Chapter 1
True Families from the Viewpoint of God’s Will
Section 3. The Family Is the Training Ground of True Love
1 God’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. (131-112, 1984.04.22)
The family is where true love settles
2 Ideal 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. (19-315, 1968.03.17)
3 You 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. (23-012, 1969.05.11)
4 Adam 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. (113-165, 1981.05.03)
5 We 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. (118-147, 1982.05.23)
6 You 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. (37-104, 1970.12.22)
7 You 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. (051-199, 1971.11.21)
8 A 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. (137-336, 1986.01.05)
9 The 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. (120-193, 1982.10.14)
10 The 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. (106-025, 1979.11.04)
11 Where 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.'' (106-065, 1979.12.09)
12 The 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. (143-285, 1986.03.20)
13 Unless 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. (149-272, 1986.11.27)
14 The 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. (241-300, 1993.01.01)
Three-object-partner love in the family
15 God 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. (54-026, 1972.03.09)
16 God’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 four-position 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. (101-042, 1978.10.28)
17 When 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. (101-043, 1978.10.28)
18 Love 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. (057-120, 1972.05.29)
19 Originally, 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. (82-194, 1976.01.25)
20 Although 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. (234-144, 1992.08.10)
21 After 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. (234-144, 1992.08.10)
22 Love 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. (25-276, 1969.10.05)
23 The 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. (25-276, 1969.10.05)