Sun Myung Moon's Philosophy of Education

Chapter 5 - A Life Devoted to Education [Part 1/2]

5.1 Why Reverend Moon is working to educate people

I want to be a teacher who gives people truth and true love. That is what God wants me to do. God does not have His own body. That is why God needs people who have bodies to work for Him. He wants to find people He can trust and to give them responsibility on His behalf. The Unification Church, representing today's religions, should work on behalf of God and the world that He desires. I want to raise up the Unification Church members to be the people who can give love to the world on behalf of God. Education must be done based on parental love. Once people understand God's will, they can turn into true people of righteousness.

Once people learn from me they come to have greater love for the world. That is a good thing. That is a great thing. We should love and teach the world on behalf of God. Who is doing that? You and I are doing this. (102-238, 1979.01.01)


I founded the Unification movement to realize the heavenly nation on earth, the ultimate ideal of humanity and God. Our movement is the best human effort to revive religions and educate people. It is historically inevitable for a spiritual movement like ours, which advocates a totally different view of things, to face opposition from the established religious groups. Every religious movement faces harsh persecution and hostility from the beginning. Only when our movement overcomes difficulties can we become the mainstream leaders of future generations. We can see examples of this in the history of religion, for example, Judaism, Christianity, etc. and even in democracy and communism. (129-298, 1983.11.25)


Coming from Korea, a small country in Asia, I actively tried to shake up America centering on God's will. However, America had already lost its spiritual foundation by the time I arrived. It was predictable then that I would be harshly slandered and incriminated instead of being welcomed.

My God-given mission is not something I can try once and then give up if it does not work the way it was meant to. In spite of being persecuted and neglected by America for the past thirteen years, I must be the individual representing God's ideal and create that kind of family and tribe. I had to be the living example for young Americans. So I have striven to establish the family and tribe, representing the world, following God's Will. I have devoted my life to raise up a new kind of people, who can live for the sake of the world, in the place of America and Christians.

First of all, for the past thirty years I have made a firm foundation of God-centered ideals and education in 100 or so countries, mobilizing academics from all over the world. Second, the ideal of the heavenly nation on earth cannot be built on a spiritual foundation alone.

Therefore, I have continuously invested in the most advanced technological and scientific developments. Third, I have been creating a worldwide financial foundation and have studied and investigated a way to develop an internationally cooperative method to have a monetary system of the future, in order to realize God's will on earth. Fourth, I have developed a worldwide public opinion network organ, in order to guide human society in the right way. In addition, I have been actively involved in many different parts of the world. All of my activities are directly connected to my mission: realizing God's will on earth. (135-236, 1985.12.11)


I have invested my life to establishing the world of love. After living sixty-six years for the public good instead of merely for private advancement, I, one day, found myself becoming well-known worldwide.

Korea needs me now. America, Japan and China need me now. I must share my teachings with them. The Unification Church must educate the world.

People can fight against us as long as they want. I am too busy to pay attention to them. (140-322, 1986.02.14)


What must we do today? We must love God and humanity as individuals.

Without having loved God and humanity, no one can go to God. That is why I have loved humanity. Although America has treated me so badly, I still love this nation. In the midst of the court fights and imprisonment, I founded The Washington Times and created organizations to inspire politicians to work for the higher cause. Everyone must love humanity. That is why the Unification Church members of all races love me. (147-214, 1986.09.21)


Since I was educating the members throughout the night, I still feel quite tired now. However, there is so much to be done whenever I think of my responsibility. I sometimes fall asleep in the car. When I doze off like that, I ask myself, "Whom am I working so hard for until I doze off like this?" If I am dozing off because I am so tired from the work I do for my own benefit or only for my children's benefit, then I cannot stand before heaven and earth. But, because I am working until I feel dead tired for the sake of heaven and earth, I feel okay. (158-139, 1967.12,26)


