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1When we study the meaning of the word family, gajeong in Korean, the second character jeong ( 庭) stands for garden. Parents and siblings in a family are like the colorful varieties of lovely flowers in a garden. The family should be a place where each member can be joyful, Singing and dancing. If family members fight each other, the garden will become a wilderness. When a flower hears harmonious music it grows well, but if it hears discordant music it cannot. The same goes for a family. When its members hear the melody of love they can grow wonderfully. What makes them do so is the heart of love.
2In a family there are parents, husband and wife, sons and daughters; and there are surely other relatives living around you. Family members include grandfather and grandmother, mother and father, husband and wife and sons and daughters. It is not mere words that unite them. It is not money that draws them together, nor the necessity of living and eating together. Sharing the same house does not guarantee that family members will get along well. It is mutual affection, no matter who is older and who is younger, that allows them to overcome the difficult challenges of life together, in unity. Vertical and horizontal, left and right, front and back; within a family all these relationships are harmonized through the love not only of mother and father, of husband and wife, of brothers and sisters, but also of grandparents and grandchildren. The family with love as its core is the foundation upon which each of its members bonds with others, moves and acts. A family is based on love.
3At home we have our grandfather and grandmother, our mother and father, our spouse, and our sons and daughters. What is good about a home? It is there that you find the embracing love of the grandfather and grandmother, and of the mother and father. You find the great love between husband and wife and the great love between brothers and sisters. It is people's original nature and tendency to seek the greatest love, so it is inevitable that we return to our family. The grandfather and grandmother are envoys of Heaven, and the father and mother, as the center of the family, represent the king and queen of the world. The grandfather and grandmother are the father and mother of the past, your own father and mother are the father and mother of the present, and you and your spouse are the father and mother of the future. When these three generations join as one, the past ages of the spirit world are connected to the historic realm of love on earth, going beyond the present family, and align with heavenly law in the future. Then all people of the world will be able to unite. The family is the core unit of harmony; ultimately all humanity must bind together as one ideal family.
4The family is the smallest unit that connects the past, present and future. It is a microcosm of the world. As the grandfather, father and son coexist in the family, they connect the past, present and future. When the son has sons and daughters, he rises to the position of the father, and his father rises to the position of the grandfather. From the grandfather to the father to the son, these three generations are to unite into one. The links of the past, present and future should unite them. No matter how much the world pitches and rolls, society will not adversely impact that sort of family. It will maintain a basis for happiness.
5In the family there are the four levels: grandfather and grandmother, father and mother, you and your spouse, and your sons and daughters. The world is the extension of these relationships. Thus you need to love the people of the world whose ages are similar to the people in your family, in the same way you love your family members. Just as your family loves and unites centered on the parents, so you should love and harmonize with all people according to the standard by which you love your own family members. In fact, God invested more to create His partners in love than for anything else. Likewise, you should love others even more than you love your own family members.
6The universe is the expansion of the directions of north, south, east and west that are represented by your grandfather and grandmother, your mother and father, you and your spouse, and your sons and daughters. The family is the ideal model wherein the different kinds of love become one; it is a textbook of love. Hence, we need to take all the types of love in the family and extend them to the world. When you relate with people from around the world who are of similar age to your grandfather and grandmother, no matter what race, respect them as you do your own grandparents. When you relate with people from the entire world who are of the same age as your father and mother, love them as you love your own mother and father. If you become such a person you can possess the kingdom of heaven; you can inherit the full scope of the kingdom of heaven on earth. Moreover, please honor all men and women in the world to the same degree you honor your husband or wife, and love all children in the world to the same degree you love your own children. The person who relates well with the entire world according to this teaching, for which the family serves as the textbook, becomes a prince or princess of God's love.
7God is the cause, and the grandfather and grandmother living at home are the representatives of God. Our mother and father inherited the tradition of the grandparents and are connected directly to us in life and love, flesh and blood. Our brothers and sisters share our direct bloodline. Family members are our kin who are connected through true love, true life, and true flesh and blood. There is no question that this love is one unified core that cannot change, no matter where you go.
8You actualize origin-division-union action through everyday life in the family. When you say goodbye to one another in the morning as you go to work, do so in joy, and when you meet again in the evening, do so in joy. When you return to your family, gather your family to talk about what happened that day, discuss it together, and suggest ways to improve. You have to connect the entire family through love and through laughter. The family becomes the children's haven of rest when they can say, "Our dad is the best! Our mom is the best! We really like it when you two love each other!" You have to become a couple who can build a family as the base of eternal joy and pride, such that your children will not want to go anywhere else.
9Why do you like love? You like it because it is how you are designed. When a mother and father love each other more than they love themselves, they are closer to the ideal. Love is a rope that binds the mother and father together into one. Steel chains rust over time and eventually break, but the rope of love lasts forever. Food or money cannot bind parents and children together; only love can bind them together. Unity among siblings is likewise possible only through love.
10A family is not necessarily good just because it has a good house and good surroundings. No matter how shabby a family's house or environment may be, a good family is one that will cherish it as a haven of rest and build ties of love that endure despite all of life's challenges. There you will find the heart of parents and children who live for each other. This heart becomes the original hometown of memories and provides the motivation that directs our lives. It is the basis of our happiness. Why is that so? It is because there is a singular tie of love between parents and children. It is a lineal bond of love that no one can replace or invade. There the love of parents and brothers and sisters becomes our motivating force. Our family members are the dearest to us in our everyday lives.
