The Words The Kwak Family
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The Words The Kwak Family |
Today is May 1, 1983, the 29th anniversary of the founding of our church in Seoul. Actually, although today is the official anniversary day, even before the establishment of the church in Seoul, our church existed in Pusan and Taegu, as well as pioneer churches in two towns near Taegu. Anyhow, our church was established under the name HSA-UWC 29 years ago today.
Today in Seoul Father held a ceremony honoring the anniversary day, at the Little Angels School. We miss Father and Mother today, but as we reflect on the meaning of this day, we should make a new determination and new beginning.
The Unification Church organization is important, but the root of the church, the main substance of the organization is True Father himself. We are so proud of True Father and we gain eternal life from him because of his substance, his heart and his ideal.
Originally, Adam and Eve were to have reached perfection; their substance would have been that of sons and daughters of God. But they lost God's heart and love, and they denied God's principle. Therefore, the main messianic role is to share with all mankind and all history these three elements: the Principle idea, heart and love, and finally substance.
Today I want to talk about restoring heartle, which is our ultimate goal. Heart and love are not logical matters, not academic experiences, not simple words.
For two thousand years Christianity has been talking about God's love. But Father's main goal is education of heart. Heart is the root of love and root of life. So if someone wants to inherit heart, he can only do it through someone who is the substantial representative of God, the son or daughter of God.
When we join the church, we adopt or accept True Parents' Principle or idea. Through Principle, we recognize God, understand the Principle of Creation, the fall of man, and the basic process of restoration. But the next stage after accepting the idea is inheriting heart and love.
You can ask a four-year old girl who her father and mother are, and she can point them out to you. But if you ask her why they are her mommy or daddy, she could not tell you the date of their wedding and the exact process by which she was given life. She doesn't need that kind of explanation. The basic relationship between parent and child is natural, not based on logic.
But when we call True Parents Father and Mother, we usually do so because of Principle, not because of natural feeling. We accept their idea and thought and through that recognize them as parents. But we have to grow further, to the point where we can feel that their relationship with us is natural and original.
Adam and Eve fell during the growth stage, before heart and love relationships were perfected. Therefore, we are not so directly involved in True Parents' or God's original love. Most people ask God for sympathetic or pitying love. Christian churches throughout the world seek God's love, but it is almost always pitying love. "Please forgive me," they plead. But in God's original idea of love, the word forgiveness did not exist. "Please help us, remember my family, remember me, protect my journey, etc.," people ask of God. All this is seeking pitying love. The original relationship between God and all mankind was to be that of parent and child, not pitying love. Helping, supporting, protecting, forgiving, strengthening -- none of these directly relate to original love.
We have to inherit God's original love by nature. When love is perfected, we don't need to ask for help or support. If we have to ask for it, our love is not complete. When you pray, what do you ask of God? After you reach a certain prayer-standard, you don't pray so much centering on yourself or your family; you pray public prayers, out of concern for the country and world, for God's dispensation. We don't need to ask God for sympathetic love, because sympathetic love cannot be the basis for an eternal relationship.
God has felt so painful because He couldn't find an adequate object with whom to share His love. His love keeps springing up and longs to express itself in a certain object. We feel happy when we receive love, but the original nature of love is not to receive, but to give. So True Parents and God Himself have been searching 24 hours a day for objects of their love. Then why do we ask them for love? Without our asking, their love is waiting to be shared, waiting for appropriate objects.
There are two limitations on God's love. He can love, but there are certain territories -- including the indirect dominion or growth period -- in which He doesn't want to share His love. Since God's love and heart are almighty and absolute, the appropriate object for His love also needs to be absolute and perfect. God is the owner of perfected love, and He seeks perfected objects.
Therefore, if you feel that God doesn't love you or care for you, that does not mean He hates you or is standing in judgment over you. It could mean He does not want to love you because you are not yet perfected.
