The Words of Joong Hyun Pak
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The Words of Joong Hyun Pak |
Because we have the supreme good fortune to be living on earth at the same moment as our True Parents, we ordinary people have the opportunity to become truly extraordinary. We can learn how to become such people by studying the life of John the Revelator, who is called the Disciple of Love.
Jesus had three key disciples: Peter, James, and John. Peter symbolizes faith and stands in the Adam position. At one crucial point Peter denied Jesus but later repented and faithfully served Jesus until he was crucified upside down, refusing to be killed in the same position as his Lord. James, a symbol of hope, represents Jesus' position. He was the first disciple to be martyred after Jesus' crucifixion. John symbolizes love and stands in the position of the Lord of the Second Coming.
An ordinary man, John became a very special disciple to Jesus. He is described in the Bible as Jesus' most beloved disciple (John 13:23). Internally and externally he was very close to Jesus, and their enviable relationship was that of dear friends as well as that of parent and child. How did such a mutually precious bond develop?
We learn from the Bible that John and his family, like most of us, were rather simple, ordinary people. John's father was a successful fisherman, and before his association with Jesus, John seems to have received no special training or education (Acts 4:13). About his character, Jesus once said that John could be like a bolt of lightning. We can imagine, then, that John was an uneducated, non-intellectual person who tended to be impatient and hot-tempered at times (Mark 3:17). Normally, we would not have great expectations for this kind of person, but in fact he became Jesus' foremost disciple of love.
John lived near the Sea of Galilee and first was a follower of John the Baptist. He completely trusted John when he testified that Jesus was the Messiah. Both he and Andrew witnessed the Baptist's declaration about Jesus, and remained Jesus' disciples even when John the Baptist wavered and failed to follow. Why?
John had the precious ability to deeply perceive Jesus' identity and value. Despite Jesus' externally humble appearance, John was able to see, as if through the eyes of God, the divine essence and importance of this man and to emphatically declare it to others. Eighty-five times in the Bible John proclaims his conviction that Jesus is the Messiah. Without his own absolute knowledge of Jesus' identity, how could he so powerfully strive to convince others?
John also had the sensitivity and trust to deeply respond to Jesus' heart and love. He received greater power and understanding from both God and Jesus than the other disciples did. God cares equally about everyone, but He can have a greater exchange of love with those who most believe, trust, and respond to Him. Many of us wait for God to give us love, without making the heartistic effort ourselves. Our ability to respond to God is of paramount importance in determining the intimacy of our relationship with Him.
The first chapter of the Book of Matthew describes the lineage of Jesus, emphasizing that he was the descendant of both David and Abraham. Matthew bears witness to Jesus as the Messiah through acknowledging his prophesied, righteous ancestry. This view, however, is rather intellectual.
John's perception, on the other hand, is incredibly deep and internal. Rather than providing historical data, he focuses on trying to convey the cosmic significance of Jesus. In the first chapter of the Book of John, as well as in his first letter, John asserts that the essence of Jesus existed from the very beginning with God -- even before Abraham -- and that the incarnation of this many-faceted essence of truth, light, and love is Jesus. He is the first to fully embody God's image and ideal, the logos through which and for which the world was created. To be able to perceive Jesus in this way, especially with little prior education about who or what a Messiah is, is phenomenal.
In 1 John 4:7-12 we find expressed a message which seems to come directly from the heart of God.
Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
Throughout the 66 books of the Bible we read how people have sought to grasp the meaning of their existence and have asked God to deepen their understanding. Finally, towards the end of the Bible, John encapsulates the primary message of the Bible -- that the absolute core and purpose of our life is to know the true love of God. Therefore, in human history, John is a most special "ordinary" person because he could share his deep experiential understanding of God's substantial love. He could not have written in such a way about love if he did not have direct experience of it.
A
North Korean man meets his sister in South Korea after 43 years of
separation. He did not remember her face, but because she looked like
his older sister, he knew it was she.
We ourselves should yearn to have the sensitivity and intuition that John exemplifies. How much do we deeply recognize the immense value and purity of our True Parents? How many times have we looked at Father too humanistically or intellectually and even been skeptical of his plans and guidance? While imprisoned in Danbury, Father had a vision for America's future, as did Daniel in the Babylonian dungeon and Joseph in Pharaoh's prison. Many righteous Americans are beginning to recognize Father's vision and unchanging love for America and the world. But sometimes brothers and sisters lose sight of the value of Father's work and, more importantly, cannot grasp the eternal, intrinsic value of True Parents.
True Parents are God's visible representatives on earth, and they have willingly assumed the crushing burden of responsibility to accomplish God's desire. To love God is to love True Parents. The more purely we can trust and believe in God and True Parents, the deeper our exchange of love with them can be.
Let us understand more specifically how John developed into a historical disciple of love. When people did not respond when John went witnessing, he became very angry (Mark 9:38). He told Jesus that if people did not follow after he witnessed to them, he felt hate for them. Jesus was shocked, and he scolded him (Mark 9:39-40). He admonished John that his angry response created more trouble than benefit for Jesus. With love, Jesus instructed John very simply that to truly be his disciple, he must love others as Jesus loved him (John 13: 34-35). Humbly and sincerely John received his guidance and made great effort to obey. John began with strong belief in Jesus, and through his absolute trust in Jesus' guidance, he could go beyond his frustration to the point of loving those who rejected him.
