Book Fourteen - A Life Of True Filial Piety
Chapter Three - The Way of Loyalty and Filial Piety
Section 2. True Loyalty and Filial Piety that Anticipates the Needs of Others

The history of humankind is that of a fallen world, yet it actually arose based on ethics and morality. At the center of that morality is love. Filial children want to love their parents ever more, patriots want to love their country ever more, and the path of sainthood teaches us to transcend nationality in order to love the world. It is the duty of saints to love the world more than they love their own families or their own countries. The way of divine sons and daughters is to love with the highest love in accordance with the law of the royal palace rather than all the laws of Heaven and Earth. Centering on love, all things should be done this way.

Filial children must follow the right way in loving their families. Patriots must follow the right way in loving the nation. Saints must follow the true way in loving the world.

The children of Heaven observe the laws of the heavenly nation and the royal palace, but they do not truly understand the reasoning behind the laws of the royal palace. You can only become divine sons and daughters if you attend God in accordance with the law of the royal palace. These are the stages that people must go through.

The filial child is welcomed by the nation; the patriot is welcomed by the saint, and the saint by the divine child. The divine child in turn is welcomed by God. The marrow of all this is true love. It is unchanging and absolute true love.

However, humankind has been wandering about in ignorance of true love and the fact that it establishes the ties that bind absolute filial children, absolute patriots, absolute saints, absolute divine children and absolute parents, and sons and daughters together. You may do all kinds of things, but once you realize this, you still have to go the way of following heavenly principles. Thus, you cannot continue to wander about. (206-62, 1990.10.3)

Filial children do not exist just for themselves but for their parents. Patriots do not exist just for themselves but for their king. Saints do not exist just for themselves but only for God. This is why the saints have been the ones to teach us about our obligations to God.

So what is God's hope? It is to save the world. What is God's situation like? He wants to love His sons and daughters. What is the hope of God's love? His hope is to live in the intoxication of that love.

You have to understand God's hope, God's situation, and God's heart. Without doing so, you cannot become a filial child. This is the crux of the Unification Church teaching. Is it right for people who want to understand God's situation not to know whether He exists or not? Can you become a filial child without knowing what God's hope is? Can you become a filial child without knowing whether or not God is sad or happy? It is impossible. The path to becoming a filial child is simple. You must want to take responsibility for the things that cause your parents to suffer. This is the way to become a filial child. (62-61, 1972.9.10)

Which of these two sons is truly a son of filial piety, one who conscientiously prepares and serves his mother's meals or the one who has nothing to offer but his love? How impious would it be if the filial son offered love, but had no food for his hungry mother to eat? However, when the mother hears her son tearfully saying, "I am such an unfilial son to be here," she will regard that as greater devotion than being served with food. Then, who is the more filial son: the one who brought rice or the one who brought love? Love can transcend time and space twenty-four hours a day. Rice, however, cannot do this. You have to understand this. (1988.8.14)

You have to determine to demonstrate loyalty to the place of God before you show loyalty to your country. Before serving your society, you must first enter into God's presence and then serve that place and finally receive its recognition. If not, then your internal connection with God cannot bear fruit in the external world. This is the essence of a life of faith. You say "I'll serve the world and be loyal to my country," do you not? Then where is the starting point of that loyalty? It is surely in the family. It has to start from within the heart and body of your parents. (22-42, 1969.1.19)

If you successfully devote yourselves steadfastly, you will receive a blessing, but if you do not, you will regret it deeply. There are some people in the Unification Church who say, "I worked with, utmost devotion to carry out the commands of Heaven," but you need to realize that the factors determining whether your efforts will create an extensive foundation on the earth are your standards of compliance, your actual accomplishments, and to what extent you are able to absorb heavenly fortune. Even if it is not an extensive foundation, I personally must leave at least a footprint in the world before I go. This is the way of restoration through indemnity. (1971.1.31)

A patriot wants to receive the love of his country. Filial children want to receive the love of their parents and relatives. However, it is not easy to become a filial child who can receive the love of the whole family. The way to do this is to not eat when others are eating in order to enable them to eat, and to enable others to sleep comfortably and to enable others to dress better than you.

Those who toil for the country and for the family while others play are children of filial piety. You should be liked by more than just your own family. You must earn the love of all three generations: grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts, and grandchildren. They all have to like you. You cannot become a filial child if even just one of these people is unhappy about you. Only when all your relatives testify about you, "I want to become that kind of son. I want to become that kind of sister," will you be able to receive the title, of filial child from your clan and establish yourself. Then you will have a place to stand. (298-278, 1999.1.16)

People who just think but do nothing are worse than those who do not even think at all. Truly they are thieving scoundrels. Such people, when all else fails, they have no other recourse but to steal.

So what kind of people are filial sons and daughters that can make God happy? What kind of people are they? Are they those that fill their own stomachs? No. They are the kind of people who give away to others the food that is meant for them. Should those others refuse to eat, they would even force-feed them.

So what must be done to make you patriots, virtuous women, and filial sons and daughters of the Unification Church? You have to be separated. Do you think that one year is enough to do this? There is a saying that patriots are born to be so. If they are born with this kind of nature, then they have to remain faithful to their cause until they die. Then what must you do? The only way is to go along the path of suffering. That is the closest, shortest way. What is the shortest way to become patriots, virtuous women and filial sons and daughters? The only way is to live a public life with tears. I have no other recourse but to make you walk the path of hardship with tears. (155-259, 1965.10.31)

If we demonstrate greater patriotism than the citizens of a country, and love all the races of the world, all the while maintaining our loyalty and filial piety before Heaven, we will not be failures. Even if we die penniless we will be precious patriots of the nation and the world. (88-27, 1976.7.1)

When you demonstrate true love to your country, you become a patriot; when you demonstrate true love to your parents, you become the most filial child of filial children. If you demonstrate this before all the people of the world, you attain sainthood; and if you do that even after entering the Kingdom of God, then you become a divine child who habitually takes a kind interest in God Himself. (176-49, 1988.5.3)

The conclusion is that without true love there is no such thing as a filial child. At the moment, people have inherited the tradition of secular love, false love. So they presently enjoy free sex and whatnot based on secular love. What they are doing is breaking down all the foundations of love, filial piety and loyalty.

It is only when you stand in front of God for the first time, having fulfilled your duty as filial sons and daughters, as true patriots, as true saints and as true divine sons and daughters centering on the absolute love emanating from the Heavenly Nation, that you can receive your inheritance from God. For the individual family to receive this inheritance, it will do so by automatically growing bigger, adding to it everything in the future country, in the future world and in the future heavenly nation. (286-300, 1997.8.13)