The Need To Save People

Hyung Jin Moon
June 2010

The only way you can come to True Parents is if you acknowledge that you have original sin, that you are a sinner with original sin, hereditary sin, collective sin and individual sin. You have to admit that you are imperfect, that you have sin. If you don't admit you have sin and think you are flawless, you can't be saved by True Parents. You think you don't need them. But the reason we need a savior is because you have sin. You hear this from Christians all the time, and they are right about that. You must acknowledge it.

Actually, it is one of the commonest features of Christian rhetoric. We used to have it in the early days; but we lost a lot of it. We became more liberalized and became afraid to talk about sin. The blessed children too; I, too. I was always uncomfortable talking about sin. I think that because the second generation was less aware, having no original sin.... Yet if we're a member of a group that does something bad, we have collective sin. We have hereditary sin -- our ancestors did had things too. We also have personal sins that have accumulated over time. This rhetoric has gone out the window in an effort to tell blessed kids they are perfect, that they are God's greatest blessing for humanity. Well, yes, in one sense they are, but if you get arrogant about it, you're never going to think you need True Parents.

I am not saying it's only a blessed child issue, I'm saying it's anybody. If you don't acknowledge you have sin, if you don't repent, you won't feel you need a savior. To connect with the savior, you need to repent, be forgiven, be blessed and be given new life and a new lineage. But that only comes through repentance. The idea of repentance is very much interwoven with Jeong Seong. We must constantly repent in front of Heaven. Christians talk about this all the time: "You're a sinner; you're unworthy to go before the throne of God. Even if we live perfectly, we can never go before the throne of God."

It's because of God's love for us that God sacrificed his son Jesus for us to be able to go to God. This is evidence of the love of Christ. And I never really felt that or internalized it. I never connected with it. It was only after my coming to an awareness of the seven deaths and resurrections that I connected with it and realized, "Wow, this is so powerful!" And this is really the only way you can discover True Parents as your lord and savior.

I knew you had to be humble, but humility is more an admirable character trait. You have to acknowledge that even though you may have no original sin you are still a sinner and that it is through the grace and love of God, and through the deaths that True Parents themselves had to endure for you, that you can stand before the eighth level of God's kingdom. I had never felt that. This not only pertains to us, but to our families, our clans and so forth. It puts the responsibility on us to accept, believe and follow. I think that was very much alive in the early church.

Think about it. The more we water that down, the more faith weakens; the more the sense of developing the salvific mind, the savior's mind, diminishes. Unless you see people as dying or doomed and destined for remoteness from God's love for eternity and how much pain that entails.... In the spirit world, God's love is like the air. If you are out of that realm, you are suffocating.

People have sinned, and because God is good He will have nothing to do with sin, His goodness is such that evil is naturally repelled. God does not have to judge you.

We are supposed be mini-messiahs. A messiah is supposed to save people. We can't save people; we don't have that authority. But we can bring people to the Messiah, who can save people. But if we lose the rhetoric of sin, that we need grace and forgiveness, we're not going to feel it's imperative to save people.

At the beginning of my own ministry, I was uncomfortable using this language. I thought it was too judgmental and too overbearing. But after the vision of the seven deaths and resurrections and the eighth stage of perfection, I realized that I was teaching members self help and not getting into God's realm of love and into heaven. I don't know if I could continue my ministry like that, because it more soothes the soul than instills the truth of the spirit world into the soul.