In the same way, we have received from True Parents priceless love and guidance, and we need to impart this to others no matter what the difficulties. Despite Father's receiving utterly unfair treatment, he has never complained and continues to work day and night educating, serving, and loving. Because of the example of our True Parents, we have the power to smile warmly at people no matter how coldly they treat us.
How did John express the love he received from God and Jesus? Some of us think mainly of the gentle, soft, smiling, forgiving aspect of love. If someone speaks harshly we may not feel that person is giving love. But the disciple John understood that love must also be strong and truthfully corrective in order to generate the power to defeat Satan and establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. John loved with courage.
Of those close to Jesus, only Jesus' mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and John witnessed Jesus' crucifixion. When Jesus saw his mother and "the disciple whom he loved" standing near her, he asked that they become as mother and son. Jesus felt so close in heart to John that he entrusted to him the care of his mother; perhaps Jesus also desired that his mother could one day come to love him as John loved him. If John had not courageously come to Jesus' crucifixion, how could Jesus have given him such a position in the final moments of his life?
John's understanding of true love poured out in his practice of it. After Jesus' crucifixion and ascension, John went to Peter and helped pioneer many churches (Galatians 2:9). He healed people and even suffered through frequent imprisonments. His entire life was spent as a world missionary -- never did he return to his home country of Palestine.
Toward the end of his life, John was exiled to the lonely, windy island of Patmos, where Jesus revealed to him amazing visions of the future, which became the Book of Revelation. There were other disciples working faithfully for Jesus at that time, but the fact that Jesus chose John to receive these revelations indicates how deeply united in heart they were. We can imagine that Jesus had recognized John's potential for greater heartistic understanding and was able to confide in him a depth of insight beyond that which he taught more publicly.
It was through John that Jesus could most freely reveal the magnificence of the Second Advent and the coming dawn of a "new heaven and a new earth." A consciousness tinged with skepticism or limited by worldly pragmatism could never have channeled such revelation to the world.
John, alone among the original disciples, was never martyred, but lived over 90 years, symbolizing the Second Coming of Christ, who must live to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Even though he eventually couldn't walk, John witnessed till the time of his death. In his sermons he consistently and simply taught, "My beloved sons and daughters, please love one another." When asked why he reiterated this basic instruction so many times, he answered, "Because my Lord commanded us to lover' John understood that from God's and Jesus' point of view, to love is not "optional" for a true human being -- it is the essence and purpose of life. How can we emulate John's example in becoming a disciple of love?
First, we must have true faith and conviction, for without faith we cannot go beyond our horizontal perceptions to trust and follow 100 percent. John had absolute conviction that Jesus was nothing less than the incarnation of God.
Second, we must practice true love. John understood Jesus' value so completely that he naturally expressed his belief in his actions. We need personal experience of True Parents' love. If you haven't had such experiences, try to inherit the experience of those who have. The more we trust and believe with both our mind and our heart, the more easily we can practice the teaching of our True Parents. Judas, for example, only understood Jesus through his mind, not his heart. He followed Jesus as long as he thought Jesus would be successful according to his own concept. When his expectations were shattered, he lost hope and betrayed Jesus because he did not have a genuine bond of heart with him and couldn't understand God's eternal plan.
We have been separated from True Parents and from true parental love for 6,000 years. We haven't even known what we were missing -- only that something was definitely not right about ourselves, our relationships, and our world. An example comes to mind: A few years ago, a selected number of families from North Korea were allowed to meet with their relatives in South Korea whom they had not seen for 40 years. However, their encounter was quite painful because there was no feeling at first. Each person was very different from the other's memory. It was shocking for someone to see his mother old and toothless instead of young and vital as he had known her 40 years ago. To finally meet True Parents now is an incredible opportunity, but, like those Korean families, we are numb in heart -- our eyes cannot see and our ears cannot hear. Most of us can barely comprehend True Parents' significance intellectually, and we have even less heartistic appreciation of them. We must continue to try to understand -- and overcome -- our profound spiritual numbness and insensitivity.
Though these reunited families at first had no feeling, as they shared and embraced, their hearts opened to each other, and they could weep. Although we can achieve some growth through education, we need the nourishing experience of loving fellowship as well. We can only grasp the reality of true love through actual experience, through feeling the emotion of caring for another in the active give and take of love. It is not sufficient to only imagine this flow. Many Christians visit Israel, for example, but just seeing where Jesus lived in no way guarantees an experience of his love.
Jesus said to John, "Don't condemn people; do as I do, and love them as I have loved you." Our central figures can give us guidance and advice about how to bind with True Parents' heart, but all too often our self-centered pride blocks us from humbly receiving their suggestions. We need to die to our former selves. If we let go of our selfish, individualistic thinking, God can give us new life and new ability to love.
True Parents are the only ones who know God completely and who are able to teach us to know God's love. For this vertical love to flow to us, we must fully trust and receive it. We should try to deeply understand True Parents, as John understood Jesus. This is why Jesus taught that we should first love him more than our family and friends. The most serious and important challenge a human being can take upon himself is to become a being of true love. If we can do this, we too can become extraordinary men and women.