagers, we are witnessing this phenom today.

Now that we are living during the time of restoring humanity back to the position before the Fall, we will see the fruit of fallen history take place.

For parents to educate their children, they must first put their good words into practice.  They should first set the example of being loyal to God's will.

In this way, they create an atmosphere where whatever they say, their children will revere them without ever talking back.

Otherwise, there is no way for the children to follow them.

For this to happen, parents should give their children a heavenly education.  In teaching their children, parents should first be exemplary.

For parents to teach their children about filial piety, then the parents must be children of filial piety first before God.

This means that you, the adults, should be filial sons and daughters according to the heavenly laws so heaven's tradition of filial piety can be established from there.

Parents should educate them to practice filial piety just as their own parents practiced filial piety in the family.

The patriot's parents struggled for the nation even while being driven into desperate circumstances. 

Parents Must First Set an Example

Parents do not make their children practice filial piety just by telling them to do so.

Every parent should want to possess a heart which causes the children to WANT to practice filial piety to spring up within them.

This kind of love does not happen in one morning, but is developed over a long period of influence from the parents.

What does it mean to exert influence?  

Parents should set the example in their daily lives for their children to follow their way. 

You should be experts at putting such things into practice.

As parents, you do not just simply say, "Become great people" but rather, you say, "Go this way in order to become great people."

Fathers must fulfill their responsibility as fathers and the elder siblings should fulfill their responsibilities as elders.

By you becoming people who walk the path of true men and women, who do not deviate from the heavenly law, a pathway will emerge by which you can go the principled course and become the citizens of the one nation.

Then, what should parent's do?

Parents should teach the children to love their brothers and sisters in such a way as the mother and father loves them.  At the same time, they should teach their children to have a love for the nation in such a way. Then they do not need any further education.

When it is time for you to pray, ask God to make your children follow this way since you are doing it this way.

You can only place your children in such a position only after you yourself have set the standard.  Once you stand in such a high position, then God would naturally lead your children in the same direction.

Thus, if you fail to reverse the trend here, then you will be called to account for this failure once your go to spirit world.

Each of your families should have such children that view Mom and Dad as greater than any kings, queens or presidents in the world.

Also, you should be able to show them their mother and father are close and united with each other like no other parents in the secular world.  You should establish such a tradition.

This tradition should be so well planted in your children that they will say that their parents make them proud more than anyone else in the world.

If you look at the parents in the secular world, they constantly fight making a big mess even when their children protest their behavior in tears.

If children are unable to grow up without any tears or sympathy, when they see their parents fight in the secular world, they still exclaim that their Mom and Dad are the best in the world.

This is because they do not know the standard.  This is why you should set the example of a true parent and how children should be.

You should establish a parental bond where adoration flows out from the innermost core of your children's heart.

Thereby, this is where the family precepts and traditions are established.  Through teaching this tradition, the children of the next generation will say, "We will stand in the position as parents."

Parents Are Best Friends and Best Teachers

Have you ever thought where does love originate?

It never comes from the self, but rather from a partner.

Without a partner, love cannot arise. 

We see this pair system in all of creation.

Within humankind, women complement men, and children complement their parents.  Love is never realized without partners, a subject and object partner.

Those who have not been able to truly experience this love of the three object partners, cannot stand of having substantially experienced God's perfect love.

We should give birth to be able to match the rejoicing of God after having created Adam and Eve when we give birth to sons and daughters.

After God spent millions of years to develop the creation, surely he was overjoyed at the time of His first children's arrival.

We learn this in the Divine Principle.  After God created the first parents He told them, "From now on, you will rule over the world.  Our family will be the central family of the world.  Please grow up quickly."  God felt joy and satisfaction after Adam and Eve came into being.

God thus desired to see the day that Adam and Eve would be able to be blessed in His true Holy marriage upon their coming age.

By the same token, when fathers and mothers give all of the energy and love into raising their children well, they want to find good partners to become good husbands and wives.  When this happens, the family thus prospers.

