Sun Myung Moon's Philosophy of Education

Chapter 2 - How Has God Educated Humankind? [Part 2/2]

2.4 True parent, true teacher, true owner

The Archangel could not raise Adam and Eve, who were God's son and daughter. The problem is how to raise people so that God needs. Do you want to be teachers? Don't you want to be exemplary? You want to work hard to be a representative of your nation, like the president. You also want to have the highest position in an administration or in some company. You have ambition to succeed in life. Don't you? Be true owners to do that.

Spouses should never quarrel, but love each other and their children, setting examples for the nation, and for heaven and earth, in loving heaven and earth, the world and the nation, and in being textbooks of the future.

What comes after education? You become the master of your household.

Every family has a tradition. Be the first ancestors who set up the tradition and bequeath it to the next generation. Exist on behalf of True Parents and on behalf of your ancestors. Parents can be like teachers and owners. My concern is how to raise the Unification Church members and hand over ownership to them.

When you look at a nation, the president is in the position of a parent.

All educators are in the position of teachers and the executive members of a government organization stand in the owner's position. The Kingdom of Heaven works the same way. In the spirit world, God teaches at the center. Everything works in a very similar way. Therefore, wherever you go, you should have the three-subject ideology. Centering on the teacher, the parent stands on the right and the owner on the left. The owner, the parent and the teacher are all one. That is the concept you should have.

What's more, to raise people to be owners, I should hand over ownership of the heart of parents, the heart of teachers and the heart of God.

After you join the church, you should be born again and be educated to be perfect. If you grow up, you will understand everything. You will want to stand in the position of the owner. Owners should hand over everything. That's what they should do. That is subjectism. Wherever you go, you will meet true teachers or true parents in the heavenly nation. (205-019, 1990.07.15)


Who is God? He is the best parent and the best teacher. There is nothing He does not know. In the position of a true parent, I have taught you the secret of the cosmos as a parent and as a teacher. God is the parent of parents, teacher of teachers, owner of owners, and king of kings. (285-299, 1997.06.29)


What is the three-subject ideology? Who are the three ideal original entities? They are God... Who is God? He is everything people desire to be. He is the true parent of true parents and the true teacher of true teachers. What is the teacher's teaching? God already is the king of knowledge. However, He has not experienced true love; that is something He can never teach intellectually.

God wanted to experience love through Adam and Eve. However, He could not have a base for ideal love on a perfect foundation through Adam and Eve. It made Him the most miserable being. That is why He could not stand in the true parent's position. Our first ancestors should have given birth to true sons and daughters, raised them and given them their rightful positions. Parents give birth to children. Teachers raise them and owners give them positions. I am not talking about the world but about a family.

Parents are also teachers. Parents are in the position of king in a nation and teachers throughout your schooldays starting from elementary school. They're in the position of owner in relationship to various organizations.

The three-subject ideology is true love for the sake of others. You must understand that. True Love is investing and forgetting how much you have invested just as God does. Recovery means curing sick people. For recovery as restoration to the original, you need to apply the principle of creation.

Applying the Principle of Creation in restoration, we must invest, invest and forget what we have already invested just as God did when He created all things, including man. I have toiled assiduously throughout my three score years and ten, but I can't say that I have done enough.

Even after my death, in the spirit world, I still have to work more and give more. For my earthly life, I have to condense some 100 million years of time into my short lifespan on earth. So I should save time from sleeping and eating. If I could earn a day by going out for an hour, I'd go even at midnight. Invest and forget: that is my motto.