The man who has agonized most over the problems of life is standing in front of you. I could never question whether or not God exists unless I could actually feel and experience Him. I have established a system of thought that any intelligent person can be taught in four days. Not even four days. I have the foundation to inspire people in one day. Korean people do not know that I have an amazing weapon that Korea could use to inspire the entire world. Because they do not know, I will teach them to understand it. Who will teach them? Western people will come and teach them. (163-123, 1987.04.19)


Communists do not have the concept of serving the world good in their political ideology. The essence of communism is that communists must expand their influence for the benefit of communism. It wants to weaken the foundation of the free world and purge it. That is the problem. It is a very unbalanced idea. Then, what is going to balance their idea? It is moral education that will do the job. World-renowned journalists should work together to stop America and the Soviet Union from influencing the world only for their own national benefits. The media must publicly announce the way to bring harmony to the world. However, they are not doing their jobs. That is the problem. So now I am trying to inspire the world's media. The World Media Association is part of the effort. You must understand the Soviet Union, America and Europe well.

You must know the situation in Africa, and South America. By digging out the reality, we must let people know that the media reports until now have been very partial.

They did not report the news out of a deep consideration for the world or concern for the public, but for the sake of a newspaper, a broadcasting company or a nation. This reality has resulted in fatal detriment for the world. We must correct these past faults. That is why the media must be leading the movement to guide the world to the correct way from now. The media must unite to teach the world the correct path.

However, the media alone is not enough. Unless we create a unified system of leadership, with well-known academics and media people, people will not believe us. Already, the world does not trust the media.

However, people generally trust academics. We must find a new way of educating humanity with well-known professors and the media together.

We should have a leadership education center. We should not allow the Soviet Union to take over the summit meeting. We should not allow America to proffer solutions to world problems merely for the sake of her own national interests, thereby troubling the rest of the world. We must not let things happen at the expense of the world. We must develop the system to have the top leaders of the world get together to find the solution for the sake of the world. To realize this goal, we should work together with academics of the world to reveal our publicly proven position, because working with the media is not enough. That is what we must do.

What I am doing is bringing the media people, academics and other people of reputation together and inspiring them to live for the sake of the world. They have been fighting against each other, divided between right and left. As soon as they meet me, they begin to realize that they should work together for the higher cause. I want to have the media working for the public interests of the world. What we have now is not enough to realize that goal. Nobody publicly approved of us. We'll need another 10 or 20 years to see our results approved by the public. What should happen now is that the media people, together with the academics, must change the mainstream. That is what I am trying to do in America. (165-160, 1987.05.20)


The reason I desire Korea's unification now is not solely for the sake of Korea. I want to raise people who can transcend national boundaries and realize the liberation of God's homeland. I want them to have proactive ideas and to be able to systematically and logically teach their ideas to others and eventually change and digest society. (172-041, 1988.01.03)


Humankind has the task of realizing the global family ideal of love through international cooperation, after having overcome ideological conflicts and having recovered its morality. The new guiding ideology must be born in Asia where spiritual teachings of humanity have originated throughout history. The idea I am promoting and teaching on a worldwide scale is Godism. (193-322, 1989.10.12)


I am spending a great deal of money for Korea. I bring Koreans to America to be educated and I am also investing enormous amounts of money in America. Koreans might wonder why Rev. Moon spends so much money in America and not in Korea. If I can move America then I can find a way to unify Korea. I can even find the way to unify Asia. That is why I bring money from Korea and invest it in America. With love I am investing myself, my fortune, and the entire Unification Church for the sake of America. When you invest something with love and care, and people come to know the true nature of your investment, realizing that what you are doing is good, then they will want to come to you. Americans will eventually want to come to lean on us and rest under the shadow of our tree. Love is the only way we can inspire all the nations that are under the shadow of the tree. (194-291, 1989.10.29)


What will Rev. Moon do once he wins over communism? Winning over communists is not my ultimate goal. What should I do by winning them over? For what purpose am I fighting against communism? My goal is not to destroy them. I think of how to solve problems afterwards. So now I am educating people through Japan. So far I have been carrying out this education centering on America. From now on, though, I will create a support association with the top leaders of the communist and democratic worlds to bring people from all over the world and educate them. Our education is the true winner. If we cannot inspire the world with this great weapon of ours, it will show the limitations of our leadership. It will also show the incompetence of handling what you have. The right time has come to educate the world.

