THE PRINCIPLE OF CREATION

A poet wrote these words in his autobiography, "Our minds are possessed by three mysteries, Maple Leaveswhere we came from, where we are going, and since we are not alone, but members of a countless family, how we should live with one another." In other words, he says that mankind doesn't know where we came from, why we're here and where we're going. The past, present and future are a mystery that religion and philosophy have tried to explain.

The Divine Principle answers these and the other fundamental questions of life. Let's begin with the most fundamental question mankind has asked -- What is the nature of God?

The noted writer Will Durant has written, "...the oldest problem in philosophy [is] the existence and nature of God." The first chapter of the Divine Principle, the Principle of Creation, answers this question by first saying that God is invisible. We cannot see God. There are many things in this world which we cannot see yet we know they exist. Radio waves, x-rays and the air we breathe cannot be seen. We know of their existence by studying their effects. Our mind or our thoughts are also invisible. We express our thoughts and ideas with our bodies. God is invisible and expresses Himself in the universe.

Romans 1:20 says: "Ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature, namely, His eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made." By studying the effect, we can know the cause. By looking at creation, we can tell something about our creator, God.




To know a person, we study his or her behavior and achievements. Likewise to know God we study His creation. The universe can be divided essentially into six categories: human beings, animals, plants, molecules, atoms and particles.

One of the most basic characteristics we see in these six categories is the duality of masculinity and femininity. Human beings are divided into men and women; animals into male and female; plants into stamen and pistil; molecules, atoms and particles into positive and negative charges. This means that the cause, God, must also be equally masculine and feminine. We call God "Father" but God, in reality, is father and mother.


The other absolute duality in these six categories is that of internal character and external form. The internal character of human beings is our minds, and the external form is our physical bodies. Animals have instinct and a body. Plants have an invisible directive nature and a body. Molecules have an invisible force that combines atoms. Atoms are made of particles united by this force. And particles are made of invisible energy.

Everything in the universe has internal character and external form. God, the cause, must also have an internal character and external form. God's internal character is His emotion, intellect and will, and His external form is energy,

God made the visible universe from His invisible energy.




The idea that invisible energy is the substance of all visible things was mathematically introduced by Einstein in his formula E = mc ². E stands for energy, m stand for mass or matter and c stands for the speed of light. This is scientific proof of a give and take relationship of invisible energy and visible matter. Invisible energy can change into visible matter and matter can change into energy.

E = mc ² Invisible = Visible


What can we learn of God's internal character by looking at the world around us?

GOD'S INTERNAL CHARACTER

1. The first thing we see is that all races, nations and cultures treasure the love in the family unit. This love is universal and the need and desire for love is fundamental in every human being. Where does this love originate? From our cause God. God is a God of true love.

2. Each person has a conscience driving him or her to seek beauty, truth and goodness. People love art, music, dance, paintings, literature and poetry. It is human nature to seek beautiful clothes, hair styles, cosmetics and jewelry. This desire for beauty is an effect of God. God is a God of beauty.

Men and women seek truth. This is why people read, express themselves in writings and go to libraries and bookstores. There is a deep desire in mankind to see children receive an education. We are all born with an innate need to learn, explore and expand through knowledge and wisdom. People study science and the humanities to master the environment and human relationships. God is a God of truth.

Mankind desires to do good works. This is evidenced in charities, volunteer work and the many social and professional organizations that champion high ethical standards. People have through religion and philosophy sought guiding principles of goodness. Our nature feels remorse when we do wrong, and we feel indignation when we see wrong doing. Because our creator is sensitive and idealistic, people are sensitive and idealistic too. God is a God of goodness and justice.

3. We see order, law and principle throughout the universe. Incredible order and harmony Snow Cappermeates creation. Kant said, "...the glorious order, beauty, and providential care, everywhere displayed in nature, give rise to the belief in a wise and great Author of the Universe." Kepler said, "The universe was stamped with the adornment of harmonic proportions .... illustrating the glory of the fabric of the world, and of God the Architect." CiceroMountain said, "The celestial order and the beauty of the universe compel me to admit that there is some excellent and eternal Being, who deserves the respect and homage of me." God is a master scientist--a God of law, order and principle.

