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.
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.
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.
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.