1Genesis 1:27 reads: "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." What kind of being is God? God is a being within whom there are subject and object aspects. All seeds resemble their origin. Because God is the original cause of the universe, all created seeds are in God's image. When you look at a seed, regardless of what kind, you see there are two halves wrapped in one outer layer. This reveals the image of God Himself. God's personality comprises plus and minus characteristics connected to the origin of life. In this way God recreates His own image, and relates with those created beings as His counterparts. Adam is His subject-partner image, and Eve is His object-partner image. Then, why did God create them as separate beings? It is because He wanted to have them each grow to perfection individually.
2When man is perfected and woman is perfected, the two are to join as subject and object partners. Prior to joining as one, they receive love as God's son and daughter. After they grow to perfection by receiving that love, they are to become one. They are brought into union and bound as husband and wife. That is the origin of the family. When they come into union, whom do they resemble? They resemble God, the subject partner, and become His object partners. Then, as His object partners, they can do what God the absolute subject partner has done. That is, as they rise to the position where they can form a subject-object relationship with each other, as God can within Himself through the powerful force of love, a new life can emerge. Just as God created people, people can also give birth to sons and daughters through the power of love. Through God's love, we are not only given the ability to create children and thus to stand in the same position as God, we are also given the heart to love our children so that we can feel the pleasure and joy God felt when He created His children and all things in heaven and earth. In the end, we should fully inherit the filial love, the conjugal love and the parental love that dwell within God. This is the wellspring of happiness that lies within us.
3The world in which we live is not the ideal world that God originally intended. Various religions pursue God's Will over human will. But what is the Will of God? Unless we clearly understand God's Will, it is impossible for us to find the way to fulfill it. God's Will is the fulfillment of the ideal of creation. What is that ideal? God created human beings after creating all things. Ultimately, God wanted not only to exercise dominion over the creation through the first human ancestors, Adam and Eve, but also to bring about a family under His love. In the Unification Church we define this as the fulfillment of the four-position foundation.
4God's Will is the actualization of the ideal of creation; concretely, it is the completion of the fourposition foundation. To achieve this, Adam and Eve must be perfected as God's children and receive God's loving blessing on their marriage. Thus they first become God's son and daughter, and later husband and wife. They should have sons and daughters and build a family that God is delighted to see. This means guiding their children to reach perfection. In conclusion, the ideal world of creation is the ideal family of unified love, where God and His children, Adam and Eve, become one. Then, with God's love at the center, Adam and Eve become parents and create unity with their children.
5God's Will is to fulfill His ideal for the created universe; that is, His purpose of creation. God surely had a purpose in creating; therefore, He will bring it to pass. Adam and Eve were at the center of that purpose. In the Unification Church we teach that God's purpose is to complete His ideal of creation. The purpose of creation is to realize God's ideal through Adam and Eve's establishing the four-position foundation. Centered on God, Adam and Eve were to attain total oneness within the realm of God's love, which they could never have left, even if they had tried. Their family would have become the center and the starting point of love, attending God above as the Father while standing as the ancestors of humanity on the earth below. When God created Adam and Eve, He anticipated the moment when Adam could relate fully to Eve, when the two would attain oneness in heart and body through their union in love. This was the ideal He wished to see become real. Adam and Eve were to become one in love as husband and wife, and give birth to sons and daughters who would be one with their parents. God's Will would then have been fulfilled, based on His love, and the Adamic cultural realm would have emerged.
6God's purpose of creation is complete only when the four-position foundation is established centered on God's love. The four-position foundation refers to true sons and daughters, true husband and wife, and true parents; in other words, Adam and Eve and their children, with God at their center. Forming the four-position foundation entails the completion of the three-object-partner purpose. From the perspective of God at the center, there is a path of love going to Adam, a path of love going to Eve, and paths of love going to their sons and daughters. This love is to bear one fruit: children. Sons and daughters are the fruit of the love of their parents, a mother and father, and at the same time, the fruit of God's love. The fact that you can state, "I have true children," means that you are finally standing in the position where you can relate to the love of the entire universe.
7God's ideal for our first ancestors was that an ideal man and an ideal woman would create an ideal family. But the center of that ideal family would be neither the man nor the woman. The husband and wife would be bonded together, with God's love at their center. A family is ultimately a gathering of parents and children. Accordingly, the completion of God's Will refers to the perfection of husband and wife and the perfection of a family, all centered on God's love.
8God did not create Adam and Eve just to gaze upon them. He did not create men and women to have them age and die. They were created to grow to maturity, to reach the age when their hearts would long to relate to someone of the opposite sex. Then they were to build the true kingdom of heaven of humanity on earth. They were created to build a cozy home of love with God at the center, a home where the man, Adam, would represent heaven, and the woman, Eve, would represent earth. Thus, although they were two, their horizontal union would unify heaven and earth. When the man and woman achieved perfect unity in God's love, the cosmos would naturally harmonize with them.
9The essence of the Unification Church's teaching is simple: the formation of an ideal family in which God can rejoice. The Divine Principle explains the attributes of God. Among them are the attributes of internal character and external form, and of yin and yang. These are connected centered on God's love. Thus we can say that love is the mainstream of all of God's attributes. God's love has the attribute of absoluteness. It is also unique, unchanging and eternal. Therefore a husband and wife bound together through God's love are an absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal couple. The same is true for their children. God's ideal is to build families that form the realm of three generations connected to God's love. In such a family, the parents would be absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal parents, and the same would be true for the husband and wife and the children. That united entity, absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal in nature, constitutes God's ideal family. God is present in such a family. As such a family expands to become a tribe, a people, a nation, the world and cosmos, the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven comes into being. And in the midst of this, God exists as the Parent, Teacher and King.