      


4. Every person has a deep need to create and to build. We admire and treasure the creations of man, and we stand in awe of the creations of God.

We see infinite uniqueness in the universe. Snowflakes have six sides, yet no two snowflakes are the same. How many snowflakes have fallen in history? Every person has two eyes, a nose and a mouth, but no two faces are identical. Even identical twins are not identical. Every person has fingerprints, yet no two people have ever had the same fingerprints. Every human being has a unique personality and a deep need to express that special individuality by creative work. This deep motivation to be creative and to strive for excellence comes from our creator God. God is a God of creativity.

5. Mankind seeks eternal, unchanging, and absolute values. A marriage ceremony is when a man and a woman publicly pledge eternal, absolute and unchanging love. We desire to make commitments for life. Many songs are about love that lasts forever. People want eternal unity with their families, relatives and friends. We also have the wish for an eternal afterlife because we do not have enough time on earth to express all our love and creativity. Kant said, "... it is plain that the hope of a future life arises from the feeling, which exists in the breast of every man, that the temporal is inadequate to meet and satisfy the demands of his nature." The desire for eternal life and eternal, unchanging and absolute values comes from God. God is eternal, unchanging and absolute.

A fundamental question of mankind is what is our relationship to God? God is our parent, and we are his children. An essential part of being a parent is being a leader. God's desire is for us to be good followers. Other terms that could be used are subject and object.


We are to be good objects to God. This does not mean that God is a dictator and we are to be robots. True leadership does not mean pushing someone down but lifting them up with parental discipline, nurturing and love. Although God is to be the leader, he also needs our ideas, love and creativity. Between people there is often a leader and follower relationship. We see this between parents and children, teachers and students, employer and employees, a conductor and an orchestra, political leaders and their constituents.

To find real happiness, people must master the art of being a good follower to their leaders and being a good leader to those who follow them. The action between leader and follower is called Give and Take Action. God created everything in the universe to exist, act and multiply through give and take action, i.e., through interdependent and harmoniously reciprocal relationships.

For example, atoms exist and act because of the give and take action between the protons and electrons. Plants exist because of the give and take of xylem and phloem. Plants give oxygen to animals, and animals return carbon dioxide to plants. Each person can exist and act because of the give and take between the arteries and veins, inhalation and exhalation. We need give and take between our mind and body. On a human relationship level people need give and take in the family between husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters. Society can function well only if there is harmony and cooperation for common goals between people, families, groups and nations.



If parents have many children they know and love each of them intimately. Even though there are billions of people God loves and knows each person intimately too. And just as parents want give and take with their children, God wants give and take with each of us.


THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

A fundamental question asked by countless people is: what is the purpose of life? God's motivation for creating the world and especially us as His children was love. Simply love. He wanted and needed to share His love. Joy is the true purpose of life. God wanted His sons and daughters to be happy and joyful. To give them the highest happiness, we read in the Bible that He gave three blessings: "To be fruitful, multiply and have dominion over the earth" (Gen. 1:28).

First, men and women were to be fruitful. When a tree becomes fruitful we mean it has reached maturity and can bear fruit. It has reached its full potential and perfection. This is figurative language meaning we too must reach our full potential and perfection. The Bible says, "You must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). To reach maturity God created everything to go through a growth period of three stages: Formation, Growth and Completion.

For example, a tree is first a seedling, then a sapling, then a tree. People are first infants, then adolescents, then adults. God is perfect and for men and women to become one with God they must become perfect also. During this growth period all creation including our physical body grows to maturity automatically. Our spirit does not grow automatically. It takes conscious, creative effort to develop spiritually.

