The Words of the Kim Family Before 2008
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The Words of the Kim Family Before 2008 |
Excerpts from the speech "Unity and New Start" Published in Guidance for Heavenly Tradition, Vol. 2
Before going to prison, Father spoke about repentance and unity. He emphasized unity quite strongly. We must unify the outside world. This is the mission Father gave us. To do this, however, our members must first be united. How can we unite others if we ourselves are disunited? It's impossible. Therefore, our first task is to unite among ourselves. How can we do this? You sing "Tongil" every morning, but does unity come about just because of that? No. It may be better than nothing, but we can never bring about unity just by singing. Then what should we do to bring unity? I'll explain six points.
The reason we are here is our faith in God and True Parents. This is what makes us brothers and sisters. Therefore, the first condition for unity is to have faith in God and True Parents. If you lose faith, you cannot unite. Do you understand this? The first condition necessary for unity is to have faith in God and True Parents; this makes us brothers and sisters.
Even though you say you believe in God and True Parents, if you go in one direction while the rest of us go in another, what will happen? Everyone should go in the same direction. We cannot go opposite ways. We should follow the same direction as our True Parents. This is very important. When we do something, everyone should participate. If Father asks us to set a prayer condition, we should all pray. If we witness, everyone should witness. If we contact ministers, everyone should do that. We should all move in the same direction. This is important.
Is it easy to unite if we have fallen nature? If you are jealous or always trying to pull others down, can you unite? We must remove our fallen nature if we want to bring unity. Fallen nature is our enemy because it comes from Satan, who is our enemy. So we have to get rid of it. The Principle teaches that there are four aspects of fallen nature. To remove them, we must do the following: have the same point of view as God, keep our positions by going through our mediator, have the proper order of dominion, and not multiply evil, which includes not passing our responsibility onto others. We must carry our own responsibility, okay? Once our fallen nature is gone we can easily unite.
When we look at children we see that they are very easygoing. Sometimes I see Japanese and German children who can't even speak to each other playing together very nicely. They unite very easily. How is this possible? Children are very pure and innocent. Do they have prejudices? No. They have pure, innocent hearts and because of that they can easily unite. It's the same for us. To achieve unity, we should have pure and innocent hearts. Many times you think too much: "Because he's like this, he may think badly of me. You often think this way. You imagine too much and that's not good.
In order to develop a pure and. innocent heart, you need a good family life and good moral education in your childhood. If you've received love and care from your parents, brothers and sisters, and relatives, you can maintain a pure and innocent heart quite easily. But if you didn't have such a family background you may have problems dealing with others. I know one sister who has difficulty living harmoniously with others. She was orphaned early in childhood, so she didn't have the chance to receive love from her parents. She joined our church and our members tried to love her but she always backed away. Because she had never experienced receiving love she was suspicious and found it very difficult to receive. When someone gives us something or tries to love us we should try to accept it and return their love. We should be innocent. Don't think, "He's planning something." Don't think that way, okay? We should be innocent and pure in heart.
We need mutual respect and trust. In Korea we have three principles and five elements of morality which come from our long history. These state that even between husband and wife there should be courtesy. Between intimate friends certain customs should be kept. This means we should respect each other. Sometimes we think, "We're brothers and sisters so we don't need to worry about that:' But there are still some things that we must realize and respect. We should always be careful and respect each other. This is difficult to practice but important. Without knowing one another it's difficult to have mutual respect and trust, yet we must try to reach this state quickly.
Mutual respect and trust are essential to unity. You cannot unite if you cannot trust the other party. When I came to Europe I found that some leaders didn't trust certain people and for this reason unity couldn't exist. It depends on a person's background. If someone had a difficult past he may find it hard to trust others. This is really sad, but we must break through it. At least in the beginning we should have trust, okay? If you trust someone and he betrays you many times, then it's understandable if you can't trust him anymore. But don't be suspicious from the very beginning. We should respect and trust one another. Everyone should try to do this. In this way we can reach true unity.
The final point is cooperation, working together. When we do something we should work together.
If I put my energy and my brother's and sister's energy together, things will be easier. We cannot do things properly if one member works alone and the others just indifferently observe. We cannot do things quickly either. So we should combine our power and work together; then good results will follow.
If we follow these six guidelines I think we can bring unity. Our goal is to unite the world, but if we cannot unite within our church then our goal is nonsense. We must really try to unite among ourselves.