Who are truly your children's best friends?

Not the young boys from the neighboring village. Your children's best friends are none other than you, their own parents.

This is how it should be.  Parents should be liked by their own children even more than their friends.  This is how you should think when raising your children.

Parents must be their children's best friends and best teachers.

While educating their children, parents should not lose their tempers and yell, "Hey you, don't do that!".  Teachers should not say, "You brat! I will spank you if you don't do what I told you.  Don't do that!"  Instead both should educate children with love.

Parents should teach their children in such a way that if they were to ask their children, "Hey, do you think you should do that?" The children will answer in such a way, "You are right, I should not do that because it would make my parents sad."

This is the reason that the parents should be their children's best friends.  Do you think that Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden had friends?  If Adam had any friends, his only friend was Eve.  Next there was just God.

But God did not want His children to be friends with the archangel who was a servant until after the purpose of creation was fulfilled, then Lucifer would have gone to the  next level beyond the servant if he fulfilled God's will.

Instead, Adam and Eve befriended the wrong person.  So, parents should be the best of all teachers, the best of all friends and become the best of all thrills of love.

Love begins from God.

Therefore, conjugal love stems from the parents.

When it is is time for the parents' children to find mates, the parents can say, "Hey, you like each other not because of yourselves but because of the virtues of your parents."  Their children should reply, "You were right, if you had not raised us this way and found such partners for us, we would have been disastrous."

As we have seen in society, marriages that are based on personal choice only without thought to the purpose of the whole, fail to meet the standard.  So who should educate children in love?  They should be educated by their parents.

Children should see that their mother and father love each other with great fun, like two cooing pigeons and learn from this kind of love.  They should be able to say, "Wow, when I see my father and mother together like that, I feel lonely when I am alone.  I also need a partner whom I can love like my parents love one another."

Their parents should teach them how to be like this.

When children are able to repeat this kind of love and extend it out into society, then the world will become a world of goodness and human history will become a history of goodness.  This is what we seek to accomplish.

Chastisement with Love

According to the Revelation of John, one should be hot or cold, but never lukewarm, because the world where love is lukewarm will never do.

If you have a heart of love you can even chastise with a stick. 

While raising your children, if they fail to meet a certain standard, even though you have loved them, then you should sometimes treat them coldly.  If you do not scold them when they are clearly at fault, then they grow up without the capacity to distinguish right from wrong.

Although your Teacher may look amiable, I can sometimes be strict. I can be merciless toward evil, but toward goodness I can be hot like a furnace at thousands of degrees.  When I heard recently that a teacher at a school in the West was in trouble with the authorities for using corporal punishment, I said to myself, "Now that nation will perish!" 


A nation that does not allow the correct discipline of children will soon be a nation of adults that do not know how to behave in the proper way.  Therefore, students should not mind if their teachers strongly guide them in the right direction even with strong chastisement.

There is a saying in Korea, "Give one more rice cake to someone you dislike, and wield a stick for someone you like."

This is the only way to ensure that the right tradition is continued.

Children should forget the pain of their punishment and should be able to shed tears before the love of their parents.

The closer you are to someone, the more you can scold him, saying, "You heathen! Why did you do that?" 

Instead of rewarding him, you can spank him on the calf and scold him, saying, "You rascal, did you do something good or bad?"

But the intensity of our concern for him must exceeds the severity of the punishment otherwise, it will be a sin.


If your punishment is more severe and surpasses the concern for the child, he could become one of your biggest enemies.


Even if you correct your child out of love, if the severity of the punishment exceeded the degree of love then everything will shatter.  Nevertheless, the opposite case happens, then everything is set right.

If we were to say that your love for him is at a level of ten on a scale of one to then, but incurred a minus of five because of a severe punishment, your child would still be grateful at the level of five.