Unification Church members must love the cosmos first, more than themselves. We should protect and raise objects of ideal love for the cosmos and the objects of ideal love for God. (204-120, 1990.07.01)


You must understand the background from which the three-subject ideology emerged. Be parents and teachers on God's behalf. There are three different kinds of teachers: grandfathers, fathers and husbands. You must also be the master with the heart of a parent. Our parental responsibility does not end at giving birth to children, but continues in educating them. What should we educate our children about? It is to enable them to become citizens of the heavenly nation. That is why education is necessary. What kind of education? It is education in heavenly law. That is the best education. (208-098, 1990.11.17)


The Fall destroyed the love relationship between God and man. It's truly heartrending. You will find out what I say is 100 percent true if you go to the spirit world. You must love people, all things and your central figure in the vertical sense. In schools, teachers stand in the central position for students. Within companies, presidents and department heads function as the central figures. Serve them as you would your parents.

Serve your teachers as if they were your parents. Serve your company president as your parent and teacher.

The president is the nation's master, or owner. People should serve him as if they were serving their own parents or teachers. Only then do they deserve to be people of the nation. Therefore, serve the president of your nation as if you were serving your own parents or teachers, and you serve your parents as if you were serving your teachers or the president of your nation. When you serve your teachers, do so as if you were serving your own parents and the president of your nation. This forms part of the three-subject ideology of love, the three-subject ideology that has true love as its central focus. (212-028, 1991.01.01)


The center of the three-subject ideology, the love of true parents, the love of true teachers, and the love of true owners is the same. It is parental love. I go home at night. The president of this nation goes home at night. The schools should be the place where people learn from teachers who have the heart of parents. Further, the president of the nation should govern it with parental love for his people. (213-124, 1991.01.16)


What is the highest education? The original base to create the heavenly nation is the family. The highest education in the family lies in teaching filial piety. You should learn it from God, who is parent, teacher and king at the same time. Yet, we never had the chance of learning filial piety as God's children, being educated as children of true parents, of true teachers and of true kings, and being true brothers and sisters.

People teach princes or princesses to represent the nation and its entire people. However, Adam and Eve, who were destined to become God's true heirs, never received such education. Adam did not get to learn that he was in the position of bringing peace to the world, and in the eldest brother's position to all people.

In all nations, however many there are, exist grandparents, parents, siblings and spouses. These four groups also live in the spirit world.

We learn the principle of how a family should be on earth, teaching children filial piety and learning to love all humankind by learning to love our brothers and sisters. (220-345, 1991.10.20)


We must resolve the sorrow of God in not being able to educate Adam and Eve because of the Fall. We must infuse the three-subject ideology into our system of education. It is the principle to be practiced and a philosophy of life based on true love. By educating people in the three-subject ideology and practicing it, we can restore the elder-sonship, parentship and kingship. Because Adam and Eve did not receive education and could not realize the ideal family of creation, which was God's will, we must form families of unification by putting into practice the educational content for children, for brothers and sisters, husbands and wives and parents. That is the way we can create the ideal nation and the world.

In the future, the problem of education will be a very important issue.

What is the principle of education? God could not educate His own children, Adam and Eve, in how to be good children. God could not educate them in how to be a good brother and sister. That caused God sorrow. God also could not educate His children in how to make a good couple as a husband and wife. He could not teach them how to love each other with His love as their central focus. God could not educate His children in how to be good parents. He failed to do all that. Were Adam and Eve God's children? Weren't they also brother and sister to each other? Were they also supposed to be a true husband and wife centering on God? Weren't they to be parents and to have their own children later?

But God could not give any kind of education to them at all.

Because Adam and Eve failed to receive the right education from God, they could not complete the family of God's ideal of creation. So, we must educate people to create families centering on true love. We must teach people how to be God's children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives and parents. That is the way we can build families - the foundation of the unification of the whole - and eventually create an ideal nation and ideal world. That is the essence of Head-wing Thought and Godism. (222-043, 1991.10.27)


What is the fundamental unit in creating the heavenly kingdom on earth and in heaven? It is the family. In a family, there are grandparents, parents and children. Wherever you go in this world, you can always meet people like your children, like your brothers and sisters, like your parents or your grandparents. It is the official and universal shape of the world.

Then, what is a family? It is a model to follow in shaping the nation and the world. Then what is love in a family? It is the beginning of creating the world and the heavenly nation.

