THE FIRST BLESSING:

BE FRUITFUL
by Dr D.M. Hentrich.

 

Presented by Rev. Dr. Michael Hendrich, Sr.
Transcribed by Airenae Culvy

 

What does it mean to be fruitful. to become the embodiment of God or to perfect our personal, individual maturity in relationship with God. In a sense, we are supposed to resemble God. Wouldn't you say that that is the main point of it, that we are supposed to resemble God.

youtube.com/1st Blessing

 

WE MUST GROW TO RESEMBLE GOD.

That is the first part; but, that is not as common sensible as you might think because there are many ways of understanding God. There is the Old Testament Jewish understanding of God; there is the Islamic understanding of God which is very different; there is a Hindu understanding of God which is very different; there is a Greek understanding of God which is very different; and there is a Unificationist understanding of God which is also very different. So, it is just not as common sensible as you might think. We are going to explore these kinds of things as we go through our topic tonight.

We are going to hit three main points that link, profoundly to the first blessing to be fruitful; and that is, the first part, since we are supposed to resemble God as an individual, then it is critical, crucial for us to come to an understanding as clearly as possible of Who and what this God is, right?

 

PART I: WHAT GOD IS

 

RATIONISM vs EMPIRICISM

When you talk to your beautiful brothers and sisters on the college campus who are rational, scientific minded, psychologically oriented, psychology, physics, science, they may say, 'Oh show me God. Where is God? Who can believe in God? There is no evidence of God.' We have to understand that what they are talking about is empirical evidence of God.

Empirical evidence means: How much does God weigh? How tall is He? What color of hair? Can we see His DNA under a microscope? That's empirical evidence. There is never going to be any empirical evidence of Gopd because God doesn't have a form; even in the spirit world God doesn't have a form. When you go to spirit world you won't see Him. He has to use the form of someone else, like an angel. So, there is never going to be any empirical evidence of God; on the other hand, that does not mean that we cannot have some kind of proof of God. Science is on the verge of somehow coming to some kind of proof of God, which is incredibly important.

But even apart from that, you have a rational understanding, a rational argument, deductive reasoning is a very legitimate form of scientific understanding. The social sciences use that all the time. It is totally acceptable. So, we shouldn't feel coy or bashful about using rational argument and deductive reasoning to understand something about God. It is totally legitimate.

 

GOD'S ESSENCE : (CENTER/INTERNAL CORE) IS HEART, THEN INTELLECT AND THEN WILL

Unification Thought uses a diagram to illustrate the essential Core of God as Heart/Love and from that comes Intellect;His motivaion and impulse for developing His ideas,dreams and wishes, ideals and visions, truth, ideals of truth, beauty and Goodness, all these kinds of concepts come based on His Heart. That is very profound.

The outside circle, of course, is His Will, which means that prior to Him expressing something in the Creation, or whatever, He first has the impulse of His Heart, which is expressed into ideas and concepts, understanding, laws and rules. Then, through that, He expresses it through His Will, through His universal prime energy and so forth. It's a simple little diagram; but I think it has great value.

 

FROM OBSERVATION & DEDUCTION

INTERNAL - EXTERNAL

So, we are going to talk about Who and what is God from observation and deduction. St. Paul in Romans 1:20 says this is a legitimate way to understand God; so, we are gonna pursue that. First of all, as we know in The Principle, first we think about how God must have some kind of internal and external aspect because that is what we see in everything in the universe, right?

So basically, if we think in human terms, our expressions are internal. There is no way to fake it. Your handwriting can send you to jail for life. Your emotions are expressed through your form, your body. Your mother always knows what is going on inside of you. Anybody who knows you or even people who don't know you (can see what's is going on with you). There's no way to fight that or hide that. By the way, you know, what we are talking about is cause and effect here, right? We are saying that, because the effect is this way, we can understand that the cause is a similar way or the same way, right? We are using that law of cause and effect. But I want to mention here that it is a little beyond cause and effect, actually ; because, what's going on here that is important is that there is resemblance between the cause and the effect.

The effect resembles the cause. For example, if you are at a pool table and you hit the cue ball any particular way, with a certain spin, or at a certain point in the ball, it is totally predictable what is going to happen to that ball, what balls that ball is going to hit and on down the bumpers on the table. It is totally predictable because the effect resembles the cause; and that is the basis of all science. We couldn't have any science, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy... nothing if effect didn't resemble the cause. So, that is really what we are basing our arguments on here, just to be clear about that.

