Based on the ideals described above, what kind of education will be required? For the perfection of the individual, education of Heart is required; for the perfection of the family, education of norm is required; and for the perfection of dominion, education of dominion is required, including technical education, intellectual education, and physical education. Each of these forms of education will now be discussed.

1. Education for the Perfection of the Individual

The education for bringing the individual to the resemblance of God's perfection is the Education of Heart. To resemble God's perfection is to resemble the unity of Sungsang and Hyungsang, which refers to the state in which the spirit mind and physical mind engage in give-and-receive action centering on Heart and are united in complete unity. Therefore, in order for the spirit mind and physical mind to become united, Heart must be the center of the give-and-receive action between the spirit mind and physical mind. Accordingly, education of Heart turns out to be education for the perfection of the individual.

To carry out the Education of Heart is to raise people to become persons who love all people and a things in the same way as God loves all people and all things. In order to receive such education, those who are to be educated need to be guided to the experience of God's Heart. How do people come to experience God's Heart? The first step is for them to achieve a clear understanding of God's Heart.

God's Heart has been expressed in three forms through the process of creation and the dispensation of restoration. The three forms of God's Heart are the Heart of hope, the Heart of sorrow, and the Heart of pain.

a) The Heart of Hope

The Heart of hope is the Heart of God at the time of creation. It refers to God's joyful feelings, full of expectation and hope, in anticipation of begetting Adam and Eve, His most beloved children, to whom He could devote His unlimited love. It was also God's joyful feelings at the moment when Adam and Eve were born.

God spent as long as 15 to 20 billion years in the creation of the universe. What was all that for? It was all for the sake of creating Adam and Eve, His most beloved children. In the hope of seeing the moment when His children would be born, God spent all that time creating the universe, in spite of all kinds of hardships. God, being filled with hope, did not feel the process of creating the universe as too long or too painful, no matter how long and difficult it actually was.

We, also, sometimes have this kind of an experience. When we work for some thing joyful, we do not feel the work as painful, no matter how painful it may actually be. We even forget about the time, because joy waits for us in the future. God's expectation of joy was far greater than any kind of joy we may experience. Moreover, the joy God felt when Adam and Eve were born was so great and deep that it cannot be compared to anything else.

b) The Heart of Sorrow

Yet, Adam and Eve fell away from God into the realm of death under the rule of Satan. So, God deeply grieved. His grief at that moment was so great that there is no way to express it. Because His expectation and hope during the period of creation had been so great, God's grief was exceptionally profound, beyond anything we can imagine. Limitless joy was transformed, by the betrayal, into limitless sorrow.

Even among human beings, when a child whom the parents love is dying, they feel desperate and grieve deeply. Even though a child's illness is very serious and the parents are told that the child will die, they will still try to keep the child alive by any means available. That is what the parental heart is like. So, when the child dies, though the parents knew it would happen, still they feel as though their hearts have been cut to pieces. That is the heart of parents.

c) The Heart of Pain

God's Heart in the course of the dispensation of restoration, or, in the process of resurrecting fallen people, is the Heart of pain. God could have abandoned fallen Adam and Eve in their condition, and could have created other human beings; yet, even though Adam and Eve fell away from Him, God did not abandon them and their descendants, due to His parent-child relationship with them. Instead, God's desire was to resurrect fallen Adam and Eve and to love them as His children forever. Another reason for resurrecting fallen people is that, if God had given tip on fallen Adam and Eve and had created entirely new human beings, He would have failed in creation and would have lost His dignity. He had to establish the condition of not having failed and to demonstrate His authority and perfection. Fallen people, however, not only were separated from God, but also were dominated by Satan, and came even to ridicule God, their Heavenly Parent. They also persecuted God's representatives, the saints and sages whom God sent to them. They would often imprison, expel, or kill them. God felt the persecution against those people as persecution against Himself. Every time God saw the saints and sages suffering from persecution or imprisonment, God would feel as though a nail was being driven into His chest or His side was being pierced by a spear.

Through education of Heart, children should come to understand the three kinds of God's Heart described above, especially the Heart of God in the course of the providence of restoration (the Heart of Pain). Therefore, I will introduce God's Heart in the course of Adam's family, Noah's family, and Abraham's family and also in Moses' course and Jesus' course. What follows is an introduction to God's Heart according to the teachings of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

a) God's Heart in Adam's Family

When God created Adam and Eve, He was filled with boundless joy; but when Adam and Eve fell away from Him, God's grief knew no limit. Therefore, in order to save Adam and Eve, 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 God might have known, from the very beginning, that Adam and Eve, and later Cain and Abel, would fail, since God is omniscient. If that were true, then how could God have grieved in the true sense? This, however, is a misunderstanding of God's omniscience, or foreknowledge.