10Adam and Eve were the substantial manifestations of God's dual characteristics. In God's heart there is nothing greater than the ideal of love in the perfect family, which is the supreme ideal of love: the perfect love of children, of siblings, of husband and wife, and of parents. Even the invisible spirit world and the visible substantial world came from the division of God's dual characteristics. The perfection of the heart of children, siblings, husband and wife, and parents is the highest goal and purpose that God desires to attain. Once these are substantially perfected, God descends and engages with them in their perfection. Conjugal love is the point where not only children's love and siblings' love, but also all other types of love meet. Thus the realm of union in love is created on the first night of the marriage of a man and woman. At that point of union of east, west, north and south, the man and woman become completely one with God and experience the greatest joy. It is the same for God, who can experience the true joy of creation only through the perfect maturity of Adam and Eve.
11Where would Heaven's palace have emerged had Adam and Eve not fallen? It would have been in the place where heaven and earth meet as one. Then why did God create Adam and Eve as two? It is because they each needed their own time period to grow to maturity. They should have reached maturity on the horizontal level and then entered the stage where they could reach perfect oneness. Then and there the vertical God could have come into them and brought them into union. This means that the vertical God would have entered the place where Adam and Eve horizontally became one, and their family would have become the home of true love. The home of true love where God could dwell was to have been Adam and Eve's home. That would have been God's dwelling place.
12Adam and Eve were meant to live with the hope of receiving God's Blessing in marriage. If Adam and Eve had believed in and followed God's commandment not to eat the fruit, they, as God's only son and daughter, would have brought into being a family that realized God's Will. This was intended according to the Principle. People need to keep hope alive in their hearts. With hope, we have to pass through a process and period of faith in order to build an eternal relationship. Our hope and faith are fulfilled on the day we can receive God's love for the first time. That is the Principle.
13God is the subject partner of love for young children, men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and grandfathers and grandmothers. When we look at families based on these criteria, it becomes perfectly clear that the family is the highest realm of love. Had Adam and Eve reached perfection through love, without falling, they would have become the first son and first daughter of God. Their family would have become the home of love.
14Through Adam's perfection, Eve would also have attained perfection, and through Adam and Eve's perfection, God would have seen the beginning of the family centered on love. Had that happened, there is no question that from this perfected family the tribe, people, nation and world that could attend God would have arisen and God, Adam and Eve would have been at the very center of them all. With God as their center, Adam and Eve's way of life and their life course would have remained in history as the tradition by which to live together with God. In that case, their habits, customs, rituals and way of life inevitably would have stood as traditions bound up with God's love throughout history.
15Had our original ancestors, Adam and Eve, not fallen but instead become a family centered on God, on that day they would have fulfilled God's ideal of creation and ushered in the day of God's joy. It would have been the first day on which the love uniting God and humanity would have taken root on earth. It would also have been the day Adam and Eve embarked upon the journey of becoming the True Parents. On that day, all people and all things of creation would have rejoiced.
16Adam's family should have realized true love in accordance with God's ideal. God created Adam and Eve, our first ancestors, with the expectation that they would substantiate and complete His internal nature and convey His Will and love to the universe. Had they done so, Adam, Eve and their children would have established the fundamental Principle for all humanity to follow. Their descendants would have achieved mind-body unity and become individually one with God, creating families in which husbands and wives and parents and children were united. These families would have created a stable foundation overflowing with freedom, peace, happiness and hope that would have spread throughout the earth. Under God's ideal, this model would not have been limited to the family or nation; it would have expanded to the world and to the entire universe. The model of the kingdom of heaven realized in the family was to expand to a nation; the kingdom of heaven in a nation was to expand to the world; and the global kingdom of heaven was to expand to the cosmos.
17When children become God's princes and princesses, they enter into a parent-child relationship with God and inherit everything from Him. When these children marry and attain conjugal oneness based on true love, they form families living in attendance to God, and those families become the foundation of peace and the ideal. Man and woman, each being half of the whole, unite and complete God's ideal love as His partners. Looking at God and Adam's family, God would be considered the first generation, Adam and Eve the second generation and their children the third generation. God was to have been in the position of grandparents, Adam and Eve in the position of parents, and their children in the position of sons and daughters. Through these three generations settling in one family, the grandfather and grandmother would have had the position of God in the kingdom of heaven in heaven and the position of the king and queen representing the earthly realm and the heavenly realm. The parents would have taken the position of the king and the queen of the kingdom of heaven on earth, and the children would have held the position of princes and princesses, inheriting the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven while representing the future.
1God's love appears in the place where the three types of love - the love of parents, of husband and wife, and of children - manifest as one. Where these come together, God is absolutely present for eternity. God is always present where unchanging parental love, unchanging conjugal love, and unchanging filial love dwell. The teaching of the four-position foundation in the Unification Church appears on this foundation.
2Ideal love is achieved in the family. However, God was unable to have true sons and daughters, to know true husbands and wives, and to become their Parent. Therefore it remains God's Will that He achieve all these; where that occurs is where love can dwell. Abandoning all their possessions, people will flock to the place where such love is realized. Love is the most important thing.