Even still, if you child is unable to accept his punishment well, in order to allow him to come to repentance, you should love him with a greater love than you have shown him in the past.

Thus, even a delinquent child would be able to repent and turn immediately around in front of such true parental love.

However, if you scold your child repeatedly, and speak loudly about how well you have raised him, he will begin to pack his bags. 

But, if you love your child with a greater love, by shedding tears as if your heart would melt for them, they will turn around.

Greater love tends to take the lead in assimilating and integrating all other lesser forms of love. 

Even parents that live in the secular society if they are lax and tell their children not to study because they look tired, that parent does not truly love their child.

Parents should encourage their children to stay up and study even if they have to spank them.

Why is this so?

The parents should be concerned for the future well-being rather than just their present circumstances.  Parents discipline children in this way because they have greater hopes and dreams for their future.

When you give birth to and nurture your children, do so with true love. 

Based on this foundation, if your family members are able to unite closely and learn to love their nation, they will then become patriots.

Hence, parents watch over the growing process of their children and thus educate them.

Sometimes loving parents have to wield a big stick of love so that the children can grow up in the right way.

Children should not complain or protest because of being scolded or even spanked by their parents when they make mistakes.

Children should take such discipline as a lesson.  They should repent seriously and strive to amend their errors.

Such children will be able to grow up correctly and draw near to the center where God abides.



Return for Tomorrow's Post: Parents' Heart Resemble God

This post was rewritten and derived from the textbook Cheon Seong Gyeong Book Four-True Family, Chapter Nine, Section 3-5

Life of Faith Toughest School

If you say that a school is good, usually it has an intense and demanding curriculum.  Religious life can be compared to going to school. Do you want to join a very simple, easy-going religion?

Members of other churches go to church Sunday morning and sit on cushioned seats. All they have to do is write out their contribution card and tithe weekly, and that's it. But here you have to raise funds. Some of you have been kidnapped by deprogrammers. There are incredible differences.



Reverend Sun Myung Moon


Of course a person that is healthy is able to digest things that a sick person would not be able to handle.  By the same token, when you have a healthy mind, you, also, can digest anything: democracy, communism, and any philosophy.

Which -ism do you think a movement such as this belongs?  Godism.  Also, Unificationism, which is concerned with uniting things.

Is it easy to unite things?

We each have five senses, plus the limbs, and the beauty of each component comes from its harmony with the whole.  The eyes do not say, "I do not want to belong to that community.  I want to be all by myself."

Even nature observes such laws of the Principle while humanity has turned away from it through choice.

Here, we have five different colors of skin coming from all different parts of the world.  Our goal is to unite them into one family of man.

This church-life of fundraising, witnessing and working around the world for world restoration is complex.

We are into boat building, the fishing industry, and later we will go to the deep mountains digging miles into the earth for minerals.  What are the goals through pushing members into these incredible experiences?

You are being made into people who cannot be defeated.  That is people who are so capable that there is no one who can keep up with you.

Through this difficult training, you are learning how to totally digest many ways of living.  Through the hardships and incredible experiences, you will become great teachers whom people ask for advice.

Then our question boils down to one central point: Is there a God?

We broke down in three previous points how the theory of evolution leaves out God in the answer to the origin of the universe.

Ultimately, our question boils down to one central point: Is there a God?

There are two contrasting "blocs" in our world today.

The two worlds are the democratic world, also called the free world, and the other is the communist world. There are a few basic differences.

People of the free world assert that all of creation began with a thought, through the invisible world of the mind, or God.  The communists on the other hand insist that matter is the essence of everything, and thought is formed from matter.

This is the fundamental difference between them.

However, because of the communistic influence that has captured the world, many people in the free world are not aware of the existence of the mind, or spirit because it cannot be seen.

When such a person gets up in the morning they know that they need warm clothing because it is cold, they don't need spirit.

If they could choose an overcoat, they would like mink or sable.  Is it easy to obtain high-quality, expensive things or is it difficult?