God's omniscience, as well as His omnipotence, toward human beings will become a reality only when human beings become perfected by fulfilling their portion of responsibility; for only then will God be able, through human beings, to rule over all things, actions, and events on earth. God gave human beings a portion of responsibility because He hoped they would fulfill their responsibility, and He believed they would indeed do that. God would never have given human beings a commandment that was impossible to carry out.

However, since the fulfillment of the human portion of responsibility depends on a person's free will, needless to say there is always a possibility of failure. So, from a rational point of view, the omniscient and omnipotent God must have known that as well. But God is "omni-loving," even more so than omniscient and omnipotent. So, His state of mind at the time when He gave Adam and Eve their portion of responsibility was such that it was filled with the expectation that Adam and Eve, His most beloved ones, would simply fulfill their responsibility. Because of such a state of mind, filled with love, God's foreknowledge that Adam and Eve might fall was overwhelmed by His mind of expectation with love; the result was the same as though He had no such foreknowledge at all.

In the days of Adam and Eve, and also in the days of Cain and Abel, God at first was a God of expectation and hope, who wished for nothing but success for them. But Adam and Eve, and also Cain and Abel, failed. Because of that, God's sorrow and disappointment were great. However, at those moments, God could not simply break down in tears, losing His dignity, no matter how sorrowful He felt, because Satan was watching. That's what caused Him an indescribable suffering of heart. All He could do was leave, silently, with His head bent and a tragic countenance.

b) God's Heart in Noah's Family

After God left Adam's family, He walked the path of wilderness for the long period of 1600 years, ¹ looking for someone on earth with whom He could work. In the meantime, 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. In such a situation, God searched for someone to work with, and He finally found Noah. God's joy at that moment was beyond compare. Yet, God had to give Noah a very strict order, which was to build the ark. Noah accepted God's order and faithfully devoted himself to build the ark for 120 years, all the while suffering ridicule from the people.

Noah, though not qualified to be a "son of God," he was established as a "servant of God" and a righteous man. God walked the path of suffering in the position of a servant together with Noah. However, 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 felt a heart-breaking pain. Deeply disheartened, God could not but abandon Noah's family.

c) God's Heart in Abraham's Family

Four hundred years later, God found Abraham and established him within the providence. The most serious point in Abraham's course was when he had to offer Isaac, his only son, whom he had begotten at the age of one hundred years (Gen. 21:5). God ordered Abraham, who had failed in the symbolic offering of doves, ram, she-goat, and heifer, to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. Abraham's heart at that point was inexplicably 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 command. In his heart, at that moment, Abraham would much rather sacrifice himself than his son.

Nevertheless, he finally made up his mind to sacrifice Isaac according to God's order. Abraham wandered around Mount Moriah for three days. That period of three days was a long, painful path for Abraham. During that time, God did not merely watch from afar; rather, having issued such a severe order, God suffered along with Abraham, as He watched how Abraham was suffering.

When Abraham was about to sacrifice his beloved son on Mount Moriah, he established the condition as though he had indeed killed Isaac, even though in fact he had not. That is why God was able to stop Abraham just prior to killing Isaac, and provided him with a ram to be offered as a burnt offering instead of his son. At that moment, God said, "Now I know that you fear God." That was an expression not only of God's pain, but also of His joy at the fact that Abraham had obeyed His command.

The mission was then passed on to Isaac, who followed Abraham's determination. Later, Isaac's descendants would leave their homeland of Canaan and enter Egypt to walk the path of suffering for four hundred years in order indemnify Abraham's failure in the symbolic offering and to establish the foundation to receive the Messiah on the national level.

d) God's Heart in Moses' Course

Moses, who was raised as a prince in the palace of the Pharaoh of Egypt, spoke out for the liberation of his compatriots, the Israelites, in order to take them back to the land of Canaan. In the process of going back to Canaan, however, the Israelites, amidst extreme suffering, revolted against Moses, their leader. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, having received the two tablets after he completed forty days of fasting on die mountain, the Israelites were worshipping a golden calf. 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" (Exodus 32:910). How did Moses feel at that moment? Moses felt 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" (Exodus 32:12), In the face of Moses' fervent appeal, God refrained from destroying the Israelites.