3You must have heard the words, "God is love." Where does that love manifest? All people want it to manifest within themselves. However, if that love were to manifest in only one person, it would end with that person. Whether that person were a man or a woman, if God's love were only to manifest in that one person, everything having to do with that love would become extinct within a century and that would be the end of it. In other words, if that one person were unable to bequeath that love to another before his or her death, it would end after a single generation. Then how will we establish the standard of love that lasts? It is through an eternal lineage. Eternal love will emerge if God can plant His love in sons and daughters through the blood relationships within a family. This has to begin with the manifestation of His love in one man and one woman. Thus the beginning point from which the love of the incorporeal God manifests substantially would emerge. Ultimately, the foundation upon which we can realize God's love is the family.
4Adam exists for Eve, Eve exists for Adam, and Adam and Eve exist for their family. They do so based on love. To form a nation, a world and the kingdom of heaven means to establish, based upon a single model, a training ground where this pattern can be reproduced, in order to expand what people feel and experience on the horizontal level.
5We have to live with three generations vertically and three generations horizontally. In a household, three generations should live together, connecting both vertically and horizontally. When you look for a spouse for your son or daughter, ideally you have in mind a harmonious family with a grandfather and grandmother, a father and mother, and sons and daughters. When a man looks for a wife, he naturally looks for one who comes from such a family. All men want a wife from such a family. Thus a man can learn how to relate to people in all positions, how to manage relationships with people above and below, and all around him. In this way a husband and wife mature and become well-rounded in heart and character. This training in love is what makes the heart grow.
6You need to build bonds within your family that will empower you to broaden your love for one another inside and outside the family. Your love within your family is the encapsulation of your love for your nation and the world. Thus, within your family you need to receive training in heart. The way of the heart will become your essential way of life, and you will assimilate the heart that is eager to fulfill God's Will. Then you can apply that heart to your tribe and to your nation.
7You first have to love your parents and your siblings more than anyone else does. If you have a family, you should love each family member in the best possible way. Through this, you become the most beautiful of flowers, with the most pleasant fragrance. You need to secure strong bonds of oneness with everyone in your family. Only by doing this can you germinate a perfect seed and bear fruit that represents the universe. Original life comes from such love, and your original value also begins from this indwelling love. In this respect, your loving relationship with your partner determines your value as a person.
8A fruit comes forth from the condensing of elements after a tree has gone through the hardships of nature for twelve months of a year. Then how does love bear fruit? Because people have not known the answer to this question, this world has become wicked and the family has broken down. Parents are not just somewhat necessary. From the viewpoint of love, they are absolutely necessary. It is the same with children, with siblings, and with a wife or husband. A spouse is absolutely necessary. The family is where people are trained in their ability to love one another, and this love is realized in the kingdom of heaven.
9The Unification Church asserts that God wants to experience the greatest joy together with our families. The place where we learn to give and receive love, the place where we create joy through harmony, nurture it and experience it, is none other than the family. This is the core of our faith. Without being nurtured with love in the family throughout our infancy and adolescence, we cannot develop the capacity to love our spouse or love our children.
10The family is absolutely indispensable to bring love into the universe. It is through learning in our families how to love our parents that we become capable of loving people of the same age as our parents. It is when we have the experience in our families of loving our grandfathers and grandmothers that we become capable of loving people of their age. It is only when you love your husband's sisters that you can love people similar to them; and only when you honor your husband's younger and older brothers that you can honor people similar to them. That is the only way that you can come to love all people.
11Where is the ideal training ground of love? The studio in which we are trained to build the ideal framework of true love is none other than the family. Where did your father come from? You need to think of your father as having come from heaven, from a world larger than the earth. You must treat him as though he were from heaven. At the same time, you must also remember that he has come from the world and from a nation. Besides that, he has come from a specific clan. Keep in mind how your father came to be your father. You may think the same way about your mother. Where is your mother from? You may think, "My mother is a representative of heaven. She is a representative of the world, and of my nation. She represents my clan. That is why she was sent to my family.''
12The family is the training ground and textbook that enables us to enter the kingdom of heaven. It includes our grandparents, parents, spouse, and brothers and sisters. Humanity covering the globe is the extension of the relationships we have with our grandparents, parents and children. Hence, only the families of the people who love each member of the human race as they love their own grandfather or grandmother, their own father or mother, their own husband or wife, and who can serve them as they would their own children, can inherit the kingdom of heaven. There we find the privilege to inherit all the power and authority of heaven and earth created by God. Even in the secular world, particularly among the ancient noble families of Korea, although they had many levels of hierarchical order, the son who worked the hardest, served the most, and loved his family the most became the heir. The principle is the same, regardless of time and space. This is a privilege granted by love. We may think God is so high, being infinite and eternal. Yet once we establish a loving relationship with God, we immediately have the right to participate in God's work at a level and rank equal to His. Not only that, we have the right to inherit the universe.
13Unless a husband and wife can establish horizontal love between them, there is no way for them to find God's vertical love. If the first human ancestors had not fallen, the kingdom of heaven would have started from their family. This is because humankind on the world level is the extension of a family. Therefore, the family is the training center of love that enables us to enter the kingdom of heaven. Only those who possess the love of God have the privilege of inheriting the authority of heaven and earth. When we ask whether life comes first or love comes first, the answer is that love comes first. In the family, sons and daughters are born through the love of the parents. Therefore children come to have the privilege of inheriting life as a result of their having participated in the love of their parents. Those who forge bonds of love stand in an equal position, at an equal level.