One of God's primary characteristics is creativity. Man must inherit creatorship from God, in order to become mature sons and daughters. Every person must fulfill a special condition. God gives us the responsibility to become co-creators. Together with God we create ourselves.

We can only be truly happy when we are spiritually mature. There is an innate gyroscope or nature that drives us to seek perfection. When the Bible speaks of human perfection, it means perfection of heart. Men and women were to have their minds (or words) and their bodies (or deeds) centered on God. When men and women would say good and do good they would have perfect character. Men and women would have the value of God. Every person would be a temple of God: "You are God's temple and God spirit dwells in you" (I Cor. 3:16).

The second blessing of God was for people to multiply. After reaching perfection, men and women are to marry and have a family.

When men and women love God, God would return that love. Husbands and wives would love each other with all their hearts and love their children completely. Physically, parents would give their children a good home, clothes and food. Spiritually, the parents would teach them by word and example of God's love and truth.

We experience the greatest love in the family. God made the family to be a four position foundation consisting of God, husband, wife, and children. And when there was give and take between all four parts then this would be the basic unit of joy, life, and of society.

God's plan is for ideal families to form ideal societies which would form ideal nations and an ideal world living as one huge, harmonious family.

The third blessing was to have dominion over the earth. Dominion means a dominion of love. Centered on God, men and women would love creation. What does creation return? When we love and care for our home and car they return beauty. When we love our dog or cat, they return beauty too. And, of course, when we love our family and friends, they radiate. God's third blessing was for mankind to love the world and live in a beautiful paradise on earth, an ideal world.

God is the Lord of mankind, and God created men and women to be Lords of creation. We reflect God directly, and creation is in the image of people and indirectly or symbolically reflects God.

The creation reflects people in many ways. Human beings and animals have similar body structures. People can imitate all animal sounds. Mankind and plants are similar too. Plant's leaves function like our lungs; xylem and phloem are like arteries and veins. Our bodies are made of minerals such as calcium and iron. We feel joy when we see our reflection in a mirror or a photograph. Because creation reflects us, we receive joy in seeing nature.

The first blessing, to be fruitful, explains our relationship to God; the second blasting, to multiply, our relationship to people; and the third blessing, to have dominion, our relationship to the universe.

I have written a book that thoroughly goes into all three of these blessings. It's title is Ten Keys of Building the Ideal World. In it I quote Rev. Moon speaking on the meaning of the three blessings, especially on the Second Blessing, marriage and the family. Excellent books by non-Unificationist writers on the relationship between men and women are by Mr. and Mrs. Andelin. Helen Andelin wrote a book for women called Fascinating Womanhood and her husband wrote a book on godly men's roles called Man of Steel and Velvet. Mrs. Andelin wrote a must-read book on how to raise children called All About Raising Children.


SPIRIT WORLD

One of the deepest questions mankind has asked is: what happens to us after we die? Is there life after death? And if so, what is it like? The Divine Principle clearly reveals the answers to these questions.

God's goal is for each person to live a perfect life of love and beauty, not only for eighty, ninety or a hundred years on this earth, but for eternity. After people die on earth God has prepared a spirit world for us to live in. Spirit world looks like this world with the only difference being that its environment with its trees, streams and mountains are even more beautiful than our physical world.

God created our physical bodies to die and become one with the earth. This is natural. Then how are we to get into the spirit world? We go there in our spirit body. Each person has two bodies--a physical body and a spirit body. The Bible says, "And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes 12:7). And "It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body" (I Cor. 15:44).

The author Raymond Moody has researched thousands of cases of people who had near death experiences and wrote a best- seller called Life After Life. MoodyOn a talk show he told of an experience in a hospital of a woman who had been in an accident and taken to an emergency room. Doctors and nurses worked frantically to save her and finally brought her back from near death. When she awoke she explained how she had an out of the body experience.

She said she saw them working to make her breathe again. Then she flew up to the roof of the hospital and saw a single red shoe. Then she came back and reentered her body. A surgeon happened to be in the room when she told this story. He was intrigued and had a maintenance man take him up to the roof. He went to the exact place she said the shoe was and sure enough there was the one, red shoe. This woman had traveled with her spirit body.

