God’s Heart of Pain
God’s heart has been expressed in three ways during the process of creation and the dispensation of restoration. These three forms of God’s heart are His heart of hope, His heart of sorrow, and His heart of pain.
God’s heart of pain refers to the bitter feelings God has experienced, having had to endure watching the central figures in His providential history being persecuted by Satan and his agents as experienced Those saints and sages were righteous men whom God sent to save human beings in the fallen world. Accordingly, God felt as if He Himself had received contempt, ridicule and persecution. This reveals another heart which God has endured in the course of the providence of restoration: the heart of pain.
3. Understanding God’s Heart
Through an education of heart, children should come to understand the three kinds of God’s heart as described above, especially the heart of God in the course of the providence of restoration. Therefore, I will introduce an understanding of God’s heart as it was during the courses of Adam’s family, Noah’s family, and Abraham’s family, as well as in Moses’ course and Jesus’ course. What follows is an introduction to God’s heart according to the teachings of faith of Rev. Moon.
God’s Heart as experienced in Adam’s family
When God created Adam and Eve, He was filled with boundless expectation, hope and joy, but when Adam and Eve fell away from Him, God’s grief knew no limit. Therefore, in order to save Adam’s family, God encouraged Cain and Abel, their children, to make offerings. God, of course, very much hoped that they would succeed in their offerings.
There may be those who suspect that, since God is omniscient and omnipotent, He might have known from the very beginning that Adam and Eve, and later Cain and Abel, would fail. If this were the case, then how could God have grieved in the true sense? This, however, is not a correct understanding. God was, of course, aware that there was a possibility of the human fall. Even so, since God is the God of heart and hope, His desire for human beings to succeed and not to fall was incomparably stronger than his fear that they might fall.
The same thing can be said of the offerings by Cain and Abel. Since God’s expectation for their offering was so great and His hope was so strong, He virtually ignored the possibility of their failure in the offering. Here we can distinguish a difference between heart and reason. God’s impulse of heart is so strong as to override reason.
At the time of Adam and Eve, and also at the time of Cain and Abel, God was a God of expectation and hope, who wished, absolutely, for nothing less than their complete success. Sadly, however, Adam and Eve, and also Cain and Abel, failed. Because of that, God’s sorrow and disappointment were incomparably intense. However, even at such sad moments as these, God could not simply break down in tears, losing His dignity, no matter how sorrowful He felt, because Satan was watching. If God had openly expressed His deep sorrow, He would have seemed to Satan as miserable, and lacking dignity and authority. That is why all God could do was leave, silently, with His head bowed and tragedy etched on his face, having to suppress the sorrow welling up from within. This is what Rev. Moon revealed about God’s heart in Adam’s family in the early days of his ministry.
God’s Heart as experienced in Noah’s family
After God left Adam’s family, He walked a wilderness path for the long period of 1,600 years, looking for someone on earth with whom He could work. In all this time, no one welcomed God: everyone turned away from Him. There was not a single home where God could dwell, not a single square meter of land for Him to stand on, nor a single person whom He could relate to. God walked the lonely path of a miserable God, literally all alone in the world. In that condition, God finally found Noah. God’s joy at that moment was beyond comparison. Yet, due to the providential situation, God had to give Noah a very difficult direction, which was to build the ark. Noah accepted God’s direction and faithfully devoted himself in building the ark, for 120 long years, all the while suffering ridicule and contempt from the people.
Noah was not a “son of God.” He was established merely as a “servant of God” and a righteous man. Yet, God was so pleased to meet such a man as Noah that He walked the path of suffering in the position of a servant together with Noah. However, after the flood, since Noah’s son Ham did not fulfill his portion of responsibility, Noah’s family, which had been saved from the flood, was invaded by Satan. When that happened, God again felt heart-breaking pain and sorrow. Deeply disheartened, God had to leave Noah’s family.
God’s Heart as experienced in Abraham’s family
Four hundred years later, God found Abraham and established him within the providence. The most serious time for Abraham in his providential course was when he was required to offer Isaac, his only son, whom he had begotten at the age of one hundred years (Gen. 21:5). God directed Abraham, who had failed in his symbolic offering of a dove and a pigeon, a ram and a goat, and a heifer, to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. Abraham’s heart at that point was unimaginably painful. He was at a loss as to whether he should keep Isaac alive, according to human ethics, or offer him, according to Heaven’s demand. In his heart, at that moment, Abraham would much rather have sacrificed himself than he would his son. Nevertheless, he ultimately determined in his mind to sacrifice Isaac, in accordance with God’s order: he decided to follow Heaven’s direction, thus sacrificing his own heart. He wandered around Mount Moriah for three days. This three day period was a long, painful path for Abraham. During that time, God did not merely watch from afar; but having issued such a strict order to “sacrifice your own son,” God suffered along with Abraham, suffering even more as He watched Abraham’s suffering. When Abraham was about to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac with his sword, on Mount Moriah, God stopped his act of killing and said,“Now I know that you fear God” (Gen. 22:12).