The relationships between parents and children, brothers and sisters and husband and wife are created with love as their focus. Only because of love, do children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives and parents live in families. Without love, they would all break apart.

However, what do people on earth most want? Some people think it is knowledge. You also think knowledge is important. Of course it is.

Others think it is money. You need money to build schools. Yes, we need money. Then, what do people think they should have after they build a school? They would say that their school needs authority. What kind of authority? The kind of with power. Yes, we need all of those.

However, even if we have all the things mentioned above, we cannot have the ideal model to live by for all mankind. It is not money, knowledge or power that harmonizes and unifies children, elderly people, men and women all together. Love alone can do the magic. That is what you must understand.

What are teachers? They are a kind of parent. What are the leaders of a nation? They are a kind of teacher and parent. The nation's leaders should represent its parents, teachers and owners. We call it the three-subject ideology in the Unification Church.

The three-subject ideology is absolutely necessary. People should be educated in their homes, in their schools and in their nation. Looking at the world, there isn't any nation educating people in that way. The educational system has completely broken apart. Parents, teachers and nations all have different directions in teaching people. Even within a family, grandparents, parents and children go in all different directions. That is the present reality we live in. (263-301, 1994.10.27)


2.5 Religion as God's means to teach mankind

Before the time of the Old Testament, people were in the servant of servant's position. In the time of the Old Testament, we came to be in the servant's position. No one could pioneer alone the path from the servant of servant position to the servant position. God Himself had to pioneer the course. He had to educate people who were more evil than the servant of servants. That was His situation.

However, God is invisible and could not appear to just anyone. He had to choose certain people as prophets. The prophets represented God on earth, but at the same time, representing humanity - they had to obey God and follow what He commanded. (042-281, 1971.03.27)


Where does God start to realize the world of oneness, the unified world?

This is the problem. God has no choice but to start with each of us, individuals. That is why God has had to educate us throughout history through religions. Religions have had the goal of educating us in how to be perfect. (053-064, 1972.02.09)


When we look at the mind and body of an individual, which is more focused on God? It is the mind. Unless we are clear about whether the body should yield to the mind or the mind to the body, we can never find the center we need to live by. So far, evil has always been able to destroy the center; we should destroy evil by centering ourselves on the good. That is how we should have our body surrender to our mind. God had to educate us through our consciences. He has taught us to go the opposite direction of our physical desires by following our consciences.

God and Satan have fought, with people in the center. Satan draws people to do whatever their bodies feel like doing. On the other hand, God urges people to do what their consciences tell them to do. God could not let people be pulled by their physical desires. He has been teaching people not to do what their body finds comfortable. The tool He has been using to do this is religion. (053-066, 1972.02.09)


God educates people through religion; but how does He do that? The mind and body struggle with each other. He has no choice but to surrender one side to the other. So, He teaches people to strike their bodies and to live centering on their consciences. All religions teach us to strike the body. Religions that do not teach that cannot be true religions.

That is the first step in surrendering your body. What is the second?

Our mind and body have just about the same amount of power. God knows how hard it is for people to strike their bodies. So, all He can do is to give two or three times more power to our minds. (053-167, 1972.02.19)


If religious people cannot establish the age of peace centering on God, then there is no God. If that is the case, we can only conclude that religions have cheated us....That is why God taught people that they must absolutely believe in Him. God taught them to love Him with all their heart and mind. God taught them to love only Him. God will not pass everything to us until the Last Days. He absolutely has to teach people to make the tie between Himself and them. If you just see that God is asking you to love only Him with all your heart and soul, you may conclude that God might as well be the dictator of love. You should love God no matter what, even at the risk of you life, but love cannot be one-sided. When God asks us to love Him with all our heart and soul, it means that He will love us with all His heart and soul, too. God has educated us to survive to the end. (053-306, 1972.03.05)


Religions are factories for repairing people. What sort of education is needed in these factories? Mind and body are struggling with each other.