After the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, God told Moses to bring forth water from a rock at a place called Kadesh Barnea (Num. 20:8). Out of anger at the Israelites, who showed litter faithlessness toward God, Moses struck the rock twice, which wits against God's will. So, God called Moses to the top of Mount Pisgah. Showing him the land of Canaan, which Moses worked so hard to reach, God said, 'This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, I will give it to your descendants. I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there." (Deut. 34:4, Rsv). Actually, God very much wanted to let Moses enter the land of Canaan; but because there was an accusation by Satan (based on Moses' having struck the rock twice), God took that measure unwillingly. God felt deeply pained by that decision. His Heart at that moment was like that of someone about to enter an enemy territory alone, after losing a close and clear ally.

e) God's Heart in Jesus' Course

Jesus came to earth as the Messiah. The entire earth should have welcomed him wholeheartedly, but, since childhood, he found nothing but rejection. His family rejected him; his religion (Judaism) rejected him; and his nation (Israel) rejected him. In the end, there was no place to which he could go.

For 33 years, Jesus spent his days almost always by himself, leading a lonely life. So, when he saw a cloud, he said, "Cloud, you can understand my suffering heart, can't you?" When he spoke to the trees, he said, "Are you kind enough to know this pain of mine?" Jesus was leading such a terribly lonely life. As he walked along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, he talked to a Samaritan woman, who was not one of the chosen people. God walked with that lonely Jesus through such a lonely path.

Finally, watching Jesus being crucified, God felt extraordinary pain. Since Jesus looked so miserable, God could not bear to watch him, and turned His face away from him. God was unable to take His beloved son down from the cross. Looking at Jesus on the cross, God suffered even more than Jesus himself.

Thus was 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 guiding them. Teachers and parents should introduce this Heart of God to children. In addition to giving talks about God's Heart, they can teach them through movies, videos, novels, plays, paintings, and so on.

It is also necessary to teach God's Heart through the practice of love in family life. To do this, parents must seriously love their children, so that, even when they scold their children, the feeling will well up naturally in children's hearts that they are being scolded because their parents love them. Also, children must come to respect their parents. In order for that to take place, the parents have to work hard for the sake of God and humankind through suffering, even to the degree that the children come to feel sorry for them.

The same can be said with school education. Teachers must show God's love through practice. Teachers should give love to the children from the bottom of their hearts, with a parental heart. Then, children will be moved by this, and will come to respect and love their teachers, and will become willing to follow their teachers from the bottom of their hearts. While giving love to the children in this way, teachers should lead them to the practice of a life of love, helping them realize how much joy they can obtain from living for the sake of God and other people.

1. Education for the Perfection of the Family

Education of Norm refers to education to obtain the qualifications to become a spouse and to form a family. A man must be equipped with the way of a husband; and a woman, with the way of a wife. The Education of Norm also includes learning the proper behavior for parents, the proper behavior for children, and the proper relationships among brothers and sisters in the family.

Through the Education of Norm, the sanctity and mystery of sex should be taught with special care. Sex is something to be experienced only after marriage, and should never be violated until that time. According to the Bible, God told Adam and Eve, "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat" (Genesis 2:17, RSV). This means that sex is sacred, and must not be violated. That commandment was not intended only for Adam and Eve, it was intended for everyone and is valid until today. That is a supreme order which will be valid in the future as well. Accordingly, Education of Norm is education for the observance of laws; it should teach children, first of all, how to observe God's commandment.

The Education of Norm, at the same time, refers to the education through which one becomes a being of reason-law who lives according to the way of Heaven. This is because the family is a miniature of the universe. The way of Heaven is the law of give-and-receive action penetrating the universe. Two kinds of' laws derive from the way of Heaven: laws of nature and the laws of values. The laws of values form the norm. As there are both vertical order and horizontal order in the universe, so there are vertical order and horizontal order in the family. In values as well, there are vertical values and horizontal values. In addition, there are individual values. The topic of values has already been treated, in greater detail, in the chapter "Axiology."

The Education of Norm must be accompanied by the Education of Heart. Norms are, "You must not do this"; "You ought to do that"; and so forth. If there is no love in norms, the norms will become formalistic and legalistic. Therefore, Education of Norm must be conducted in an atmosphere of love. In other words, norms and love must be one.

Love without norms is usually called blind love. Should parents or teachers love the children with that kind of love, the children would come to despise them. Parental love and die love of teachers must have some form of authority and dignity. In order to be that way, their love must be in accordance with Logos. In situations where there is too little love and too much emphasis on norms, the children will feel restricted and come to revolt against their parents or teachers. The reason is that love should be above norms. Even when children fail to obey norms, still they must be given love continuously.

