Cheon Seong Gyeong – Sun Myung Moon
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Cheon Seong Gyeong – Sun Myung Moon |
Today, many Christians say that because God, the Creator, is a unique and absolute being in the position of the Most High God and the being of supreme goodness, He cannot have a relationship with human beings whom He created, that is, with created beings. In other words, they say His creatures are profane, whereas He is absolute and divine. But from the viewpoint of love, no matter how elevated and good God is, and no matter how lowly His creatures are, they must have the same character as God if they are to have a relationship of love. They must have the same heart. It means God must have the same personal qualities as a human being. (138-245, 1986.1.24)
What kind of deity is God? He is a personal God, with intellect, emotion, and will. Since what this personal God wants most is love, He created human beings as His partners in love. This is an amazing fact. (143-149, 1986.3.17)
How did God, the First Cause, shape human beings? He made us like Himself. He made us in His image. This means that the Father resembles us as we resemble the Father. This leads us to the answer. In seeking to know about God, what might we find about His nature? If we conclude, "He is someone like me," we will be right on the mark. (127-233, 1983.5.15)
Whom do you think God resembles? If it is love that God needs, would He love something that resembles Him, or would He love animals, which do not resemble Him? God needs a partner whom He can like and with whom He can share love. If human beings are indeed God's partners, upon looking at the human race we are led to the conclusion that God must be a personal God. All His elements must be able to harmonize one hundred percent with those of humankind. God must be one who harmonizes all elements of the body and mind. This is why God must have the attributes of intellect, emotion, and will. (162-271, 1987.4.17)
If God exists, what kind of relationship does He have with human beings? To have a relationship with human beings, He must be a personal God. And to be a personal God, He must resemble human beings. People have the attributes of mind and body. Then God, as their Creator, has to have similar attributes if he is to share with them a common purpose. This point marks the origin of the concept of dual characteristics. (167-243, 1987.7.21)
Do you think God has a personality as people do? If He is like a person, do you think He is a man or a woman? Then, do you think He has the thing all men have dangling from them, or not? What kind of internal nature did I say God has? As the Subject of dual characteristics, do you think He has both the concave and convex parts or not? Have you thought about that? (181-203, 1988.10.09)
Do you think God laughs? Have you seen God smiling? Do you think God has eyes? Do you think He has a nose? How about a mouth or ears? Does He have a body? If you examine Christianity carefully you can see that Christians do not have a sense of this. They do not know if God has eyes. If you ask them, "Have you really seen His eyes?," they do not know. If you ask them, "Whom does God resemble?," they will answer, "What do you mean? God resembles Himself." What kind of answer is that? Whom does God resemble? His children. This is why God has to be a personal God. As a personal God, He demands of us the highest standard of character. What forms the base for the highest standard of character? It is measured neither by money nor by power, but by love. (182-59, 1988.10.14)
If God exists, He has to be a personal God; He has to be like a person. As a personal God He must possess intellect, emotion, and will. Based on these attributes, all His feelings and desires, and all of the goals He sets according to His will must become concrete. (174-162, 1988.2.28)
God knows everything. He is the supreme King of knowledge and power; He is all-knowing and almighty. Furthermore, He is omnipresent; no place is void of His presence. What is it that He needs? Diamonds? He can make them any time. Gold or jewels? No. What God needs is love. If God were alone, would he say "Oh, I have love and it's great"? What is it that God needs? If God is a personal God then He must have a mouth; must He not? Then, He also must have a nose, eyes, ears, hands, feet, and a mind and heart. If God is like a person then He should have these attributes. (142-30,1986.3.3)
What kind of person is God? He is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and could destroy or save the world with just one word. But we do not need this kind of God. What kind of God does our original mind desire? We would desire someone about whom we can say: "I cannot but love Him more than my own father and mother. Even if we have a righteous king or president in our country, He is even higher than they are." Presidents are changed every four years; they are good and bad, and thus difficult to respect. (147-271, 1986.10.1)
If God exists and comes to our world today, He must be a God of intellect, emotion, and will. Why? Because this is how human beings are. His intellect, emotion, and will, however, are not based on the human way but on the heavenly way. (9-291, 1960.6.12)
Can the absolute God be sad? Can the all-knowing and almighty God avoid sadness? Can He relate to sorrow?