God cannot repair us if He leaves things as they are. So, what He teaches us to do is to strike our bodies and live by our minds, our consciences. The higher religions are, the more they focus on that kind of teaching. Jesus told us, "Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it." He taught us to go in the opposite direction of satisfying our physical desires. We must get rid of our arrogance and stop putting ourselves before others. God had to teach us to go the other way, the opposite way. He has had to teach us to strike our body and make sacrifices. (054-028, 1972.03.09)


Any religion leading people to God teaches them to sacrifice and to serve others. That is to train people to be able to adjust to the heavenly nation's principle and to the habits and customs of the original hometown. We are wanderers. It is God's will to educate fallen people to adjust when they go to the original hometown. It is the principle of God's creation that a good world can only exists based on that principle. It is God's will for us to embody the principle. (070-305, 1974.03.09)


What is the purpose of God's creating the organization, churches? In churches, God gathers all different races and trains them. Churches are training places. They are spiritual training places. They are training places for people of the future and the families of the future. Churches must teach families, tribes and peoples the right way to go. All the prophets in the past guided their kings, especially when they were on the wrong track. They judged those leaders and led them to God. God wants to create the families, tribes and peoples of the future through churches. (106-034, 1979.11.11)


What is the reason that religious values have broken down? First, thanks to the development of science and technology and the growth of economy, people tend to pursue more materialistic goals. Second, atheistic, materialistic ideologies, including communism, have become widespread around the world. Third, with the separation between church and state, people excluded the teaching of religion from textbooks in schools in accord with their national educational policies. Fourth, communists are trying to destroy moral values as a part of their strategy to create one communist world. Fifth, religions cannot teach the essence of why people have to maintain religious values. (122-300, 1982.11.25)


Religious teaching is the highest teaching. What does "the highest teaching" mean? Parents should teach their children, "No matter what you do, one thing you must never forget is that you must love God more than you love us, your parents, and that you must love the nation more than you love us." Their children must accept that their parents are people of the truth. "Not only am I teaching you to do this, but we will live that way, too. We will be examples for you to follow. Our last words will be the same as these. It was our way of life when you were born. It will always be so for the rest of our lives. If we go this way and if you follow us, the tradition will not change. You should be able to give your children the same legacy as your last words when you die. Any parents that can say that are righteous parents. (127-290, 1983.05.15)


God has educated people through religions so that He could create the garden of true olive trees. On the foundations created by religions and centering on His love, God sent the Messiah, the true olive tree, to have us engrafted with him. That is the messianic belief. You can understand the rebirth written of in the Bible in this light. (135-012,1985.08.20)


Although religions transcend the norms or rules governing reality, you cannot underestimate reality entirely. Religions must take great interest in problems happening in reality and discover what God's will is toward solving those problems. You must be able to arouse new, God-centered changes in the hearts of the people who can actually solve the political, economic, social and educational problems. Religions should help those people to be renewed and be able to solve problems centering on God. (135-222, 1985.11.16)


What are religions supposed to do? They are to educate people's minds. Religions should give more power to our minds and restrict our bodies.

Why? Because we have to return to our original place. Therefore, higher religions do not restrict people's minds. They strengthen the mind so that the mind can bring the body into harmony and center it on God. (195-017, 1989.11.01)


What was the reason for God's having sent saints and prophets to this earth? It was to show people examples of personal integrity and the true love of God that He wants to see in people. It was to teach the leaders of nations God's way so that they could create harmony between the world of the mind and the world of the body centering on His true love. (219-110, 1991.08.27)


If God exists, He must fix humanity. Yet, everyone has different cultural, traditional and historical backgrounds. Therefore, God had to adjust to those and educate people to control their bodies and to live by their consciences. Religions have found the way for people to live their lives by their consciences. That is why religious education must restrict bodies. No religion can teach people to follow their physical desires. Never. Whatever links to our physical desires must be cut off. That is the problem that must be solved. (223-350, 1991.11.20)


There are two things I've spoken of today: unity of mind and body and unity of husband and wife. Everything is fine once we are united with God. When we see it that way, world peace is not very difficult.