14The family consists of grandfather and grandmother, father and mother, husband and wife, and sons and daughters. When you extend this family, it becomes a nation and then the world. The vertical relationships of the family are extended horizontally to the nation and the world. All of this is gathered and knitted together, vertically and horizontally, into one place; that is the family. Therefore a home in which three generations live is a microcosm of the world. When we look out into the world, we can see people who are similar to our grandfathers and grandmothers, our father and mother, our husband or wife, and our sons and daughters. A family with three generations is thus a collaborative training center where we can learn to live in harmony with all people of the world. The family is the training ground where we can achieve a subject-object partnership with the authority to harmonize and create oneness by forging bonds of heart with the whole world, transcending nationality and race. This training takes place centered on love.
15God is the God of love. The love of such a God reveals itself among us as the love of parents, the love between husband and wife, and the love of children. No matter how great someone may be, if he is a man he is bound to seek a woman, and if she is a woman she is bound to seek a man. When they marry each other they are meant to give birth to children.
16God's Will is to realize the purpose of His creation. His purpose of creation is to be fulfilled based on love, but how is that accomplished? In other words, how is the purpose of creation, where love is the center, to be achieved? It is through the completion of the four-position foundation. This is why, in the Divine Principle, the completion of the purpose of creation is explained as the completion of the fourposition foundation. What does this mean? It means the father's love is the mother's love and the mother's love is the father's love; the parents' love is the children's love and the children's love is the parents' love. It also includes the siblings' love for one another. All these kinds of love are one. Love can reach any place. From a vertical viewpoint there are three stages, but from a two-dimensional viewpoint, all three stages become one. Where does that occur? It happens with the parents at the center. Therefore, centering on parents' love, a man and woman become one in love, and God becomes one with their love.
17When a husband and wife realize perfect love, the four directions circle around and form a sphere. Happiness and satisfaction are possible only when we are in touch with the elements of love. If we take love out of the picture, everything grinds to a halt. The Unification Principle teaches that the purpose of creation is fulfilled through the completion of the four-position foundation, and that this is not possible through the perfection of only the father and the mother. Not only do the father and mother have to become one, allowing God's love to dwell within them, but they at the same time have to love their children absolutely, so that God's love can reach the children through them. By love I do not mean thinking or saying, "I have to raise these children well so I can take it easy when I am older and my life is coming to a close." That is not love. Parents are responsible to unwrap their bundle of love and convey it to their children in the family. Then the children will surely orbit around their loving family, which began from heaven, heading toward their ultimate destination. Parents therefore have to teach their sons and daughters how to serve and love God. The wife has to demonstrate how to love her husband and her sons and daughters, and the husband has to demonstrate how to love his wife and his sons and daughters. In the Unification Church this is known as the perfection of love among the three object partners.
18Love never starts from oneself. Love starts from the other partner. When we do not have a partner, love cannot even begin. When we see human beings as the center, even God becomes a counterpart. A woman is a man's counterpart, and children are counterparts to their parents; love cannot be realized without counterparts. In the Unification Church we call this the love of the three object partners. A person who has not experienced the love of the three object partners cannot claim to have experienced God's love. Divine Principle calls us to be just as joyful when we bear children as God was after He created Adam and Eve. After creating Adam and Eve, God hoped to feel joy and satisfaction as He protected them and raised them. He nurtured the hope that, "From now, you will have dominion over the world! Our family will become the center of the world! Quickly grow up! Quickly grow up!" and He was eager to see them marry. In the same way, fathers and mothers want to raise their children well and find them good life partners with whom they may become good husbands and wives. If they help their children have good marriages, their family will prosper.
19Originally, had Adam and Eve attained perfection and the two formed a couple, this couple would have realized love and given birth to sons and daughters from their love. Taking a broader perspective, we see that before they realized love between husband and wife, the two were to have related with the love of siblings. Each gradually was to have attained perfection as an individual. Then based on the love of husband and wife, they would have advanced to the stage of giving love as parents. An individual is perfected as a son or daughter in the presence of God by experiencing first the love of siblings. Then comes the love between husband and wife and finally love for children. Had Adam and Eve attained perfection by aligning themselves fully with God at the outset as siblings, as husband and wife, and then as parents, they would have had to go no further. Nothing could be greater than this. Adam and Eve would have been the first ones to attain perfection, give birth to children, and reach the position where they could affirm their love for their sons and daughters as perfected parents. Then God could have loved them all, and this would have enabled all the types of love in His creation to begin.
20Although male and female family members grow up in the same home as brothers and sisters, because of their physiology their lives are different. Males tend to be wild and adventurous in nature, while females tend to have a quiet demeanor, being reserved and cautious. Females more than males tend to feel secure when they receive love, content within the boundaries of a home. For this reason, when the two come together and interact in the conjugal relationship, this realm of heart of husband and wife, based on the children's and siblings' realms of heart, will blossom.
21After loving others as a brother or sister, when two of you become life partners and love each other as husband and wife, you will be glued to each other. As this takes place, you will bear the fruit of the parents' heart and siblings' heart, and perfect the hearts of man and woman. In this way, in oneness, you can go directly to God's love, centered on the ideal of creation. Love travels the shortest distance. Thus it always travels in a straight line rather than a curve. Then where do the two meet? It is on the perpendicular. If the man takes one step forward, the woman also takes one step forward. Since they do not want to separate from each other, they finally bump together. In loving each other, the man does not want to lose to the woman, and the woman does not want to lose to the man. So they are on an equal footing. There is a core of love within the family. The love of parents, the love of siblings and the love between husband and wife are all connected to that core.