If God does exist in the universe, then He would be important to the existence of the creation.  But if this God was only good for fulfilling the external daily requirements such as meals and necessities, what kind of God would He be?

If God was on a mountain, He would not only be on the highest mountain, He would be at the peak of that mountain.  If there was a tree there, God would be at the very top of that tree.

Is it easy to find and discover God?  If God has hidden himself on the earth, if He dwelt in the desert, He would look for the largest desert, like the Sahara.  This is how we reason.

If God was in the midst of the Sahara, even though many people have died along the way in search of Him, there would be many other people who will never stop searching to find Him.

God is that precious.

If He is the most precious thing, and you knew you can find Him in the desert, would you like to go there?  Even if it was at the risk of your lives?

This is the way human nature is.

If God is at the highest point of the mountain, people would not stop climbing up until they reach that pinnacle.

That is the way man is created.  If He was hidden in a cave miles beneath the earth, men will dig and dig and not give up until they reach Him.  This is what man's spiritual nature is inclined to achieve.

Why is that?

While man is in the process of reaching that highest, deepest and widest point, we overcome everything in between.  Once we finally reach the top we become conquerors. Thinking men always feel they want to conquer something which ordinary people do not reach.

It is mans spiritual nature to reach and strive for the utmost.

Would God place Himself where it was easy or difficult to reach?  God would be at the pinnacle, where people could ultimately reach Him through an extraordinary way.  What place are we?


I really want to give people the most precious thing under the sun. Then should I devise a way of life which is easy to live? Or should it be a path full of overwhelming experiences?  Everyone wants to get a Lincoln, if possible, instead of a Ford or Chevrolet. The most beautiful car is the easiest thing to create in the factory, right? No, the most expensive car requires the most care to make.


A lot of investment, extra effort and all kinds of tests went into making a car.

People who buy cars do not think about how difficult it was to build;they just simply enjoy the car.  Even though one created the automobile and wants to ride it, the owner would tell him that he does not belong there.

But, if his car breaks down, who will he need?  He will need an auto mechanic.

The well-dressed rich man who bought the car and the oily mechanic are both connected to that automobile.  What does this analogy mean for us as people of faith?

Would you want to be the passenger in the expensive car, or would you like to be the dirty, oily laborer who made the car?  Anyone can get dressed up and sit in a nice car, but not everyone can create a car from nothing.


Dumb Reverend Moon took the difficult road instead of the easy one, becoming the dirty mechanic. The mechanic who had the ability to create the expensive car has nothing to worry about. If the car breaks down, he can fix it. Even if there isn't a car, he can create one. He has confidence in himself.


Many Americans are proud of the Empire State Building and the once World Trade Center and so forth, but who built them?  Who designed them?

The Trade Center was designed by Japanese and built by the unwealthy.  Americans are proud of such structures, but are they able to build them on their own?

Even if your ancestors were great, working hard to build the things America is now proud of, what abut you?

Descendants of many great people do not care about such things and rather go clubbing and just enjoy life dancing and having a good time.  What can they be proud of other than that?

Young people today are going after fun with no purpose in life. 

No matter how great their past may have been, these young people will decline.

The children of those who had built such great monuments should be able to do something even greater and bigger to leave for the next generations.  Thus, the nation and people will be able to prosper.  We pledge to be people who will be purposeful and prosper.

We shall be the remnant.

Father speaks about growing up in North Korea and the process of activities that work toward restoring the ideal world:

I was born deep in the mountain country of Korea in a little house. I talked about mankind, the universe, and salvation of the nation. My parents thought I must be crazy.

They said, "You are the son of humble peasants.  Think about how to take care of the fields, how to raise the animals."

People around there couldn't comprehend the things that the little boy was talking about, so they said I was a crazy child, and when I became a little older, they said I was a crazy young man, then a crazy adult.

That crazy boy grew up to be a crazy man, then came to the United States, and is still talking about crazy things. I act like a crazy person. People look at me and say that something must be wrong with my brain.