These are serious questions that I cannot take lightly. We cannot maintain the view that the absolute God can be the father of humanity and yet never experience sorrow. There is a logical contradiction here, for it fundamentally distances God the Father from His children who have intellect, emotion, and will, and who experience the feelings of joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure. Therefore, God has to be the Subject who can feel joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure - even more than we can. (203-288, 1990.6.27)
There is no religious organization that correctly witnesses about God. If you talk about God, Buddhism and Confucianism are the same; they become dumbfounded. They do not know the personal God, with intellect, emotion, and will. The Unification Church asserts the oneness of God and man. This is a magnificent concept. (227-112, 1992.2.11)
Members of the Unification Church can be proud of the fact that we know God very well. We know God clearly. God is both a personal God with intellect, emotion, and will, and the Subject of love at the same time. We know this clearly. We know that the God of love is the center of heavenly heart and we know that the center of heavenly heart cannot vacillate. (210-314, 1990.12.27)
In addition to His intellect, emotion, and will, God has His own hopes, circumstances and heart. What are God's hopes, circumstances and heart? We need to know these fundamentals before considering humankind's situation. Armed with this knowledge, you will naturally and immediately understand people's original desire. Why? Because humankind's purpose is God's, and God's purpose is humankind's. Those who understand people's circumstances, hopes, and heart can also understand God's. (151-208, 1962.12.15)
We cannot talk about love unless God is a personal God. God needs to have the same qualities of emotion and character as human beings. Christianity, alone among religions, revealed that kind of God. The early Christians called God "Father." Becoming free and able to call God "Father" marked a great religious discovery. My explanation of God, as the internal and external Father who seeks to create a unifying authority through love that is incarnated in substantial form, takes the conversation to a new level, but the Christian discovery of God as the Father is amazing. Furthermore, it has created the base upon which the nature of God, in love, can be peacefully discussed and explored. Christianity has also promoted monotheism. For these reasons, as I see it, Christianity serves as the global religion that can unite the world. It is paving the way to unify the world. (139-239, 1986.1.31)
Although there are many religious paths today, the one religion that can penetrate the heart has not appeared during the course of history. Because God exists, however, such a religion must inevitably appear. Some religions instruct in social ethics and morality and others teach about the infinite spirit world. However, there must be a religion that combines teachings on ethics and morality with those that describe the incorporeal world, uniting them upon the essential core of one heart. I have searched for such a religion and it is Christianity. Christianity is a religion of heart. Through the Fall, human beings lost God and forgot that God is our Father. We lost the substantial True Parents and Christianity is the religion that can reintroduce them. (9-140, 1960.5.1)
The final destination of philosophy is the discovery of God. What kind of God is He? He is absolute, unchanging and unique. In discovering God, we will find that He has to be a personal God, one needed by human beings. In order to have a relationship with us, God has to be a personal God who shares the inner and outer aspects of all our thoughts, ideals and will. He has to be someone who can deeply relate with us in all aspects of our being, emotional, volitional, or intellectual. Otherwise He has nothing to do with us. From this point of view, on the basis of the premise that He must be a God whose character includes human-like character, philosophy has not honored God. (138-142, 1986.1.21)
Whom does God resemble? His sons and daughters. Who are you? You are God's sons and daughters. You take after God. And God is a personal God. Can God just be some shapeless entity? What is amazing about Christianity is that it has talked about a God of emotion and personality in terms of His character and love, and His intellect, emotion, and will. This is a great thing. It has also promoted monotheism. (177-274, 1988.5.20)
If God is a personal God, do you think God needs love? When we human beings are born as God's sons and daughters and call God "Father," we need the Father just as He needs us, and the Father needs us just as we need Him. (184-199, 1989.1.1)
If God is a personal God, what should be connected to Him? When you say "God," you are talking about something high, aren't you? Then, can your body be connected to Him? No. It is your heart that is connected. Human beings are to live with a vertical heart with the First Cause, the personal God, at the axis. Just as the earth rotates on its angle-adjusted axis and moves in its day by day, 365 day course around the sun, we should live revolving around God. This is how we should see it. (194-154, 1989.10.22)
God's existence leads naturally to the conclusion that this world has no hope for the future unless God's providence advances and is fulfilled. The Unification Church has emerged at this time in history to acknowledge the personal God with His perfected intellect, emotion and will, and to work with Him to realize the ideal world based on the realm of heart. The Unification Church is clarifying, for the first time, the relationship between God and humankind. (213-302, 1991.1.21)