The moment we die our spirit bodies immediately enter spirit world. It is far greater than this world. There is no concept of space and time. There are no clocks. Travel is instantaneous. And we do not need to sleep. There is no concern for food and shelter as we have on earth. There is no death. There are no boundaries. No limit of movement.

What do we do in spirit world? We spend time giving and receiving love from our spouse, our children, our families our friends and from God. For eternity we grow in knowledge and our lives increase in excitement. Heaven is not a boring place. For eternity we are on an exciting journey. Spirit world in infinite, and we have eternity to explore it.

If it is so beautiful in spirit world then what is the purpose of living on earth? Although our life on earth is only a flicker of a second in length compared to our eternal life in the spirit world, how we live our life on earth is extremely important. Just as the womb of our mother was where we formed our physical body, this world is the womb for our spirit body that will live forever in spirit world. We grow our spirit body by living God's way of life.

Our physical bodies grow by receiving proper nutriments of air, light, water and food. Likewise, we grow spiritually by receiving spiritual nutriments of truth and love. When our physical bodies do deeds of love then our spirit body receives vitality elements and grows. As our spirit grows, it gives spiritual elements to our physical body which is felt as spiritual joy or renewed energy.



God's plan is for each person to live his or her life on earth receiving love and truth from God and living a life of service. By the time each person physically died, he or she would enter spirit world having grown to moral perfection.

God has given every person five physical senses and five spiritual senses which makes a total of ten senses.


God created us with the ability while we are on earth to see, hear, taste, smell and touch not only this world but spirit world as well. Perfect people on earth would be the mediator between the two worlds. Their spiritual senses would function like that of a radio or television set. They could freely perceive the spirit world whenever they wanted just as a radio or television set can receive radio or television waves.

Because we have a spirit body when we are on earth, we could have a relationship with a person who has died and is living in the spirit world. A person on earth could shake hands with someone in the spirit world, and it would be just as real as shaking hands with anyone on earth. There would never be separation between people. For example, in God's ideal world let's say a married couple lived to old age and the husband died. He could still live with his wife on earth. He would stay with her and be just as real as when he had his physical body. They could still embrace--even sexually.

Life in the physical world in only a few years, but it is a very important few years. People can multiply and have children only on earth. People in spirit world cannot conceive children.

There are three stages in our life: the nine months in the womb, our life on earth and our eternal life in the spirit world. The first stage, the embryonic stage is our first world where we live in a compact universe of liquid. In these nine months our lungs are prepared to breathe air, but we don't use the lungs until we leave the womb and enter life on earth. The second stage is the terrestrial stage. We breathe air and are to spend our time growing our love lungs to breathe in the spirit world which has no air. We breathe love there. The third stage is the spiritual stage in which we are spirit like God. It is the third and final stage. The first stage, in the womb, is a world of total darkness; the second stage, earth, is a world of half darkness and half light; the third stage, spirit world, is total light.


We prepare our love lungs by giving and receiving love in the family which is our school of love. The three loves in the family are:

God's ideal is for every person to experience perfect love in a family and this would create an ideal world of love on earth and forever in heaven.

But this noblest of ideals, an ideal world, never happened. Instead human history has been the very opposite. Every human being experiences tragedy, suffering and pain in their life to one degree or another.

What happened that destroyed God's dream of a perfect loving world? In the Bible we read that His dream was shattered by the failure or the fall of Adam and Eve.

Countless people have asked if Adam and Eve are real people and how the world was created? The Bible has been interpreted in different ways to answer these questions. Because of these differing interpretations, Christianity has split into many denominations. The Divine Principle is not mankind's interpretation of the Bible. It is God's interpretation. It is the truth that can unite Christianity and ultimately free all mankind to be one loving family.