22Love is the basis upon which you can conform to the standard of the whole. Therefore, unless you have a husband or wife as your life partner, you cannot pass all the requirements God set for you to stand as a perfect being. The same principle applies to having a relationship with your parents and children. When it comes to having children, it is not enough to have only sons or only daughters. Those who have given birth only to sons ask for daughters. Why is that? It is because duality is lacking. We desire to reside within the love of parents, the love of a spouse and the love of children. We should be able to receive a father's love and a mother's love. We should also be able to receive love from a husband or wife. We should be able to experience loving sons and loving daughters.
23The public law of heaven and earth clarifies the proper positions for the father and mother, the husband and wife, and the son and daughter, and calls us to maintain them. The universe is based on this ideal and fundamental standard. When we are in complete accordance with this principle we experience joy, but when we cannot align with it, we are unhappy. Again, we are joyful only when we live fully embracing this principle. Whatever conforms to this principle is goodness. A person who builds upon this goodness is a good person, but someone who builds on what is bad undermines goodness and is evil.
1We cannot live apart from heart. Even if you were the president of a country or possessed unsurpassed authority over the world, if you did not have a place to express your heartfelt joy, what good would it do you? You would not feel life's deep joy from those whom you command - your cabinet members or followers. But in your family this is something you can feel. When you return home from work, you should be able to feel this from your spouse and from your children. You need to be able to share it with pride in the company of others. It is the same with God. Even if He were to restore the entire world, without a family God cannot feel joy. So we do ultimately need to have a family.
2The family is a good place. It is good because our mother and father, our older brothers and sisters, and our younger siblings are there. Everyone, without exception, feels nostalgic for their hometown, and ultimately longs for their original homeland. People tend to think of their hometown more than their nation. Even though we may live somewhere in the Republic of Korea, we long for our hometown. Our hometown opens and elevates our heart. Love binds us to our hometown in multiple dimensions and in all four directions. That is, we are bound to our father and mother above us, to our spouse on the right or left, and to our sons and daughters below us. Our utmost desire is for happiness centered on love, so we cannot help but long for our original hometown. Then where is God's original hometown? The basis of His original hometown is the recognition by His son and daughter that He is their Father. That is, it is the place where His only son and only daughter, who possess His love exclusively, dwell. It is the place where that son and daughter marry to form a perfect family.
3In the Unification Principle and in the book of Genesis, it is written that everything was created for the sake of human beings. The ideal world we long for exists for the sake of human beings. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is the world in which we live for the sake of others, knowing how to love people. The kingdom of heaven does not exist apart from us. The world in which we know how to serve and love others is the kingdom of heaven. Where is that place? When we think of this question with reference to our own life experience, we see that it is in the family, where we love others and where we are uplifted. When parents look at their child, even one who is immature and mischievous, with a zero score on a scale from one to ten, and nothing to be proud of, they still love him or her more than anyone else. The family is where love is abundant. It is the place where you are elevated to manifest your infinite value. It is the place where happiness dwells.
4The family is the eternally unchanging origin and foundation. It cannot be changed even by parents, much less by siblings or national policies. Nothing in the world can change it, not even God. Therefore, in relation to the family, the term revolution is eternally unnecessary. If the family is a place of love, there is no need for revolution. With regard to love between man and woman, our grandfathers and grandmothers in their youth experienced the same heart of yearning that young people feel today. Our hearts are the same; the feelings of youth are the same. However, the framework of the family is changing and this is creating all sorts of structures and shapes. A loving heart is a loving heart, but the shape of the family is changing. This eventually will bring ruin upon humanity. The family that stands on a solid foundation cannot be swayed by any ideology or thought. On the contrary, such a family transcends and governs every ideology and teaching. Once we establish the family with this standard it will never change, not after ten years, one hundred years, a thousand years, even for eternity. It will instill order in a people and a nation.
5Neither your nation nor the world is the base for your happiness. Your family is. Therefore, your ultimate ideal should not be the world; it is your family. Ideal individuals have to dwell in the family. Your ideal itself has to dwell in the family as well. If such a family were to exist, the father of that family would be an ideal father and the mother an ideal mother. The sons would be ideal sons, and the daughters would be ideal daughters. Then each one of them would be the base of an ideal family. Thus we are all meant to realize ideal families.
6What could be considered a happy environment? A happy environment exists when people are positioned to receive love from their parents, experience the love of their siblings, share conjugal love with their spouse, and love their children. People can bring about the advancement of a nation and the world only when they know all these kinds of love. Thus the foundation of happiness is love, centered on harmonious parents, couples and children in a perfected family.
7We absolutely need a home. Without the home as the base of perfect happiness, the nation and world cannot fulfill their purpose. We have to become parents, spouses and siblings centered on the home God would desire to see. Happiness and discontent both begin from homes and spread out to the nation and world. The home is the beginning point and settlement point that God desires. However, we have not been able to realize the home of God's ideal. Instead, the home is sometimes a place of bad feelings and unhappiness. No one knew that the home, which was to be the base of the greatest happiness, could become the base of despair and distrust God has been working until now to reverse this through indemnity. Unhappiness in the family began from the time of Cain in Adam's family.
8When we have something good, we like to boast about it and advertise it. Wanting to advertise something means that we want to draw other people into a relationship with it. What is it that we like most? First we like our parents most, then we like ourselves, and then we like our children. This is what we have seen in history. Then through what are all these are integrated? The family is the base that connects us to each other's lives. Based on the environment that connects our lives together, the family is the basis upon which relationships of love can bloom.
