Who is Rev. Sun Myung Moon?
Why is it that even though we aspire to do good, we find ourselves doing
things which hurt those we love? How come so many people end up in divorce
even though they sincerely promise to love their spouse forever on their
wedding day? Why do so many people not have control over their own body, so
that they struggle with uncontrollable desires for food, sleep, sex, tobacco,
drugs, alcohol, and so on? Not only do we struggle to have control over our
body, but we have trouble controlling our thinking and emotions. Why? Why
do so many people live on the brink of despair and suicide? Why do people
who believe in God still live in insecurity, worry, fear of poverty and
abandonment? Why do we have fear to talk to strangers who are God’s children,
our brothers and sisters? How is it that even though many of us believe in God,
so few of us experience His love directly? Is something wrong with us?
Are people generally good or are they evil? We have both good and evil desires. When we look inside ourselves, we find that when we fulfill good desires, we feel happy, elated and at peace with the world, even if we have to pay a price for doing the right thing. However, when we fulfill evil desires, we feel conscience stricken, ill at ease, and become depressed. We have within ourselves a contradiction. Were human beings born with this contradiction? Did God create us with this contradiction, or did it come about after God created humanity? What helps me overcome this contradiction within myself, between my good and evil desires?
What does this have to do with Rev. Moon? He is a man who has solved this
problem within himself, and teaches us how to do the same thing. He teaches
that the only power which can help us overcome this inner contradiction
is love. Love gives us the power to reject evil and pursue goodness. Love
motivates us to unselfish action, but condemnation makes us defensive. He
says that He experiences God’s love in every cell of his body all the time. I
want to be like him, and I want to show you how to be like that too. I want
that love, and I want to share it with the world. That love is the healing
power for all mankind and the pathway to world peace.
He says that once we can gain mastery over ourselves, we become qualified
to inherit everything that God created. The whole universe belongs to God,
and if I belong to Him, everything He has is mine also, everything, including
His love.
What does it mean to experience God’s love? The nature of love is that
it takes two to experience it. This does not only apply to human beings. It
applies to the Almighty God Himself. In the beginning, God was all alone. There
was nobody and nothing for Him to relate to. No matter how perfect He may
have been, He could not experience love all by Himself. He needed someone
or something to experience love with, and that is why He made you and me.
Would God create a being much less than Himself as His partner in love? When
you marry, do you want someone who is better than you are or worse? You want
someone better, right? When you have a son or a daughter, don’t you also want
them to be even better than you are, and have everything much better than
you did? Of course you do. Where does this desire come from? It comes from
the God who made you, and He has exactly the same desire. He wants you to be
better than Himself. He wants to love someone who is not intimidated by Him,
who can laugh and play and be at ease with Him. Otherwise, the relationship
is not one of love, but of fear.
Even if your father is the President of the United States, and you
are a little kid, to you he us just Daddy, not Mr. President. You want to
climb onto his knee so that he will read you a story. Isn’t that so? So in
the realm of love, I do not care about your position or power, your vast
authority or how much money you have or how smart you are, but only that we
love one another. Even if God is the owner of the whole universe, He wants
us to relate to Him as Daddy. Without us, He is all alone. He needs us. He
wants our love. He is grieved that we are alienated from Him.
Well, you can say, I did not alienate myself from God, I never truly knew
Him. Well yes, that is the whole problem. God created humanity, but some
time long ago in the forgotten past, something went horribly wrong. We feel
something is wrong with the world. How come if God loves humanity, there
is so much suffering? Why does God continue to let human beings murder
each other, rape, mutilate, exploit and brutalize each other? Were the
massacres in Rwanda God’s will? Was the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia part of
God’s plan? Was Hitler’s killing of six million Jews God’s will? We see war
has been going on since human history began. Is this God’s wish? Why does a
good God allow human suffering? This is an age old agonizing question. Many
people stopped believing in a good and just God after seeing first hand the
brutality of human beings, or the reality that innocent people suffer. How
could such behavior come from creatures of a good and loving God?
The world’s religions in one form or another point to an event in the
beginning of human history called the Fall of Man where all the misfortunes
of human history began. They teach that originally, God started the human
race with two people, Adam and Eve, and they were able to talk with and relate
freely with God. Something they did caused them to be alienated from God, with
tragic consequences. The first son in that family murdered his brother. From
then on, human beings became more and more evil, until they descended into
such darkness, ignorance and brutality, that they were unrecognizable as
human beings, and modern science thinks of them as barbaric cave men. The
teachings of religion suggest however that they were our evil ancestors.
What was the fall of man? How did evil come into the world, if God
is good? Did God create the devil? How did he become evil? How did this
contradiction come to exist in human beings? If God’s wish was to create a
world where He could experience love with us, His children, and the world
ended up being dominated by evil, the Fall must have involved some kind of
corruption of love. The quality of love in the first family of man must
have been defective. If they had experienced and shared the perfect love
of God, the first family would not have been the disaster that it was, and
humanity would not have inherited the legacy of evil. Scripture tells us
that we reap what we sow. The fact that the world is filled with evil and
selfishness suggests that our first ancestors created that standard.
Rev. Moon’s teaching helps us understand what God’s original intention
was for human beings, and how we were supposed to live with God. It also
gives answers to these agonizing fundamental questions of human life that
philosophers and religious leaders could not adequately address or solve. It
teaches clearly about the origin of evil, and the method for restoring
ourselves fully to the position of God’s children. He teaches not only
an idea, but how to apply that idea so that we can experience God’s love
directly, without need of someone as a mediator. He has come as the Messiah,
the savior, the one who comes to fulfill Jesus’ mission to build the Kingdom
of God, and create one global family of true love.
Modern man is no longer satisfied with mere theories about God that violate
his scientific understanding of the world. God is the author of science
and of religion, so if there is a universal truth, it must not contradict
itself. Religion and science must come to agree. Just as we no longer believe
in the childish ideas of our youth, we as adults need God to tell us plainly
and clearly what He needs us to do to solve the many problems of our lives
and the world. Jesus Christ promised that this time would come when God would
speak to us in a way that we could clearly understand. That time is here. Rev.
Moon has come as God’s messenger, and his purpose is to help all of humanity
come back to a direct experience of God’s love and His presence, so that we
will be able to use our own God-given gifts to create Heaven on Earth. As Jesus
prayed “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
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