 

MASCULINE - FEMININE 

And of course in the Principle, we next talk about masculine and feminine. We see masculinity and femininity in the creation. It's the common thing among living creatures. It doesn't have to be universal. It's okay that there are some exceptions. It's okay that sometimes in a plant there is the male and the female wrapped up in the same plant life; or, that some creatures might be asexual. That really has nothing to do with this. The point is that there's tons of male and female pairing, compliment pairing there that you can't deny. And so, it is the common thing in creation. From that basis, we can say that the Creator, the designer of it all must have the essence of masculinity and femininity within Himself; otherwise, we couldn't see this in the creation, positivity and negativity are in all that. So, it is a totally legitimate argument, even though there are some exceptions that people want to jump on.

 

HARMONIOUS

God must be a harmonious God. Why would we have any evidence to suppose that kind of thing? Well, if we look around in nature, we see abundant evidence of harmony in the universe. If you look at humanity for all these examples, you are going to get in trouble, because humanity is broken. So, we have to look beyond humanity to the rest of the universe to come to these logical conclusions.

But, you look at nature and not only see harmony among the fish and the plants and the ocean and the air, stuff like that, this amazing, marvelous bio-system and ecological balance. We love to go out in nature and be among it, you know. But the fact is that, if the universe were'nt harmonious, then it would be explosive or chaotic or conflictive. We don't see that kind of a universe out there at all. So, we are legitimately safe to say that because we have a universe that is not like that, that the Cause of this universe, this God, must also be a harmonious Being. It is a very legitimate argument.

 

BALANCED

We can also say by looking around that God must also be balanced. Why in the world would we have some reason to come to a conclusion that God is balanced? Is there any evidence of that in the universe if we look around? Well, there is. If we look around we consider that, if a living thing is chemically out of balance, for example, then what will happen? What do we say about that living thing that is chemically out of balance? It's sick. And if it is emotionally out of balance, what do we say about that living creature? It's sick. And if it is psychologically out of balance, it is sick, right? So, do we live in a sick universe? Nobody would say so. It's not sick. So, on that common-sensible argument, we can safely say that we can deduce that the Cause of this universe must be balanced. A balanced Being must be it's cause; and, we can see balance in the universe in many, many different forms.

 

LOGICAL - RATIONAL

Also, we can say that God must be logical and rational. What evidence might we find in the universe that God might be logical and rational? Actually, of course obviously , there's an abundance of that. Thanks to modern science, it's over-abundant. We couldn't have any science at all, if the universe around us was not logical and rational and predictable. So, that is just a no-brainer, right? Logical and rational, that is why we have something called 'The Intelligent Design Theory' coming up. You can look on the web and find that there are a hundred and thirty or so amazing coincidences out there in the universe that enable life to exist as we know it; and, if any one of those coincidences didn't exist, then there is no way that we could be here. And, many scientists who didn't believe in God before are beginning to realize that this can't be coincidence. This just can't. It is way beyond that. So, this is a very exciting kind of thing.

 

SCIENTIFIC - MATHEMATICAL

Also, we know we can say that there is plenty of evidence that God is scientific and mathematical. It is just one step beyond what I was saying before, but the amazing and marvelous thing is that God seems to be obsessed with numbers. I mean, it is just unbelievable how many (examples)... every thing in the physical, tangible universe, every physical, tangible, material thing in the universe seems to be able to be described with some kind of mathematical formula. God must be just so obsessed with formulas and numbers. It is just unbelievable. And, it is awesome.

For example also, there are the smallest ... sea shells. If you look at the shell you can get the feeling that God is waving at us; because, what is this? This is the example of a geometrical algarythm. It would take a computer and a 3D printer to create this kind of thing. It is a simple formula but still, there is geometry in here. And, you know, I googled this on three different websites to see what the agnostic, atheistic, scientific community says about this. You know, because they don't want to believe in God; and what I found on all these websites was the same thing. They said that, well, this is the natural process of evolutionwith geometry applied to it. Now, I thought, 'Well, that's nice. What's the next question we should be asking here? (which is) 'Where did the geometry come from? Does this little creature know geometry? Come on? So, I mean, they know that this cannot possibly be explained by random, accidental mutation. It cannot be explained that way; but, they just don't want to say that 'G' 'o' 'd' Word. Nope, no they don't want to say that.

CREATIVE

Also, we can say that God must be creative. What evidence might we find in the universe around us that could lead us to believe that God might be creative. Well, uh, you know, look at differently colored and intricately different flowers and fish and insects and birds that kind of thing brings to mind the creative touch in the universe. It is incredible. I mean, these don't look like random, accidental mutations do they? We just need to open our hearts and minds.

The Michigan Institute of Technology. It is called MIT. There's quite a few MIT's these days, a famous engineering school and they've been working for over a decade on how to develop a robotic hand. A lot of colleges are working on robotics. They want to be the leader in some aspect of robotics. So, they are working on how to improve on the human hand. After ten years of intense research, they came to the conclusion that there is no way to improve on the design of the human hand. Isn't that amazing. How can you think that everything is just random accidental mutation ... ?