The family we live in is the foundation for the cosmic victory. If people are united centering on God, we do not need religion. There are many teachings from saints and patriots. However, we can all jump over those in an instant if we become completely one with God's teachings.

Your nation is not the place where you become one with God. It is in the relationship between you and your spouse. That is the beginning point. (259-053, 1994.03.27)


The goal of our unchanging God is to realize the ideal world of true love. The purpose of religion is to actualize true love and true family.

If religions do not contribute to those goals and exist for only their own sakes, they have nothing to do with God no matter how well they speak about Him. Neither God nor the world exists for the sake of religion. Religions came about to realize God's will to restore the original world of true love and true family. That is what I have tried to achieve for the past forty years of my life through interreligious movements worldwide and in different areas of life: academic, educational, ideological, cultural, artistic, journalistic, scientific, technological and through various kinds of businesses. (260-126, 1994.05.01)


The religion that God wants to lead the world with is the religion in the position of parents. God wants religion to teach the parental heart.

I am teaching the True Parents' ideology and tradition. You must be true parents in your own families, and then in your tribes so that you can fulfill the responsibility of tribal messiahs. Only the religion of the true parental heart can realize God's will in a world full of struggles, hatred and sins. Religions despising or hating other religions are not useful for the realization of world peace and God's providence. (260-128, 1994.05.01)


Without God's having invested and given, the cosmos could not have been born. The law of the cosmos is that the subject lives for the sake of the object. However, in the fallen world, the subject does not live for the sake of the object. Instead, the subject misuses the object for his own sake. That is why the world has no alternative but to decline in the end. I believe that religions must teach the heavenly principle that you are happy only when your object is happy. The Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace sees that religions must constructively work together for harmony between religions and for world peace. The Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace should function as the world's conscience. It must guide and give advice to the national leaders from around the world in the fields of politics, economics and education. Great religions were born and grew up in the soil of persecution and martyrdom. They stand on a foundation of the precious traditions of their founders. Therefore, we must not avoid the sacrificial course and must recover the original honor of our religions. (271-070, 1995.08.21)


2.6 Nature is the best teacher

What is the sound of love that God makes? Pigeons go "Coo, coo, coo." What sound of love would God make? Ah- Ah- Ah-. That sound must have been the most profound. If all of our nerve cells get 100 percent together and make the sound Ah- Ah-, how great it would sound. So, think of nature as the cosmic museum of teaching about love. How wonderful it is! How beautiful it is. Do you understand now? (133-315, 1985.01.01)


All things love one another. Animals, insects, plants and minerals all love one another. They sing, dance, fly and crawl for others. You should watch them and learn what they are doing. Nature is the museum where Adam was supposed to be educated. It was the living textbook to educate Adam.

As people grow older, men and women are more strongly attracted to each other. They do not know why, but they just want to touch each other. If they touch each other, they receive very strong stimulation, such as they have never before experienced. Adam and Eve must have felt something very strong toward each other. That was an undeniable fact.

They watched male and female animals kissing each other. They saw and learned. Nature is supposed to educate people naturally. The world of creation has enough material to inspire Adam and Eve to feel stimulation for each other. It is an awesome thing. (134-194, 1985.07.20)


The archangelic world was supposed to protect and educate our human ancestors, Adam and Eve. God put angels in the servants' position. Adam and Eve fell, though, during their growth period. God knew that there was the possibility of such a tragedy from when they reached the middle of their growing period until they reached the age of twenty. That was the reason God had to warn them not to make mistakes, not to fall.

Today's Christians say, "The mistake was that Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." If you ask them what the fruit was, they will tell you, "It was a literal fruit." The Fall was not originally intended. Having learned from nature, Adam and Eve were supposed to have grown up and naturally entered into a love relationship. All things were supposed to be their teachers. (137-127, 1986.01.01)


Adam and Eve were born to be God's children and grow up under His protection. They grew bigger as they grew older. The more their intelligence grew, the more they learned about the world of creation.