I can unite the various races in America. I can unite the African, Hispanic, Asian and European Americans. We must educate Americans. So far, we have educated four thousand people in America. We have done that over the past five years. The leaders of the nation now know about us. (201-245, 1990.04.28)


We must educate former presidents of every nation and financial leaders of the world. We must bring politicians together and teach them Unification Thought. We must teach them Godism and Head-wing Thought.

The Federation for World Peace must bring the world's problems to an end. Who can move both communist and democratic worlds? Can the Pope do it? Can Billy Graham do it? No. I must do the job. (203-134, 1990.06.23)


Everything the Unification Church does is connected to education.

Whenever we meet, you will learn something. I can talk easily until past midnight. You sometimes make up excuses for me, "You are not so young any more. You must be tired, and it's past midnight. You need to go to bed and rest." And then you would stand up to go. Then I would say, "You fool, you are the ones who are tired and want to go to bed. You are trying to send me away for your own benefit, aren't you? Sit down!" Then you would turn red and sit down. Many people have brought embarrassment to themselves that way. You have no idea how much blood and sweat I have to shed to make sure you learn something. (203-309, 1990.06.27)


Based on the educational problems in Korea, people are now acknowledging that the Unification Church is absolutely necessary. People think that the Unification Church is absolutely necessary to straighten out people's minds from such ideas as communist thought. Because the time has matured we can proclaim True Parents. (204-195, 1990.07.11)


Saints and sages have tried to solve the problems of their societies through education. But I teach you to solve the mind-body problem first. You must unify your mind and body centering on your conscience before trying to create world peace. (206-083, 1990.10.03)


I have gathered people of importance and opinion makers, centering on the American Leadership Conference (ALC), to inspire them to work for God. I believe that we must change those people. It is not easy to change the entire population of the world. However, people who are governing each nation are actually a countable number of people. If those leaders can change, the whole world can be turned around. No one can assail our ideology on a logical basis. No philosophical idea or religious idea can. (210-208, 1990.12.23)


Head-wing ideology is not for my own sake, but for the sake of the entire human race. The ideology of God is the ideology of humanity. It is not just my own ideology, nor is it even the principle that belongs only to the Unification Church. It is the principle that all people of the world must follow.

The principle was discovered because I invested myself completely to fulfill the responsibility as a prophet. I did not do it for my own clan or people but for all people. It is for all people. It is not my own principle. You must think that way too. That is the only way you can go beyond the established Christian churches. The principle does not belong only to the Unification Church. (214-341, 1991.02.07)


I am known as the worldwide anti-communist leader. My anti-communist movement does not have any political or economical purpose, however. I have simply pointed out the fact that the communist ideology is not based on truth. I only showed the alternative and developed the Victory Over Communism (VOC) movement for educational purposes. (219-123, 1991.08.28)


I have worked so that God and people can meet. It is not an easy task.

So far, the saints have taught you how to solve problems more externally. However, no matter how much I teach you, I cannot solve your problem of mind-body disunity for you. (224-164, 1991.11.24)


I used to pray for twelve or seventeen hours straight. That is how I endured to discover the truth. I have prayed in tears and deep lamentation for more than ten years in very miserable circumstances.

