My recent experience's with Hyun Jin Nim

Ken Bates
November 4, 2011

Hyun Jin Moon bows with the audience, May 30, 2010

I've been away for a while… trying to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. That helps me to keep my connection to God, and to just stay away from the political issues. In spending time with Hyun Jin Nim recently, I was deeply moved to hear his perspective on the current "challenges". The following paragraphs are based on my personal experience, and are my personal opinions.

He said that everything (even what's currently going on in our movement) happens for a purpose, and when you allow God into every situation, God finds a way to work through it. He feels really grateful that God is working in so many profound ways in his life and projects. His current situation is one that he never could have envisioned, but it is allowing him to understand Father's heart and course in ways that could not be experienced without intense trials.

Hyun Jin Nim is the only one of the True Family that I really know well personally, and I have always been amazed at his degree of conviction and determination to succeed in his role as a true son, and as a providential figure. Anyone who has ever spent time with him knows that he does not just approach life casually. He makes every day an unforgettable, outstanding experience of learning about oneself and about how to push to that place where you find God and find new insight. To him, a day without growth and new lessons learned is a missed opportunity to grasp something precious about how to love and live to the highest degree. I believe that this is why he's grateful for the experiences he is now having.

Recently, the accusations about him that you have undoubtedly heard have been repeated so often that some people have come to take them as truth. Stealing assets; hungry for power; envious of position. Those who work closely with him (and anyone who knows him, if you go back and review his 10 year track record) know how ludicrous those accusations are. Rather than speaking out to refute those claims, he has redoubled his efforts to move God's Providence forward, and he has been allowing us to evaluate who has stayed more aligned with God's historical providence… those being accused or those making the accusations. The answer to this is not a simple one of physically sitting by Father, but of continuing Father's life's work.

Hyun Jin Nim has been through very tough times, and has had to make extremely difficult decisions about whether to walk away from all the difficulties, or to take the harder, rockier road and continue in what God has called him to do against unimaginable opposition. He has never rejected his past, his parents, or Father's teachings; he simply disagrees with the current direction of the church.

When I first saw him in such anguish, with a wedge driven between him and his parents by many people describing him as a disloyal son, I tried to understand his experience of rejection. I used to say (at that time, somewhat tongue-in-cheek) "I'm amazed that those who oppose him so strongly are still willing to give him the key to God's heart!", because I could see that though he suffered, he came closer and closer to God through it, and God continued to work with him more obviously. I started to understand that this closeness to God is not given by those who make our lives difficult. They may pave the path for it by creating difficult circumstances, but the experience of God's grace, and knowing God's aching heart can only be given by God to those who seek it in those most trying times.

Hyun Jin Nim's personal experiences when he tried to break through and meet True Parents within the past few years showed him that True Parents do not get accurate reports about what is happening in the church or in Hyun Jin Nim's own activities. Even in recent reports about activities, True Parents are still told what leaders want them to hear rather than the truth about what really happened. This kind of contradictory culture is exactly what Hyun Jin Nim spoke out against when he was in leadership positions, and what he still opposes today.

There are other things that I won't mention here that many people agreed had to change in our church's culture. Some of those can be altered by new policies and different organizational structures. Other, deeper problems have persisted through many changes already, and continue to plague our relationships within our movement as well as with other groups that we seek to partner with. Maybe those cultural problems can only be resolved when we are shaken to our roots, and feel like we are losing everything. Then our only option is to turn to God and desperately ask Him how to proceed. I know that Hyun Jin Nim has been through a lot of that, and has found new strength and clarity in his life.

If someone disagrees with my perspective on what Hyun Jin Nim is doing, that is because they are starting with different assumptions. If you start out assuming that Hyun Jin Nim did something wrong, then you could easily build a case on that. If you know that Hyun Jin Nim had good reason for his concerns about what was happening around True Parents in 2008-9, then you will see why he has had to take the course he has taken. The many campaigns and declarations against him have been built on an initial assumption that is flawed and simply untrue.

Working closely with Hyun Jin Nim, I can tell you certainly that he is not the source of negative rumors about any of his siblings. He may disagree with them, but he has not been attacking them. There are many other people out there with axes to grind who have said unflattering things, but Hyun Jin Nim and those working closely with him are not the origin or perpetrators of those rumors.

I hope this message helps you to understand my trust for Hyun Jin Nim, and to have hope for the future of God's Providence. I just wanted to share what I have experienced, as I believe there are a lot of stories out there that are not accurate.

With prayers and love

Ken Bates