The Principle explains that when the Bible begins by saying the universe was created in six days, we should read these numbers symbolically. The universe was not created in six literal 24-hour days. Scientists are correct in determining that the earth is millions of years old. There is no conflict between God and science; God is the greatest scientist. The six days in Genesis are symbolic of six gradual periods of time. II Peter 3:8 says that, "...with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." God always works through a growth period. The six days represent the six geological periods known as the Azoic, Archeozoic, Proterozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras.

Evolution

The popular explanation of how the world came into being is the theory of evolution which says that life began as two simple cells uniting and forming more cells. Somehow, random mutations took place. These mutant cells united and formed more complex organisms that in turn had mutants that united, and they formed even more complex organisms. In this way the world evolved from simple bacteria and algae or amoebas to plants and animals and finally man from ape-like creatures.

This is not how the earth was created. God created the world in an evolutionary manner by creating in a normal progression of simple to complex. From God's energy, particles were formed. From particles, atoms were formed which in turn formed molecules. Molecules form minerals, and minerals serve plants, plants serve animals, and animals serve mankind.

We have to include divine guidance to the theory of evolution. God created the world by plan, not blind chance. God created each organism specially. He created the first amoeba, the first fish, the first deer, the first ape, the first man. Every organism has an original parent.

The answer to the question of what came first -- the chicken or the egg is the chicken. Or more precisely two chickens-- a male and a female. If the theory of evolution were scientific fact then there would have to be "intermediates or transitional forms to bridge the enormous gaps which separate existing species" (Evolution -- A Theory In Crisis p. 58). Scientists have never found even one of these so called "missing links" and they never will. Our minds did not come from animals. Our minds came from our parent God. God created a first man and a first woman. We call them Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were not born the son and daughter of an amoeba or ape; they were the son and daughter of God.

We all have parents -- a father and a mother. Our parents had parents. If we continue back in time we find the original parents of mankind were two people. Adam and Eve were real people. They are not fictitious or fairy tale creations. We are not descended from various sets of ancestors. If we were, then the various races might be of different quality or even be different species with different value. We all have one common origin--a first man and a first woman. God always works from a central point. And by having the same original parents each of us is a brother and sister to each other living as one family on earth.

The Bible, if read literally, shows Adam and Eve lived only a few thousand years ago. In the seventeenth century a prominent Anglican Archbishop and theologian, James Ussher, compiled a chronology of events in the Bible which became famous because they were widely printed in the margin of the King James Version of the Bible for nearly three centuries. Archbishop Ussher placed the creation of the world at 4004 B.C.

These 4000 years are comprised of the 2000 years from Adam to Jacob and the 2000 years from Jacob to Jesus. Of course, there have been 2000 years since Jesus to today. So, if we take the Bible literally, God created Adam and Eve 6000 years ago. The Divine Principle explains that we should read these numbers symbolically, not literally. The first man and woman lived longer than 6000 years ago. They lived hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Recently, the world of science has made discoveries in genetic research that prove we have a common ancestor mother and a common ancestor father. Scientists are using the names Adam and Eve for the founding father and mother of mankind.

In a cover story on this breakthrough Newsweek magazine in 1988 wrote, "When scientists announced their discovery of Eve last year, they rekindled perhaps the oldest human debate: where did we come from?"

"The veteran excavator Richard Leakey declared in 1977: 'There is no single center where modern man was born.' But now geneticists are inclined to believe otherwise....'If it's correct, and I'd put money on it, this idea is tremendously important,' says Steven Jay Gould, the Harvard paleontologist and essayist. 'It makes us realize that all human beings, despite differences in external appearance, are members of a single entity that had a very recent origin in one place. There is a kind of biological brotherhood that's much more profound than we ever realized."

We have learned in this first chapter of the Divine Principle that God's plan was for Adam and Eve to create the first perfect family and from them the world would be populated with morally pure people living in luxurious splendor experiencing true love every moment of their lives. In the next chapter you will discover why the world is not an ideal world.


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