9The family should be a place where we model all relationships on every level. All people without exception determine their life path within their families. They are born in a family, go out from their family to all directions and return to their family from all directions - north, south, east and west - and encounter ups and downs in their family. This understanding tells us that a person who cannot experience happiness in the family should not expect to find happiness on the national level. Even if he were to recover his nation, where would he live in that nation? He would be unhappy, with nowhere to go. Only in the family can we find our parents, our spouse and our children.
10Some people may say that they are satisfied with their work and need nothing more, but that is not true. There may be some fulfillment there, but the workplace connects people through material things. Politics is where people pursue their rights and interests. Even in religion, people seek God in different ways, from all directions. Though they may be able to find God, they will not find love. True love can be found only in the family. Someone may be successful in his company, earning vast sums of money and being recognized by many, but if he does not have a loving family, he is an unhappy man. Even if someone goes into the field of politics, becomes a member of parliament and even the president of his nation, if he has no loving home to which he can return, he will be an unhappy man. Even if someone becomes a famous pastor and a great spiritual leader who is genuinely loved by the members under his or her wing, that love is not enough. We look for a deeper and more central place of love than that; that place is none other than the family.
11Even if someone has unified the entire world, he or she will be unhappy if there is disunity within the family. The realization of the ideal of love has to begin in the family; the family is the haven of happiness. Thus the kingdom of heaven begins in the family. Jesus, who came to this earth to realize the kingdom of heaven, spoke of the day when a bride would be prepared for him. He based this statement on the standard of the family. The family is interconnected in love and is united through love. Love does not change, so it can unite everyone. That is why the love of grandparents, of parents and of husband and wife can be one. In love all can unite, because the nature of love includes unity. Further, love's motive is to create life. The lives and ideals of a grandfather and grandmother are connected in love, which they bequeath to the parents. In other words, they bequeath everything to their children. Our parents are the children of our grandparents, and we are the children of our parents. The environment that revolves around such love is the kingdom of heaven.
12When we say someone is happy, on what basis to we say this? We cannot call someone happy just because he or she has external ability, power or prestige. Can we say that someone is happy because he or she has great wealth and envies no one? No, we cannot. Can someone be called happy because he or she has worldly knowledge, or is influential enough to move the world? These things alone do not make a person happy. All the people on this earth generally feel, experience, and recognize that the family is the base for happiness. Yet they do not have families that meet the standard of true happiness. That is why the issue is the family. In the family, there must be parents. In the world, a child without parents is called an orphan, and we always feel sorry for orphans. If there are parents in the family, it means there are also husband and wife. It is pitiable to have no parents, but it is also pitiable to have lost a beloved spouse. No matter how much husband and wife love each other, there is no greater sadness than when one of them is bereaved. Moreover, having no children is a great cause of unhappiness for a married couple.
13Suppose that someone were unable to acquire a position that brought authority, power or recognition, and had nothing to be proud of. However, suppose that person had a family with true parents, a true spouse and true children, a peaceful family that was the envy of his community. Such a happy family should share its genuine happiness even beyond the tribe; it should impact society, the people and even the nation. There is no question that such a family would be admired by the people and the entire nation. If such a family emerged on earth, representing both the people and the nation, without doubt the world would honor that family.
14We should be willing to make sacrifices in order to recover the family. If the father's self-sacrifice saved his family, the children would say, "Father, you have worked so hard!" If his sacrifice moved his wife to the very marrow of her bones, she would say, "Oh, my love! I am so grateful to you!" This is the way true people are. The individual sacrifices for the family. In a family, the mother makes sacrifices for her husband and children, and the children in return offer devotion to their parents and love their siblings. A family that is united in this way is a happy family. A family where the members strive to serve one another, giving fully of themselves, will experience God in their midst. The family that can embrace God will eternally remain an ideal family. The family is the training center for life in the kingdom of heaven.
15The kingdom of heaven is the world in which we love all elderly people as we do our parents, we love all humankind as our brothers and sisters, and we love those of our own age as we do our spouse. The kingdom of heaven is the world where we live based on this universal view of people, expressed in the different realms of heart that we experience in the family. A social structure that expands based on families made up of such people is like the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is a global extension of our own family, filled with our brothers and sisters.
16What is the kingdom of heaven? It is the place where we can love the people of the world as we love our own family members. People who can do that are the citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Grandfather and grandmother, father and mother, couples, siblings and children make up four generations. They are a textbook in the form of a family, a textbook through which we can experience the true love of the universe as citizens of the heavenly kingdom. The family teaches us as if it were a textbook. People who live this way experience no national barriers, even after they go to the spirit world. Wherever they go, wherever they are, the road opens up for them.
17The kingdom of heaven is where husband and wife go after attaining complete oneness through God's love, and is where the children who are born to such a couple go. It is where we go with the family, tribe and people who have attained oneness with God at the center. Therefore Jesus, who did not have a family while he was on the earth, could not enter the kingdom of heaven; he dwells in paradise. Only husbands and wives who have been brought together based on God's love can enter the kingdom of heaven. It is a world where the principle of relationship as husband and wife applies. That is why only families can enter the kingdom of heaven, and each family should bring its tribe and nation along with it.
18Your family is in the position to represent the sovereignty of the heavenly kingdom. Parents represent the sovereignty, children represent the citizens, and material possessions represent the land of that nation. Consequently, being devoted to your parents is the same as being patriotic to your nation and also leads you to fulfill the way of a saint on the world level.
