The Meaning of the Children's Pledge

Chung Hwan Kwak
November 1981

The contents of the Pledge are fundamental points which true children can use as the basis of their lives.

Without True Children, fallen man could never occupy the position of child of God or True Parents. The Bible teaches that the wild olive branch must be grafted onto the true tree (whose root is our True Parents and whose branches are the True Children). Without True Parents and the life element they provide, fallen man has no direct link with God and no hope of becoming a child of God. God being the original owner of true love and true life, we must strengthen our relationship to Him, inheriting eternal life from Him and True Parents.

True Parents introduced the Children's Pledge on October 1, 1962, the third anniversary of Children's Day. It is my understanding that the contents of our Pledge show us the main conditions of being a child of God and the True Parents.

We share this Pledge with God a minimum of once a week, at 5:00 on Sunday mornings. But True Parents proclaimed this Pledge not just to be said at a formal service once a week, but as a basis tor our lives.

Paragraph 1: We have to become a child of goodness and eternally attend God with true filial piety.

You call upon your Father in heaven; you pray in the names of the precious True Parents. But where is your heart when you do so? Is it connected to your mind? If you just call upon God without preparing your heart, it has no meaning Remember this when you call out the words "God" or "Father" It is essential to prepare a pure mind and heart and give complete devotion in your prayer. God and True Parents don't want just a simple relationship or merely a formal bond. They want a deep relationship with you, one with real meaning.

The ultimate goal of any of us is to claim the precious title of child of God and True Parents. Everyday, we advance towards it step by step, trying to maintain a steady progress. In order to do this, it is important to research the quiet side of True Parents: their lifestyle. Using as tools the Divine Principle, their words and research into their character and hearts, we should try to understand their sacrifice and how they were able to overcome Satan.

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear "True Parents"? For myself, I visualize Father in the prayer position, with tears flowing from his eyes. This is the eternal image carved deep within my mind. I have seen him cry in his prayers to God. I don't know how you feel about True Parents, but I wonder how many members understand this more invisible side of our True Parents.

There are many religious leaders, but none can compare with Father; he devoted his whole life to teaching and guiding. As you know, Father speaks publicly for hours and hours on end, not a "normal" amount of time. His life is completely dedicated to teaching God's will, yet his teaching is never confined to public meetings. He teaches at the dining table, in the car, anywhere. Others might be able to do this for one week or one month, but I wonder how much longer anyone else could continue such a schedule. It is not easy to spend one's whole life like this, but I can testify that Father completely devotes his life to teaching and guiding members.

This is the lesson each of us should learn in order to be able to inherit the foundation of True Parents. It can happen, if we go through this process.

Paragraph 2: We have to inherit Gods character, love and life.

We have so much to learn and absorb. Each of us should try to follow True Parents' lifestyle. In the early days of our movement in Korea, True Father received tremendous persecution from Koreans in general and Christians in particular. But still, he continuously prayed for Korea and lands beyond. Even though he had been tortured in Japan almost to the point of death, he prayed daily for Japan. After coming to America and receiving so much unjust persecution here, still he prayed an average of a few hours a day for this country and her people and her future. Once he told a group of us that while on the airplane to America, he pledged to God that he would become a historical person and set the greatest example in loving this country with deep filial piety. This was not a simple promise, but a pledge that he lived up to and continues to live up to.

We should learn from Father's devotion and how he strove to inherit God's love and ideal. He invested his entire life for his disciples and members. He is the origin of God's true love for man; he decorates his life by sacrificing himself and his family for God and for the public purpose.

Blessed couples know that even though we invest ourselves in working hard for the public purpose, we need some private time. So if we feel that way, imagine how much more strongly True Parents and True Children feel. Still, they sacrifice themselves wholly for the public purpose

I am sure that after a day of working hard and devoting yourself 100 percent to your mission, when you return to your center and pray, your original mind may tell you that you still did not do enough. The True Parents worked a thousand times harder than any of us; they stood on the front line and supported us through prayer. Because True Parents had such a motivation, our original mind knows that we can never do enough.

Paragraph 3: Every day we fight against Satan for the sake of God's will, with the heart of a parent, the body of a servant, and the sacrifice of our own blood, sweat and tears.

Father and Mother have never asked us to do something which they have not first accomplished. Because of the Fall, all creation came under Satan's dominion, and all things and all people are separated from God. Therefore, a child of God must fight against Satan before he can live based on God's ideals and love. Our age bridges the fallen and ideal worlds: on one side, we still live in a world of evil, but on the other, we want to establish the ideal world.

We have been granted the possibility of staking a claim on the title of child of God. Even though we do not yet live in pure surroundings, we are all destined to become blessed couples. Not only do we stand on the bridge, we are the bridge. Yet being torn between two such different situations, we tend to complain and compare the ideal with the reality of the fallen world.

The True Parents are completely pure in heart and mind and live the ideal of love, so it is more difficult for them to have patience with something less than the ideal. Yet before complaining, they themselves always stand on the front line and fight against Satan. They are the model Children of God. They pray we will follow their example.

Paragraph 4: We have to unite with Gods peace, happiness, freedom and ideals and pass these on to all things of the created world.

Without achieving true love and perfecting his own character, True Father never tried to take dominion over all things. For example, before 1970 he never had the Korean family focus on building any financial foundation. In the early days, members of our church simple begged. He taught us that God created all things for man to use; therefore, when man perfected himself, all things would naturally gravitate to him. This is one of his main principles, and this is why he constantly urged early members to work on perfecting their own characters and not concern themselves about financial things. It is still an important principle for all Unification Church members to follow.

Paragraph 5: Gods sons and daughters must be the ones to build the ideal world.

The concluding paragraph shows how to perfect God's ideal, heart, sovereignty and dignity and how to keep tradition.

Let each of us remember that we have the potential to claim the title of child of God. Since True Father proclaimed Home Church activities, he has given us the opportunity to build villages full of children of God. We can make the race or tribe of the children of God. What a privilege and blessing!