Book Four - True Family
Chapter Nine - True Education for Children
Section 4. Parents Are Best Friends and Best Teachers

Where does love come from? Never from the self, but rather from one's partner. Without a partner, love cannot arise. Within humankind, woman complements man, and children complement their parents. Love is not realized without partners. This is called "the love of three object partners." Those who have not experienced the love of three object partners cannot stand in a position of having substantially experienced God's perfect love.

"Let us give birth to sons and daughters and rejoice to the same extent that God rejoiced after having created Adam and Eve." This is taught in the Unification Church's Divine Principle. Having created Adam and Eve, God said, "From now on, you will rule over the world. Our family will be the central family of the world. Please grow up quickly, grow up quickly. He felt joy and satisfaction while protecting and nurturing them with hope, desiring to see the day of their marriage upon their coming of age. By the same token, fathers and mothers want to raise their children well, and find good partners for them to become good husbands and wives. When that happens, the family prospers. (57.119, 1972.5.29)

Who are your children's best friends? Not young guys from the neighboring village. Their best friends are none other than their parents. That is as it should be. Moreover, parents should be liked by their children even more than their friends. That is how you should think. Therefore, parents must be their children's best friends and best teachers.

In educating their children, parents should not say, "Hey you, don't do that!" and teachers should not say, "You brat, I will hit you in the calf if you don't do what I told you. Don't do that!" They should educate them in love. Parents should educate their children in such a way that if they are asked, "Hey, do you think you should do that?" they would reply, "Right, this is not good because if I did it my parents would be sad." Thus, parents ought to be their children's best friends and teachers.

Do you think Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden had friends? If Adam had a friend, it was only Eve. Next, there was just God. God did not want them to be friends with the archangel, who was a servant. Yet they were ruined because they befriended the wrong person. So parents should be the best of all teachers, the best of all friends, and manifest the best of all thrills of love. Love begins from God. That being so, conjugal love ultimately stems from parents. So if parents say, "Hey, you like each other not because of yourselves but because of the virtues of your parents," their children should reply. "It would have been disastrous had our parents not raised us this way and found such partners for us."

Hence, marriages based on personal choice fail to meet that standard. By whom should children be educated in love? By their parents. They should see their father and mother love each other with great fun cooing like pigeons and learn from it. They should say, "Wow, when I see my father and mother together like that, I feel lonely when I am alone. I also need a partner whom I can love cooing like my parents." Their parents should also teach them to be like this. Then the children will come to repeat what their parents have been doing, the world will become a world of goodness and human history will become a history of goodness. The Unification Church seeks to accomplish this. 157-121. 1972.5.29)