19The four-position foundation is formed when the three types of love -- parental love, conjugal love and filial love - are realized. God will surely appear in the place where this four-position foundation has been fulfilled. God dwells in the place where the love of the four-position foundation is secured. It is there that we live and attend God for eternity. That place is the foundation for the kingdom of heaven.
20When people are perfected as the object partners of God, the incorporeal God's ideal of love is substantiated. When people completely unite in mind and body and mature in character with God as their center, they become eternal object partners of God's life, love and ideal. Once Adam and Eve become ideal individuals as God's children, they will form an ideal family, then an ideal society, nation and world, and realize the kingdom of heaven of harmony and unity. In their lives they will experience ideal happiness and bliss in resonance with absolute love.
21Life in the kingdom of heaven begins in the family, not elsewhere. The kingdom of heaven is a multidimensional extension of the family, not something separate from the family realm. When you embrace your husband or wife, therefore, you should think that you are in harmony with all the men or women of the world. In this way, you make the condition in your family of having loved all humanity.
22The extension of the ideal family is the ideal nation, and the extension of the ideal nation is the ideal world. The extension of the ideal world is the ideal cosmos. When that is realized, since the heavenly kingdom is the extension of the family model, people who have experienced the way of true love in the family are set to be welcomed anywhere they go in the world. They will be able to travel freely in the heavenly world.
23The family is a training camp that equips people to enter the kingdom of heaven. It is a training ground. The world is inhabited by people just like our grandfathers and grandmothers. If we expand the family, we have the world. The population of this world is composed of people of the age of your mother and father, the age of your spouse and the age of your children. Therefore, people who expand in all directions the training that they received in their families, and live within a realm of love that serves people in all directions, will enter the kingdom of heaven. The family is the training ground that makes it possible for people to go straight to the kingdom of heaven.
24The family is the place where we can feel the joy of creation on behalf of the invisible God. When we look at the world, we find people who are like our children, people who are like us, people who are like our father and mother, and people who are like our grandfathers and grandmothers. Imagine that you had a yardstick to measure children, another to measure spouses, another to measure parents and another to measure grandparents. Putting all of these together, you could form the body of one family. When you extend the family, you have the world. Look at your own family's situation. If you make all of them - children, spouses, parents and grandparents - the subject partners, and make the world their object partner, the two will go round and round as plus and minus. People who live on earth interacting in this way enter the kingdom of heaven. This world becomes the training ground that opens the way for you to go to heaven.
25The family is the training ground that prepares you to conquer the ideal nation and the ideal world with love. Moreover, it is the training ground that prepares you to conquer the heavenly kingdom and even God Himself. There, if you cast a net of love and pull it in with all your strength, the world will be pulled to you, the spirit world will be pulled to you, and even God will be pulled to you. In the end, an ideal family is where we fish to catch the universe with love.
26God is the vertical Parent. He will never be apart from you, for all eternity. The reason we have to attend our parents is to receive training in attending God, who is the vertical True Parent in the eternal world. The heavenly kingdom is the world of love. The world of love exists with the air of love, and the family is the place that trains you to adapt to that environment. True love contains the concept of giving. It does not mean that you can act as you please for yourself. If you think you can relax and be comfortable in your own home, you are wrong. It is actually a difficult path to follow.
27People who go the way of filial piety - attending their grandparents and parents in the family - and apply these lessons to the world, will find that they can relate to everyone, anywhere. Even if they go to the spirit world and meet people who have lived in past ages, they will be welcomed. Right there, equality, harmony and unity emerge from the north, south, east and west. When this center of equality, harmony and unity appears, freedom emerges. Freedom means being with God. Once you reach that level, all things of creation will welcome you. That is freedom in the truest sense.
28Our journey through life consists of becoming a son or daughter, a brother or sister, and a husband or wife who can receive and practice God's love. It is a journey to become a husband or wife and love our sons and daughters from the position of second creators, just as God loved Adam and Eve. The beginning is love, the process is love and the end is also love. As the perfect product, after being manufactured according to the specifications of love, we go to the kingdom of heaven. When we actualize the kingdom of heaven, we do not do so as individuals but as whole families.
29In a family there are grandfathers and grandmothers, father and mother and also sons and daughters. It is the same in the world. If you are trained to love people in the world who are the same age as your grandfather and grandmother, your father and mother, and your children, more than you love your own family members, you will become a perfect being who can relate at any time to the multitudes in the heavenly world.
30Is yours a family in which the father and mother, the couple and the children are united in unchanging love? Is your family a treasure that the universe cannot continue without, a family everyone aspires to emulate? If we expand such a family horizontally, we create a tribe that God can love and cannot release. Yet even if we expand that foundation to a people and a nation, that nation is not enough. We need the world, and even that is still not enough. We cannot reach perfection unless we reach the stage of governing by the authority of the love that connects and unites the spirit world with the earthly world. If we do not reach that stage, there is no way for humanity to be liberated.
31Love is the reason God created man and woman as the ideal of His creation. That is why people who have lived centered on love enter the kingdom of heaven. If you compare the kingdom of heaven to a barn where the harvest is stored, the family is the harvest. A man and a woman who have become husband and wife centered on love enter the kingdom of heaven with their family. When you perfect your home on the earth by creating such a family, your entire hometown will welcome you. You will be a model son or daughter and model grandson and granddaughter whom God can embrace and love. When you put these teachings into practice in your own family, you will stand in a position from which you can go straight to the heavenly kingdom.
Fin de True Families from the Viewpoint of God's Will