Recently I have been saying that America cannot afford to have Jimmy Carter as President for another four years. Attacking Carter was almost like hitting a stone wall with my own fist. Who would get hurt?

Even if my hand got hurt, I wouldn't stop. But finally the stone wall gave in.

From the average person's point of view, my ideas are a little crazy. You are the followers of that crazy man. Amazing, though you aren't bothered by being called crazy men and women. You became so crazy that you gave up drugs, gave up discos, and you stopped any promiscuous behavior. You are liberated from that.

We are looking at the entire world and are trying to do something about its problem. If I tell you to gather on the East coast, you hop into vans and drive all day and night, and in three days you are all here. If one driver's eyes keep closing, someone else will open his eyes and drive.

Do you think I am so dumb that I don't know anything about these realities? You fundraising members, for example, go out into the streets every day and people yell at you and spit at you. Sometimes you are even shot at.

The best attitude is to go do fundraising as a researcher who is studying the people who hate Moonies. I am also researching all the fundraising members. I push you out, and in the meantime I study what kind of person you are.

The material fundraising members get to study is the extraordinary treatment they receive.

Some are kicked, some are stabbed, and some are hit. I want to see these records. What makes the men and women who can withstand this remain committed to their purpose?

People do not like to suffer, even for themselves, but here my fundraising people are suffering for the sake of others. Not a single benefit comes to them, but they are doing it for the sake of others and for the sake of the world. This is either extremely bad or extremely good; it cannot be in between.

Certainly I don't enjoy tribulation.

I would much rather go to an easy church. But I discovered that an easy path was not going to bring the solution. An extraordinary route had to be found, and I found it.

Once I found that route, I asked you to go all the way and not give up. Do it until it is finished. What you are doing now is becoming dirty, oily car-makers. You have started to build an automobile, so don't stop in the middle; go all the way.

Your fundraising record will remain.

People will recognize your deeds and your certificate will come. Later, a signature will be placed on that certificate, acknowledging you as a master in your field of fundraising, for instance, and then you become a teacher. When you complete a most beautiful car and then you drive it, nobody will say anything critical to you.

Would you rather build a 1981 Lincoln Continental, or buy one from a dealer?

If you build one, when you drive it you are not just driving a car. You are demonstrating what you are and you can be proud of yourself. But if you only talk about your idea and never carry it out, no one will trust your word.

You may buy a car and be proud of it, but people will say that you are just being snobbish, that you really have no right to be proud. But, when you make it and drive it, then you can be proud of your accomplishment and no one will say anything.

The basic difference between you and me is that you would prefer to buy a car from the dealer while I would rather build the car myself. The Unification movement is like that car. I can be proud of it and no one can say I am taking too much credit.

However, I am still working on this car because I haven't gotten the certificate yet from the US government, for example. But eventually the certificate will be processed and the signature will be put on, and then I will proudly testify and proclaim it to the people. Then they will say they are ready to hear me.

My ambition is to make each one of you my coworkers in the factory. Are you the auto buyer, or a coworker? That means you want to get down to work, don't you? Doing this hard work means being disciplined, pushed and taught. As the foreman of the factory, I will not compliment you too much.

I will always discipline and criticize you instead. This is the only way I can make you into top-notch workers. I want to push you so hard that no one is able to compete with me. I want all customers to agree that the best automobile comes from the Moon factory. Would you like that reputation?

The same principle is being applied to boat making. I told our people to make the best boat under the sun, but to make it the cheapest. The only way they can do that is by sacrificially giving themselves. But through this process the most beautiful boat is created, and no one else has a boat that can compete.

With the same spirit we make a society, a nation. If we Moonies make the best kind of nation for the cheapest price, there won't be room for communism to creep in."


Return for Tomorrow's Post: Become Ideal People for Liberation


This Post was rewritten from the speech Things That Are Important to You