Love and norms must be united. Love is harmonious and round, whereas norms are, so to speak, linear. So a person in whom love and norms are united is a person in whom, so to speak, a circle and a straight line are united. Love seeks to forgive and accept him, whereas norms seek to regulate strictly. Therefore, such a person has a character equipped with unified polarity, being most harmonious and at the same time most strict. A person with this kind of character is sometimes very strict and other times very kind, and can always assume the proper attitude according to the time and place.

1. Education for the Perfection of the Nature of Dominion

In order to perfect the nature of dominion, one must first acquire knowledge about the objects over which one is to have dominion. Intellectual education is necessary for that purpose. Next, one must acquire technique to develop creativity. That purpose is served by technical education. Furthermore, since people are supposed to be subjects of dominion, their physical strength must be built up. That purpose is realized through physical education. Intellectual education, technical education, and physical education, together, are called "Education of Dominion."

The Education of Dominion is based on general education, which, when more deeply developed, becomes specialized education in various fields. In intellectual education, such specialized knowledge as natural sciences, politics, economics, culture, and social studies are taught. In technical education and physical education as well, there are various specialized fields. Education for the performing arts, for example, may be regarded as a kind of technical education.

Through Education of Dominion, we learn the methods of developing our creativity. Creativity is inborn, and everyone is naturally endowed with it as a potentiality. Education of Dominion, however, is necessary in order actually to manifest it.

The development of creativity refers to the cultivation of the ability to form an inner four-position base and air outer Four-position base in the two-stage structure of creation. The ability to form an inner four-position base refers here to the ability to form a Logos (i.e., a plan, a design, or a conception). In order to be able to develop a Logos, one must acquire a great deal of knowledge through intellectual education, and enhance the contents of the Inner Hyungsang (ideas, concepts, and so on) qualitatively as well as quantitatively. As the Inner Sungsang (intellect, emotion, will) acts upon the Inner Hyungsang centering on Heart, one makes .1 plan or a design by using the information within the Inner Hyungsang. To develop a Logos means to develop new ideas; in industry, this means to develop technical innovations.

Next, the cultivation of the ability to form the outer four-position base refers to the enhancement of the ability to substantialize new ideas by using tools and materials according to a certain plan-in other words, the development of skills in conducting outer give-and-receive action. Here technical education is required. Of course, good physical condition is required as well. Therefore, improving one's physical strength through physical education is also necessary.

The Education of Dominion must be carried out on the basis of, and in conjunction with, Education of Heart and Education of' Norm. Only when based on Heart and norm can intellectual education, technical education, and physical education become wholesome and can creativity be fully manifested.

The Education of Heart and Education of Norm must be given equally to everyone. They are called universal education. On the other hand, the Education of Dominion must be given to people according to their abilities, interests, and desires. Some may major in natural science, others in literature, and still others in economics, and so forth. Thus, the field a person chooses varies depending on that person's preference and aptitude. In this sense, the Education of Dominion is "individual education."

It can be said that universal education and individual education are in the relationship of' Sungsang and Hyungsang. The reason is that the Education of Heart and the Education of Norm are spiritual education, that is, the education of the mind, whereas the Education of Dominion is material education, in the sense that the student learns certain materials and acquires certain techniques for the actual exercise of dominion over all things. Accordingly, universal education (Education of Heart and Education of Norm) and individual education (Education of Dominion) must be carried out side by side with each other. That is what is meant by "balanced education" (Fig. 5-2). They include the aspects of universality and individuality in education.

Fig. 5-2: Universality and Individuality in Education

In ancient Greece, in the Middle Ages, and in the Modern Age, there was always an effort to provide education of love and education of ethical and moral principles, even though the teachings provided were not perfect. Today, however, these kinds of education are being slighted, and what can be called "unbalanced education," with excessive emphasis on knowledge and technique, is being practiced. As a result, the healthy growth of human nature is hampered. Therefore, a new theory of education must appear whereby the education of love and the education of ethical and moral principles can be given on a new dimension. It is on this basis that intellectual education and technical education should be conducted. Only through such balanced education can science and technology be guided in the proper direction. Then such problems as pollution and the destruction of nature will naturally come to be solved. Moreover, through this kind of education, teachers will regain their authority as teachers.

It should be added that the starting point of education lies in family education. School education is the extension and development of family education. Accordingly, family education and school education must be united. If this is not done, it is difficult for proper education to be carried out, especially Education of Heart and Education of Norm. In that case, unity in education cannot be actualized.

 Download entire page and pages related to it in ZIP format
Table of Contents
Information
Tparents Home