Compared to my situation, how comfortable your lives have been. Imagine yourself in my shoes. I have to teach people anytime, anywhere. How can you inherit that tradition? That is what God and True Parents want you to do. The mission of my life is how to educate people whatever the sacrifice. If you want to unite with me, you must have the same goal in mind. (246-079, 1993.03.23)


I have stood in the forefront to pioneer the road for the providence of restoration. Now I want to make the way to save people who are starving and dying of hunger. That is my final project. Kim Il-sung ordered his people to have me take charge of developing the Keumgang Mountains as part of their national economic project. However, I did not focus so much on the project because I believe that education is much more important than making money. Education should be the priority. I want to take responsibility for the ideological vacuum in North Korea through my ideas. The same goes for the former Soviet Union. (267-040, 1994.12.27)


No matter where I am, I must educate people. Wherever I go and whatever I do, I must teach people. Living that way, I do not feel burdened. I feel that I am doing my job. When you talk you must shed sweat and tears. Power generates power. Good conditions generate good conditions.

Even if I memorize the entire manuscript of what I am going to say, I pray a lot on the day of my speech. (279-312, 1996.09.22)


The first stage for the 360 million-couple International Holy Blessing Ceremony, that I will hold on June 13th, is the fruit of the education I have given throughout my entire life for the sake of the realization of ideal families. Those people who will be participating in the blessing ceremony have promised to God to be true husbands and wives and to become true parents by creating true families based on true love. We have been leading a historic revolution of true love centering on the true family movement, for the sake of world peace. (294-068, 1998.06.11)


5.2 Koreans - Awaken!

Today, we must transcend all barriers and boundaries with the idea of unification and stand forth before all thirty million people of the Korean Peninsula. We must educate all youths on the street. That is how urgent our situation is. We must do it. Otherwise, I see nothing but impending ruin. (015-341, 1965.12.07)


We should intensify our work in training and educating people in schools and government offices. Is it impolite to impose yourselves upon those people? You, men, think about it. Is it rude to do so? You people in the audience, what do you think? How good do you feel about it? Is it good enough to risk your own life? You have no time to think. You should be very serious. (017-153, 1966.12.11)


When you go out to fight, do so in the position of parents. Even if you are fighting against your enemies, ultimately, they are like your children. Our motto is to shed sweat for the earth, tears for humanity, and blood for heaven with the heart of a parent and the body of a servant. Only by such means can we fully restore the world. God's highest goal of education is to raise us up to be that kind of people. (017-338, 1967.04.30)


Koreans distinguish themselves individually, and you can tell that they are a people of excellent quality. However, Korean parents do not bring up their children properly. Hence, as their second parents, we should educate them to be become great people. That is what the Unification Church must do. (018-237, 1967.06.11)


Even if I should die, Unification Thought will endure. The time of working centering on churches has passed. It is time to work at the national level. Do not think that we are going to enter into politics.

That is not the case. We must educate people, teaching them the right ideology and how to live good lives. During the 1970s, we must teach Unification Thought to all Koreans. Please understand that this is what God wants us to do. (027-245, 1969.12.24)


Day and night we need to be thinking of how to restore Korea, both south and north. External things are not the problem. Even if South and North Korea were unified, how would we educate young people who grew up in North Korea? They are completely fanatical communists. How shall we turn them around and inspire them to resist Maoist and Stalinist communism on our behalf? How shall we make them the Cains who surrender to and fight on behalf of Abel? Unless we achieve this, we cannot bring about the unification of Korea in the truest sense, resolving all historical resentment to stand before Heaven and make our appearance before the world once again as a unified sovereign nation. That is the destined path we must go. (030-021, 1970.03.14)


We first launched our Victory Over Communism (VOC) education during the busy farming season of rice transplantation. If the farmers neglected their work that week, the entire annual crop of their village would be ruined. Don't you think so? Would they not run away saying, "Why do you bother us at this busiest time? Why don't you come in late fall or in the winter?" We have now very successfully held the tenth workshop against all the odds. The spirit world is willing to help us, the ancestors having no choice but to support us by working through their descendants on earth and inspiring them to attend the workshops. Once they have received education here, they come to miss the workshop. (034-041, 1970.08.29)


CARP is developing into a powerful organization on the campuses.