Abraham’s heart to follow God’s will, his absolute faith, obedience, and loyalty established the condition of having killed Isaac, even though in fact he had not. That is why God was able to stop Abraham just before killing Isaac, and He provided him with a ram to offer as a burnt offering, instead of his son. “Now I know that you fear God” was an expression of His joy in seeing Abraham’s loyalty, being willing to offer even his son Isaac as a sacrifice, as well as His regret at Abraham’s failure in the earlier symbolic offering.
God’s Heart as experienced in Moses’ course
Moses was raised as a prince in the palace of the Pharaoh of Egypt. After he witnessed the suffering of his people, the Israelites, however, he decided to lead them to the land of Canaan according to the will of God. After many difficulties and setbacks, he led them out of Egypt and into the wilderness. The Israelites, however, revolted against him, their leader, each time they encountered difficulty. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, after having completed forty days of fasting on the mountain and receiving from God the two tablets of stone, he found the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. Seeing such an act of faithlessness and blasphemy, Moses, in anger, dashed the tablets to the ground, thus smashing them into pieces. At that moment, God said, “Behold, it is a stiff-necked people; now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them.” (Exod. 32:9-10).
How did Moses feel at that moment? Faced with God’s wrath to the extent that He even wanted to destroy the Israelites, Moses’ love and loyal heart for his people welled up within him at that moment. No matter how difficult it might be, Moses felt that he had to save his people by any means, even at the cost of his life. He appealed to God, saying, “Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.” (Exod. 32:12). In the face of Moses’ fervent appeal, God refrained from destroying the Israelites.
After the Israelites had wandered in the wilderness for 40 years and finally arrived at a place called Kadesh Barnea, the Israelites complained to Moses yet again, saying, “There is nothing to eat here.” Out of frustration and anger at the Israelites, who were demonstrating utter faithlessness toward God, Moses struck the rock twice, thus going against God’s will. God later called Moses to the top of Mount Pisgah. Showing him the promised land of Canaan, which Moses had labored so hard to reach, God said, “You shall not go there, into the land which I give to the people of Israel” (Deut. 32:52). God had no choice but to speak this way to the 120-year-old Moses, who had twice fasted for 40 days and had suffered greatly for 40 years in the wilderness, all in order to lead the Israelites. In fact, it was God’s desire to allow Moses, the leader of the Exodus, to enter the land of Canaan. However, due to Satan’s accusation (based on Moses’ having struck the rock twice), God had to take such an extreme measure, even unwillingly. In so addressing Moses, God felt deep sorrow and pain.
God’s Heart as experienced in Jesus’ course
As prophesied in the Old Testament (Isaiah 9:6), Jesus was born on earth as the Messiah. The entire world should have welcomed him wholeheartedly, but even from childhood he experienced heart-breaking rejection. His family rejected him; his religion (Judaism) rejected him; and his nation (Israel) rejected him. In the end, there was virtually no place wherein he could find any acceptance.
For 33 years, including his three years of public ministry, Jesus spent most of his days by himself, experiencing a life of loneliness. He expressed his lonely heart, saying, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58). When he looked at the temple at Jerusalem, he tearfully rebuked the Israelites, saying, “The days shall come upon you, when your enemies build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another.” (Luke 19:43-44). As he walked along the shores of the Sea of Galilee in order to divert his mind from his loneliness, he once spoke with a woman of Samaria, who was not one of the chosen people (John 4:7-26). He expressed his mortified mind to the leaders of Judaism, saying,“Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.” (Matt. 21:31). God walked with this lonely Jesus through such a lonely path.
In the end, when Jesus was crucified, how deep the grief in the heart of God as He watched His beloved son, Jesus, miserably dying! Deploring that he could not save Jesus from the cross, God could not even bear to watch, but had to turn His face away. Seeing Jesus on the cross, God suffered even more than Jesus himself.
All of the above episodes are accounts described by Rev. Moon in his tearful sermons during the early days of his ministry. From him we come to know the heart of God in the courses of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Furthermore, …behind the tribulations of the saints, sages, and righteous people of other religions and other nations, there was the heart of God constantly guiding them. Through an education of heart, teachers and parents should introduce the heart of God to children. In addition to talking to them about God’s heart, they can teach them through TV, radio, movies, videos, novels, plays, paintings, and various other means of communication.
• New Essentials of Unification Thought (2006)