Our goal is perfection, and we need perfected love. Before receiving the Blessing, we are not yet in the indirect dominion; we are in Satan's dominion. Unless we overcome Satan's dominion, we cannot expect the love of indirect dominion. Members sometimes wonder why blessed families undergo so many difficulties after the Blessing. We enter God's dominion after the Blessing, but the final stage, the perfection stage, still remains to be fulfilled.
Furthermore, since God is the owner of life and goodness, it is impossible for Him to share His perfect love except with objects that manifest His life and goodness; He cannot share original love with people who are still affected by evil.
Still, Heavenly Father does want to share His love and encourage and guide people along their life of faith; so He shares pitying and sympathetic love. This is the kind of love He has been giving out for thousands of years.
God's original love reaches people by substance -- not by teachings, sermons or philosophies. Someone who has completely inherited God's original love can transmit it to others. We experience original love, not learn it. Without God's perfected son and daughter on earth, we cannot know God's original love. Jesus came to share God's original love, but he had to begin by giving pitying and sympathetic love; after people progressed to a certain extent, he then wanted to share God's original love. "God is my Father; I am His son," Jesus proclaimed, describing the relationship of original love which he and God shared. But he couldn't transmit that original love to others.
Two thousand years after Jesus, Christians still understand God's love as pitying and sympathetic love; therefore, they keep pleading for it. But when you enter the eternal spiritual world, you don't need sympathetic love. There, God and spirit world check our spirits to see how much we have inherited of His original love. Sympathetic love has no value in the spirit world, since it was not part of God's idea for the creation. Therefore, we need to repent for our attitudes in prayer and daily life which have been primarily that of seeking pitying love.
When we accept Principle, we enter the stage of law and order in our relationship with God. Many people in the world are below the Principled stage, so we need to witness to them and teach them. But law and order are not the contents of our ultimate relationship with God. God did not create us in order to rule us by law and order, but by love.
Since fallen people have denied God, we need to start our life of faith at the law and order stage, the stage of circumstances. But many Unification Church members seem to remain stuck at that level and are constantly influenced by circumstances and environment. When you can witness well or when you bring good fundraising results or hear some good news, you become excited. But why can't you maintain this level of excitement? Because the environment changes; you become tired, sick, etc.; and your spirit loses power. An eternal relationship with God is not characterized by this kind of ups and downs.
Remember the example of the four-year-old child. Such a child will not deny her mommy or daddy just because the environment changes. Her feeling toward them remains constant. Even if someone tempts her with an offer of a gift if she denies her mommy or daddy, she won't. Her connection is natural and heartistic.
Our ultimate goal in our life of faith is to reach this standard and overcome the environment. When something good happens, inherit the content; don't just pick up a good feeling. We have to make a determination to overcome circumstances. Then when we go through ups and downs, when we encounter changing environments, we are at least prepared for them.
A certain percentage of each of Father's sermons is usually devoted to indemnity or sacrifice, because on the road of restoration, we cannot avoid indemnity conditions. Indemnity conditions involve two aspects: first, self-denial, and second, sacrifice. Without these two components, conditions we make are not accepted as indemnity conditions.
By joining the Unification Church and taking up the way of restoration, we have already committed ourselves to a course of self-denial. If we completely deny ourselves, environment and circumstances no longer affect us; we don't become so upset when things happen. Of course, it is difficult to become that way, but if we keep on persevering, we can achieve it.
God's original idea was love-dominion. But we were born under Satan's love-dominion. Since love is the root of life, we have to deny love -- at least the satanic love that has dominated us. We have to deny the root of fallen life. So the real meaning of denying ourselves is to deny love.
It is relatively easy to deny certain activities or external goals, but difficult to deny the root. Therefore, Jesus told his disciples to deny their parents, brothers and sisters, and spouse, and then love him first. If you deny your parents, they become angry and persecute you; in a sense, your way is easier then. If they pour out much more love for you than before, it is potentially dangerous.