 

CONSISTENT

Also, we can say because of evidence around us in the universe that God must be consistent. How can we say that God must be consistent. Well, I love the Hubble telescope. It is about ready to be retired, actually, coming down. There is another one that they've developed that they are going to shoot up to replace it, which is about twenty times more effective. The pictures we've gotten from HUBBLE are so amazing.

The HUBBLE has shown us pictures and received data of some of the earliest galaxies in the universe, Some that existed back very close to the time of 'the big bang.' And the point is that they're not even there any more. They don't exist any more. They are gone; but, the gamma rays, the x-rays, the radiation, the light is still getting to us. We can analyze that; and, the point is that we can tell something about the makeup. What kind of chemistry, heat and intensity, we can tell things about the makeup, whatever, we can tell things about what it was like. So the point is that the laws of nature that we observe were the same then as they are now. Otherwise, we couldn't understand how the information is coming to us. It would not make any sense. So, that is maybe billions of years ago that the same laws were working as they are now. That tells me that God and the universe are consistent.

 

RELATIONAL

Also, we can say that God is relational. That's a big one, of course. Everything, virtually everything in the universe is in a relationship with something else. There's nothing, we have been able to find nothing in the universe that is not in a relationship with something else. Everything is, even the galaxies are pulling on each other, and so on, down to the smallest particles and sub-particles. So, God seems to be obsessed with relationship, right? Father even said that God invested the most of His Creative Energy in what? in designing what? The human sexual organs. So, that means that ... what does that mean? That means that God wants to be involved in that relationship, not just the physical experience but also the spiritual experience of the coming together of His Masculinity and Femininity, and an explosive way. He wants to be part of that. That is where human life comes from, right? Human life is born from that. God is so intensely into relationship. God wants to be part of human life. It is beyond description. So, He is a relational God. So, we can learn from that.

 

HEART

And 'Heart.' How could we possibly come to some deductive argument to prove that maybe the Origin of the universe is a being of Heart. Well, look at some pictures of parent, child bonding that might remind us.

But not only that, an industrial designer is familiar with the people in the world of art and the people in the world of engineering; because, it's kind of a combination of people in those two worlds. And there is a very big difference between those two kinds of people.

If you ask people from the world of engineering to develop a car, they will design a car that works every time, starts no matter what kind of weather it is, no matter how cold it is. It will take you anywhere and probably on very little gas, anything, whatever, does it even need gas ... They know how to build anything that works; but, it probably wouldn't look like much but nuts and bolts and tinker toys of a really kind of crude construction. But, if you ask people of the world of art to build a car, they will build the sleekest, most modern, most unbelievable Mazarati-type thing you can imagine. You'll want to get in it, sit in it and drive it; but, it may not work. It may not go anywhere; but, it will look like a million bucks. And I think that the difference that I can see is that beauty, beauty comes from an expression of that 'Heart' of Love. That is my conclusion.

So, when I take that way of thinking and look at the universe, I just know that God is definitely not (just) an engineer. He's got that nature; but, He is way more than that. He's expressed so much beauty, all the flowers, the insects. I mean let's face it. Nature would be fine with a half a dozen kinds of shrubbery, twenty kinds of fish, three kinds of birds. We don't need all this variety; but, God is so expressive with His Heart and made things with so much variety.

FROM OBSERVATION & DEDUCTION

We can know that God is a God of:

INTERNAL - EXTERNAL 
MASCULINE - FEMININE 
HARMONIOUS 
LOGICAL - RATIONAL 
SCIENTIFIC - MATHEMATICAL 
CREATIVE 
CONSISTENT 
RELATIONAL 
HEART

(OVERALL) GOD IS MIND/HEART/SPIRIT RELATING WITH (EXTERNAL ENERGY) BODY THAT IS YOU (HUMAN BEINGS)

So, all these things are aspects we can say, we can rationally deduce that all these things must be elements of the Creator of this universe. From deductive reasoning, this is all legitimate. This is from Father's Words. I didn't make any of this up. So, how about you and I. Our job is to become like God, right? So, how about it, you know? Then, if we're supposed to become harmonious and balanced beings like God; then that means that, we need to ... It has nothing to do with church, you know, (in the sense that) sitting in church and listening to a sermon (that may be boring you) is not necessarily helpful to you in this area] but for example, maybe the other six and a half days of the week maybe you're going to college and you're studying counseling, or maybe you are studying chemistry or medicine or psychology. You know, these things are all about balance, chemical balance, psychological balance, you know, balance in relationships within myself and with others, families, teens, marriage. It is all about balance. So, harmony ... It's all about harmony and balance.

