Sunday, January 23, 2011

Who Are We?

From the beginning of time men have struggled in the relationships they build. Between men and women, between culture and culture, even between nation and nation, we have seen man's inhumanity towards man. Without knowing who we are we can never establish true human relationships. The following passage from Divine Principle clearly identifies what it is to be human.

We have discussed how God's purpose in creating human beings was to rejoice with them. Thus, our purpose of existence is to bring joy to God. What must we do to bring joy to God and fully manifest our original value?
Created beings other than humans are endowed with the innate nature to grow to maturity naturally and become object partners which bring God joy. Human beings, on the other hand, can become true and authentic object partners who bring joy to God only through their free will and free actions. They cannot become the object partners who inspire God with joy unless they understand His Will and make effort to live accordingly. Hence, human beings are endowed with emotional sensitivity to the Heart of God, intuition and reason to comprehend His Will, and the requisite abilities to practice it. A person who relates with God in this manner will attain perfection of his individual character. Adam and Eve prior to the Fall, as well as the prophets of every age, had some ability to converse with God because they had these innate faculties.
The relationship between God and a person who has attained individual perfection can be compared to that between the mind and the body. The body is the dwelling place of the mind and moves according to the mind's direction. Likewise, God abides within the mind of a fully mature person. Such a person becomes a temple of God and leads his life in harmony with His Will. A perfect individual is fully attuned to God, just as the body resonates with the mind. For this reason it is written, "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" and "In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." A person who has perfected his individual character becomes a temple of God, and the Holy Spirit abides within him. Living in oneness with God, he acquires a divine nature. Thus, it is impossible for him to commit sin or to fall.

A person who has perfected his individual character embodies total goodness and fulfills the purpose of creation. If a person embodying total goodness could fall, this would lead to the illogical conclusion that goodness contains the seed of its own destruction. Moreover, if human beings, who were created by the omnipotent God, could fall even after becoming perfect, we would have reason to doubt the omnipotence of God. God is the absolute and eternal Subject. To give Him true joy, His object partner must necessarily also be eternal and absolute. For these reasons, a person who has perfected his individual character can never fall.
Had Adam and Eve reached perfection, being thereafter insusceptible to sin, they would have borne good children and founded a sinless family and society in complete concordance with God's blessings. They would have founded the Kingdom of Heaven, which consists of one great family with the same parents. The Kingdom of Heaven has the form of an individual who has achieved perfection of character. Just as the members of the human body are coordinated in horizontal relationships with each other and move as one in response to the vertical commands of the brain, in this society people will form cooperative horizontal relationships with each other and live together in tune with the vertical directions emanating from God. No one will harm his neighbor, since if one person were to suffer pain, everyone in this society would experience the Heart of God who shares in that person's grief.
Regardless of the purity of the people of this society, if they were living in primitive circumstances like cavemen, this could not be considered the Kingdom of Heaven which both God and human beings desire. God gave us the mandate to have dominion over all things. Hence, to realize the ideal of creation, people of perfected character should advance science, harness the natural world, and create an extremely pleasant social and living environment. This will be the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Once people have attained full maturity and enjoyed life in God's earthly Kingdom, then when they shed their physical bodies and pass into the spirit world, they will form the Kingdom of Heaven in heaven. Accordingly, God's primary purpose of creation is to build the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

This is the theory of the ideal idividual, family and society. In practice this family Rev Moon described looks like this:


What is the definition of the ideal family? The ideal family possesses the eternal love of God; the ideal family possesses the everlasting love of husband and wife, and the ideal family will have love between parents and children, These three eternal and lasting loves combined together will make an eternal family.
Married people, if you love your own wife, if you love your own husband, then when you look at other men or women, you will respect and admire them just as you do your own family members. For men, the female world is an extension of the world of your wife. One woman was selected out of all the billions of women as a representative woman. A woman must think of her husband as the representative of the entire male race, the symbol or center of the male race.
When you go to the spirit world, that world works like this: The person who has lots of love toward his own parents, toward his own brothers and sisters, husband or wife, and children, that is, the person who experiences a deep sense of love in family life will have much, much freedom to maneuver. He can go horizontally in all directions, everywhere without any limitation. In contrast, a person who has no experience of love is narrow-minded. He isolates himself in spirit world and has no freedom at all.
The love between parents and children is a vertical relationship; the love between a husband and wife is a horizontal relationship, and the love between brothers and sisters is a circling, surrounding relationship. These three relationships are different. If you experience here on earth a deep sense of love in these three different ways, then you will be able to maneuver vertically without limitation, horizontally without limitation, and circle around without limitation. Those who did not taste parental love because of the early death of a parent, for example, are tragic people in a way, because they lack that very important aspect of experience. Likewise, those people who never experienced family life, the husband and wife relationship, are also in a way very poor in spirit world because they lack one important aspect of life. Also, those without brothers and sisters are in a poor position because they can not live a full life in spirit world with one whole area of experience lacking. A wholesome family life, therefore, has grandparents, parents and children. If one generation is lacking, the family somehow feels crippled. The ideal family alone can serve as the building block of the Kingdom of God on earth.

If we can create, that is live in, an ideal family we can create an ideal society, culture, world, universe! That is the great purpose and meaning of human life. We have the mission to create an ideal family here on earth.

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