Academics are beginning to realize that we are a growing concern they need to grapple with and know more about. Recently, 55 scholars attended our Unification Thought seminar at the Christian Academy House. There was an article about us that will certainly become an issue. All that did not come about through our own design. They came to us and listened to our teachings and concluded on their own that the Unification Thought is the truth that can unify world religions, and that it is the new guiding principle for college students and the young people to sort out the problematic issues of the lack of values and the absence of morality. They were excited after they learned what we had to tell them.

Some of them said that they would have brought some prominent academics along had they known the program would offer such rich content. (039-269, 1971.01.15)


By the time people get to the forty-day workshop, they usually reach the point where they can offer their lives for God's Will. At the end of the seven-day workshop, people normally decide to leave the past behind and work for God's Will. I make it a point to interview them to ascertain their intentions and resolutions. Those willing to devote their lives for God's Will later proceed to attend the twenty-one-day workshop.

Would they be willing to die for God's Will at that stage? That is the question. Our education turns on the issue of whether or not we are willing to devote our entire life for God's Will. After the twenty-one-day workshop, people should feel strongly that they are God's children. We are raising them up to that level.

The forty-day workshop empowers people to work on God's behalf, pour everything of themselves into fighting for Him. Just as God has been laboring assiduously in leading the providence of restoration throughout history, taking responsibility for everything, people need to be helped to rise to the level where they are, in fact, working on God's behalf.

Let us systematize our curriculum in realizing these objectives. You may explore various options in searching for the optimum. Adopt an eclectic approach in studying the Western and Oriental educational systems. (075-093, 1975.01.02)


In 1967 I told the Korean Intelligence Bureau that they should put me in charge of educating North Koreans, who, as young people who have tasted the bitterness of the communist regime, need to be enlightened by the Victory Over Communism (VOC) theory. However, the Intelligence Bureau scoffed at the idea of getting the Unification Church to run a reorientation program for North Koreans. You cannot imagine their contempt. Despite all that, I have continued to expend our foundation.

I have long emphasized the need for us to hasten the process of public education for the local authorities. Those 70,000 personnel out there can become the branches that will sprout leaves, namely the citizens under their jurisdiction. To employ communist terminology, they are the "cells" that must come alive. When all the leaves are eaten up by bugs and die, the branches, trunks and roots will eventually die, too. What should we do with those 70,000 people? You may not know it, but many high ranking officers from the air force, the army and the navy, including well-known generals and admirals, as well as heads of veterans' associations, have undergone our CAUSA training program in America. (135-253, 1985.12.12)


In many respects, the new spring breeze is blowing in over humankind, particularly in the free world. I don't know if they have a spring breeze in the communist world. Their time, however, is over. They failed in what they had set out to do in the beginning. The new spring breeze is blowing centering on Rev. Moon's ideas. New buds are sprouting in your hearts. We have begun educating grassroots leaders of all the towns in Korea. From where do flowers bloom? From below? Where? Flowers bloom from the softest part of the branch. The families of those grassroots leaders are like the new buds sprouting forth. If they blossom into flowers, Korea will have hope. Seoul will not be overrun by spies.

Without educating the grassroots leaders properly, we cannot liberate North Korea. They will dominate us. It is an urgent matter to educate the grassroots leaders. We must plant the new seeds. When the buds sprout forth centering on the leaders we educate, we must make them grow into trees. (142-255, 1986.03.12)


I have built this foundation in the face of worldwide opposition. We will be able to work dozens or even hundreds of times faster in a more conducive environment. I speak to you in this way because I consider you as my family. Please be reminded of your responsibility and start sowing your seeds in the hearts of the 120,000 grassroots leaders of Korea. The International Federation for Victory Over Communism (IFVOC) and the Unification Church are to play their roles in influencing and inspiring politicians and in providing them with a clear and positive action plan in dealing with communism. Seeing the Korean government being plainly adrift, we have no other recourse than to take the initiative and be firmly rooted in order to get a good grasp of the situation. (142-256, 1986.03.12)


I ordered the books Victory Over Communism Theory, Unification Thought and Unification Principle for you, paying for them out of my own pocket for you to use them as textbooks in town meetings. If these teachings are disseminated, Korea will not perish. Korea has attained this standard of living despite the tragic Korean War and its devastating aftereffects over the following two decades because Koreans invested a lot in their children's education. Although universities have sometimes been disparagingly referred to as ivory towers education is undoubtedly important. We need to equip people with the right ideology. I know for sure that only then can Koreans go on to become world leaders.