To deny parents' love, or vertical love, is the first stage in cutting off the relationship with Satan. The next level of self-denial is cutting off horizontal love, separating from the old boyfriend or girlfriend.
The second component of indemnity conditions is sacrifice. Satan's strategy in relation to Eve and Adam was to get them to think of their personal benefit. "Your eyes will be open like God's," he told Eve. He was tempting her to become self-centered. The opposition direction is to sacrifice one's self.
So many times Father has stressed these two qualities: self-denial and sacrifice. If we live by these teachings, no environment can distract us. Likewise, if by overcoming our environment, we can learn the way of self-denial and sacrifice.
My main point, however, is not just to ask you to sacrifice and deny yourselves. Please think about your eternal goal of becoming God's sons and daughters. When the environment seems so difficult and challenging, don't just ask for God's support and help. After being in the church for two or three years, you should quit asking for God's pitying love.
When you overcome this stage, your daily life becomes so simple. Of course, we still have to work hard. But the external daily schedule is not the most important factor. If your spirit is bright and harmonious, the external schedule is never difficult. So don't try to solve external conditions; focus on the internal.
If you resolve no longer to ask for sympathetic love, your prayers become so simple; your basic concerns and concepts will become so simple. So please graduate to this level.
If America were to accept True Parents easily and if your environment always welcomed you with open arms, that reception would have no meaning. Even though the whole world were to become the heavenly kingdom, you would have gone through no experience to enable you to inherit God's original love. So check that you are headed towards this goal.
If you happen to meet Father in the elevator of the World Mission Center and he smiles at you and looks you in the eye, you feel good for a whole week! There may be other times when you work very hard, pray all night, etc., and Father passes by you without even acknowledging your presence. Then you feel dismayed.
If Father's motivation in smiling at you is pitying love, please don't feel excited, because it has no eternal meaning. Father and Mother are heart, love, substance, perfection; if you are perfected, their reaction to you is very meaningful, but if you are not perfected, their reaction to you is almost entirely sympathetic love.
Our movement needs a new approach to True Parents and God. We should expect original love. If all leaders and members were to focus completely on original love, 99 percent of the problems in the Unification movement would disappear. Ninety-nine percent of our situations belong to the realm of sympathetic love and environment.
A couple of years ago I concluded that environment ultimately doesn't matter. I used to look at Father's face every morning to see whether the day would be a good one or not. Later I concluded that it didn't matter. I have my mission to do, under any circumstance. If Father kicks me or scolds me, I remain constant. Of course when that happens, I feel ashamed and sometimes go through internal difficulties, but I still keep my longing for original love.
If your basic faith wavers, you haven't yet reached the level of circumstances. Once your faith is firm, then you have to deal with circumstances. But I want to urge especially you blessed couples to rise to the next level, that of original love.
I want to give you some eternal homework. At least twice a day, check the quality of your heartle toward True Parents and God. Ask God and True Parents, "Don't give me any more sympathetic love. There are many outside people asking for Your sympathetic love; please give it to them. Give it to the people I witness to, but not to me." Furthermore, if you feel sympathetic love coming to you, protest internally, "Father, Mother, I don't need this kind of love; I want your original love. I can't ask for it now, but please reserve it for me."
For the past couple of years I have been thinking about original love in my prayers. I concluded that if God and True Parents can proclaim one moment before I die that I am their son by original love, I will need nothing more. To receive that love on earth for even one moment means one is connected to it for eternity.
What I have been telling you is not simply theory; it is an absolute condition for restoration. God has used True Parents as His vehicle to establish an organization and promote a revolution of heart and love. Although a large membership and worldwide missionary foundation are necessary, our main internal goal is a revolution of heart and love.
True Parents are patiently waiting to share original love with you, so you have to prepare to receive it. Restore any relationships that are not ultimate relationships. Then your root of heart will increase. When your heart and mind are stable, love will spring from your heart, and your life will blossom from that root.