So, you are learning the nuts and bolts of practical application, the tools to become more like God, by mastering those things. So, it has everything to do with your spirituality. It's not something on the side. It has more to do with it than going to church ... *

(*Air's note: more than just calling yourself 'good' or being emotionally supported by others as being 'righteous' and getting the 'feeling good' by sitting through a church service, if the nuts and bolts of how to actually become more like God are not learned very clearly and applied).

For example, how about being logical, rational, logical, scientific and mathematical? Well, again, if your going to college or your passion or your hobby is to learn about scientific things or mathematics, and your taking logic or psychology, or whatever it is. You're actually contributing tremendously to your spiritual development. You're becoming more like God; because, those people are developing attributes of God within themselves, right? It's the practical nuts and bolts. It's very important.

Not only that, but don't forget Hoon Dok Hae; because, there is absolutely no way in the world that we are going to transform ourselves into real people who feel, think and live like God and embody the Principle if we don't change our way of thinking. And the only way to do that (change of thinking) is by reading Father's Word, Mother's Words. There is no other way. It's impossible. You'll never get there; and so, I always tell people that the most important things for your spiritual life is to read Father's (True Parents' Word) every day. There is no substitute for it. You gotta do that.

So, (next is) 'Creative.' That's a fun one. If you want to be like God, you've gotta develop your creativity, right? Well, that's fun, art, music, dance, literature, design, architecture ... It's all developing the practical nuts and bolts application of how to become more like God Himself. It's fantastic. It has nothing to do with church.

(Air's note: I hope it's okay to offer an out-loud thought here. I feel the need to qualify a closed statement repeated about church ... : Of course, in the history of restoration going to church is an important consistent practice as a condition of what we do to learn the so-far understanding of the age about God and make that and other consistent conditions for return to GodParents ... Justification by faith in Christ Jesus and picking up our cross to follow Him, has been a major part of that providential restoration process through the symbolic Bride, The Church. An enemy of this time of Visitation of 2nd Coming would work to limit us with that sense of our own justification/righteousness... Taking it from TPs Words, we know that church ( as meaning 'religion' & denominational religious belief and practice, as church has been, and as I hear Rev. Hendrich saying), is not enough ...It's been limited and also ... dividing of us ...) 'Church' is only needed because of the fall and prolongation of completion of The Christ Mission; and, it will not be needed in the future ideal world, except for the meaning as a gathering place to study and fellowship in communities where holiness is 'natural' not church learned; and, for eternity we will be wanting to gather to study the perfected True Parents' History and Living Word Life completing past testament ages. I don't hear Rev. Hendrich countering any of that but saying that churches that are not doing that Hoon Dok Hae can be less important than college education 'when it is used' helpfully to motive and practice to apply the reality of what attributes of God and GodParents ARE to learn and resemble. Physical GodParents of Direct Image are The Beginning of that ongoing education , TO also BE ourselves, as an ongoing earth and spirit life purpose ---academia will accommodate with emphasis to educate as a study of God by studying all aspects of God's Creation and its Principles/Science/Nature ... and for how the individual can best be a citizen of God resemblance; and thereby, naturally live to serve lasting peace in families of world family of joy and happiness. )

but, all that you put into that is helping you become a person who's more resonant with the Living God. How incredible!

And, when you are consistent. Consistent. We learn in psychology, for example. You are learning how to help people become more consistent. And it's incredibly important. Same thing, you're becoming more like God by learning that.

(Next is) relational. Well, this is a big one. You could be into studying business management. You think maybe business management is just a dry old course. Well actually, you're learning about relationships, how to build relationships within the company and between aspects of the company and their suppliers and their markets, stuff like that. It's all about relationship building. And (not psychology but) sociology, international relations, political science, counseling ... It's all about relationship building and you're learning to develop the nuts and bolts practical aspects of your becoming more like God in doing that stuff. And so, it's awfully important; and, on top of that of course, is where you can get some help from the religious world; because, you have to have a good value system. Nobody wants to relate to somebody who has bad values; as in, not giving a darn about anything or anybody and who always stealing or ripping people off or whatever. If you have bad values, your know, fallen nature, nobody wants to relate with you.

And finally, 'Heart.' And that is an easy one as well. You know, there are so many virtues that we need to learn in developing our self to be a being of heart, which is to become more like God every day, which is where your religious experience can come into (play) more and more. We need to have sensitivity and all kinds of things for that: trust, tolerance, respect, honesty, purity, humility, patience, many virtues you have to develop to do that.

So, what's the point of all that? The point of all of that is to say what God is; because, we need to become more like God.

 

 



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