They were supposed to learn why God had created it. They were also supposed to learn from the world of creation. Everything that happened in the world of creation was supposed to be a chapter in a textbook for Adam and Eve to learn and to live by. It was supposed to be a museum and provide examples of ideal life for the perfected Adam and Eve. (137-126, 1986.01.01)


What does God need? Love. He does not need anything else. Why did God create all things in the cosmos? For the sake of love. Everything in the animal and plant worlds exists in pairs. Then, why did God create all things in pairs? God built the natural world like a vast museum in order to teach love to humankind. Man is the most precious of all the things of creation. (142-113, 1986.03.06)


If Adam and Eve had grown to maturity, they would not have regarded each other as brother or sister. Through observing the insect world and animal world, they would have understood that everything exists in couples; the males and females are fond of each other; insects and beasts alike move in pairs. They sing to court each other, to express their love to their mates, and they reproduce and rear their young, and are in harmony with the vast universe. Though naive and ignorant when young, Adam and Eve would have understood the birds and bees by the time they reached seven, eight or nine. (143-081, 1986.03.16)


To find an object of love, God created the heaven and earth. Once He finds His object partner, He has to teach it, beginning from the smallest things, and raise it to become His ideal perfected object partner. Before becoming full-grown, the object must pass through much training and education, through many plus and minus reciprocal relationships. This is the growth process for any created being. All created things can thus be utilized as the textbook of the museum of love, in order to perfect the ideal love of Adam and Eve. (180-176, 1988.08.22)


When we say that nature was created as the textbook to educate us based on love, how close are we to the things of creation? God made the Creation out of love for me. He made it as the textbook for showing me the path of love. Therefore, I have to learn to love all animals, all the things of creation. (183-189, 1988.11.01)


Why were things created in a pair system? The creation is displayed as an exhibition hall or museum from which the ideal love of humanity can unfold. A pair of salmons is a loving couple, and is a true example whom all mankind can learn from. When we see the things of creation sacrificing their lives to protect their offspring, we can tell that nature is the textbook from which mankind can learn. (193-301, 1989.10.08)


Looking at the things of creation and the natural Garden of Eden, which was created as a pair system, Adam and Eve would have come to understand what they had to do when they grew up. Isn't the creation God's museum?

They form a museum of love to teach Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve would have known this one day. They would have grown up looking at the male and female birds, male and female butterflies, and all things being born in pairs, falling in love, bringing forth their young and living. It would have dawned on them that a grown man is a prince of love who represents God's masculinity, and that a grown woman is a princess of love who represents God's femininity. The woman would tell herself, "That man is just the person I need!" and the man would think the woman is really important to him. I am sure you will understand what I am talking about, seeing as most of you here today are married and have your own children. (201-161, 1990.08.30)


A subject and an object are created as pairs in the natural environment. This universe is a museum of pairs with love at its nucleus. We have to learn by watching birds loving each other, building their nests to lay their eggs, feeding their young. We have to do more than the birds for the sake of our own children, even hundreds of times more. Male and female insects mate with each other and bear their young. They risk their lives to raise them. This is how they teach us. (229-287, 1992.04.13)


There is nothing which does not form a love relationship with humankind. They are all teaching humanity. Also, all males and females fit to their concave and convex parts when they make love. They are all created so that Adam and Eve can watch and learn.

If Adam and Eve had known nothing by the time they reached twenty, that would have been a grave problem. They should have known everything about how all living organisms move, beginning with tiny insects. If the chief director of a museum is ignorant, how can he demand that everything be modeled after his ideas. You have to govern all living things through love as their master, loving and teaching them. Becoming an ideal couple and a unified pair of owners, you can be qualified to be the lords of all creation. (265-062, 1994.11.20)

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