It is not my ideology, but yours. With it you can guide people in any society, in any culture in any developed country. You can assimilate the culture of developed countries. Koreans are crazy about migrating to the developed countries. Whoever is armed with my teachings will excel overseas.

We need to train people over the next three years from 1986 through 1988. Following the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Olympics, within three weeks, Kim Il-sung will surely propose holding unified elections in both South and North Korea. The free world will welcome it, too. If that happens, South Korea will be pushed into a corner from which it will not be able to extricate itself. Having already organized themselves clandestinely and in advance, they will push for early elections to be held. Knowing the urgency of the situation, those of you sleep, drink or play will perish. Those who are not caught unawares will not fail. (142-260, 1986.03.12)


Who can provide public education in Korea? I can. Some government officials announced that they had educated 195,000 people through the People's Movement for Reconstruction. In actual fact, that number included the 165,000 we had educated. They had asked my permission to incorporate our result into their statistics and I told them to go ahead. That is the state of affairs in the Korean government. Who is leading the New Village Movement? I was the first to organize agricultural cooperatives. This nation cannot be saved without some ideology related to the Unification Church. These days, the government is conducting forty-day workshops under the name of "New Village Education." The very idea of a forty-day workshop came from me. (148-121, 1986.10.05)


The theory of communism is most extensive. It is no simple task sharing our ideas one on one with those coming from a philosophical background.

Considerable experience is evidently required in analyzing and propounding Marxism-Leninism. Yet we must educate all the people in South Korea in a short time and increase the scope of education into North Korea once unified elections have been held. Once someone has been thoroughly indoctrinated in dialectical materialism, it is well nigh impossible to turn him around 180 degrees.

The South Korean government has been trying to re-educate captured North Korean spies who have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the communist ideology. When we teach them, they admit that we are right. Yet they have become exceedingly accustomed to their old way of thought, similar to smokers who know that their habit is going to kill them one day, and yet are unable to cut off from the addictive taste of nicotine. They would say, "You have failed to make it as delectable as my long held faith. How can you excise something that has for so long been a part of me? I know you're right. Based on your theory, I cannot deny that God exists. It is a fact that we all possess dual characteristics, as you say. I can understand that the First Cause possesses dual characteristics in the same way as resultant beings. But, it is not as tasty as my communist ideas." They don't like the taste. They are unable to free themselves from the thought patterns programmed into their minds for their entire life. Communists feel exhilarated by communist ideology but they don't experience that exhilaration with us. Exceptional efforts and sacrifices are needed to get old habits to die. (172-190, 1988.01.21)


About 900,000 participants underwent our official four-day training program over the past twenty years through the activities of the International Federation for Victory Over Communism (IFVOC). We cherish the precious accomplishments of having helped so many people to completely revolutionize their lives. Apart from the efforts of the IFVOC another 2 million people were exposed to our ideas. Although not all of them joined the Unification Church, they still form an important base of positivity for our movement. Even the Korean government was not aware of the network we had set up, running like veins through the whole country. (203-139, 1990.06.24)


More than a million people participated in our IFVOC three-day seminars.

About ten million attend the IFVOC meetings every year. Altogether, some 40 to 70 million people have been contacted in one way or another at some point in time. You don't see them, but once the word is out that I am coming to speak, massive stadiums can be filled up with a hundred thousand people within three days. (232-172, 1992.07.03)

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