Founder's Address World Culture And Sports Festival 2004

Distinguished guests from 113 nations, leaders from religions, academics, politics, civil organizations, youth participants from the Interreligious Peace Sports Festival, participants of the International Marriage Blessing Ceremony, students and youth leaders, ladies and gentlemen…

The theme and goal of the World Culture and Sports Festival, which I proposed in 1988, is to establish a world culture of heart. All mankind should come together in harmony and unity centering on God and true love, to create a world of harmonious interdependence, mutual prosperity and universally shared values. Consequently, events of this festival strive to break down man-made walls. This is a cultural festival that aims for a unity transcending nations, races, and religions.

This tenth World Culture and Sports Festival is all the more significant because it comes during a providential time in history when the era of the coming of heaven is so close at hand. In fact, this festival is opening the way for the era of the coming of God's kingdom. The title of this speech is, "The Absolute Value System of the True Ideal Family Determines the Owner of True Love," and it introduces only a part of the truth that heaven has given to mankind.

Dear guests, what was God's purpose in creating humankind? The desire of the omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent God was to not live in solitude. Thus, He created the cosmos as a part of the process of creating an environment for His children, and on that foundation, He created men and women as the object of His absolute love.

God created mankind as His children. His desire was for them, His objects, to become better and greater than Himself. Even in this world, parents wish for their children to become better and greater than themselves. This is the love of a parental God, which He gives as a blessing.

God's purpose of creation was to feel joy in seeing His children grow and perfect themselves, receive the marriage blessing from Him, multiply true children, and create a true, eternal ideal heaven in which they could live.

The path for becoming an owner of love can be opened through the practice of true love which invests and completely sacrifices itself first for its partner.

Before God created human beings, He first established the standard of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience and then invested Himself 100 percent. Through this, He brought the realm of the object into the realm of absolute values. One cannot become an owner of love on one's own. This is only possible through an object-partner. This love principle of absolute values also pertains to God. Without children, parents can never become owners of love. In the same way, in order for God to stand in the position of the owner of absolute love, He must create His children, who stand as God's object-partners, in the realm of the values of absolute love. Perfection is reached through the emergence of the values of an absolute subject and absolute object.

Observing the order of the universe, it is not true that the weak are unconditionally sacrificed and exploited for the sake of the strong. The theory of survival of the fittest and the law of the jungle are fundamentally wrong.

Believers of this theory have overlooked the absolute values that aim for the perfection of the owner of love, who stands as the subject by living for the sake of others, investing true love and forgetting ever having invested into the object, who responds in absolute obedience. If true love is excluded from this formula, only the concept of struggle remains, but God's principle of creating is not that of existence and development through struggle. Rather, He seeks harmony and unity leading to absolute values through a mutual process of giving and receiving within the relationship of subject and object.

An individual may be sacrificed for the sake of the greater good, but we should not perceive this as struggle. It must be seen as an investment for the sake of mutual development.

Can we indeed define the act of an individual willingly sacrificing himself for his family, or the family for the nation, or the nation for the world as struggle? In this way, the realm of absolute values exists for the sake of bringing about the full realization of true love, where each strives to first set up the other in a position of an owner of true love.

Thus, we must remove from our lives the roots of a self-centered and individualistic mind-set and the behavior that flows from that. This is the root of fallen nature and the cause of all evil. This can be said of self-centered behavior on the individual level as well as of collective individualistic behavior in society.

This path is directly contrary to the spirit of true love's system of absolute values. Instead of sacrificing and giving for the sake of others, self-centeredness calls for others to sacrifice thereby causing a person to be more concerned with his own interests than the well-being of others. Through the Fall, self-centeredness was ingeniously injected into the mind-body struggle. Satan planted this poisoned mushroom in the hearts of people.

Although embracing self-centeredness may result in a person appearing beautiful and gaining worldly fame and earthly comforts, it is a trap that once entered will lead to addiction and a life of suffering that is difficult to escape.

Let us think about the concepts of "front" and "back." When we say "front" it already acknowledges as a pre-existing condition the word "back." The word "top" holds true only when "bottom" exists; "left" is a precondition of "right."

In the same theory, male denotes the prior existence of female. In other words, men were born for the sake of women, and women were born for the sake of men. Without men, there is no need for women. In the same way, without women, men cannot retain the value of their existence.

In the end, nothing is born for the sake of itself. All beings exist and act for the sake of their partner. This means that we were created to live in an ideal homeland within the context of relationships of mutual concern for each other.

Let us think about our five sensory organs. Did your eyes come into being for the sake of looking at themselves? Our eyes, nose, ears, mouth and hands all were created for others. What is the force that mobilizes our five sensory organs to sustain our lives and maintain our activities? It is the force that aims to perfect the values of true love. Therefore, our five sensory organs are simply tools that came into existence for the sake of practicing true love.

In this way, nothing exists for its own sake. A life of living for the sake of others, giving and sacrificing through love, and perfecting the owner of love through obedience, is a life that satisfies God's ideal of creation. You were created for the sake of your partner, therefore the law of nature calls you to live for others more than for yourself. This is where the absolute values of true love are created.

Dear guests, do you know where the dividing line between heaven and hell is? Is it in the air? Is it in a cathedral? Is it in a national boundary? No, the dividing line between heaven and hell can be found in one's sexual organ. The selfish use of human sexuality is where the greatest tragedy in human history occurred; it is a tragedy which turned heaven and earth upside down.

If you recklessly use your sexual organ, like a blind man, you will surely go to hell. On the other hand, if you use it in accordance with the standard of God's absolute love, you will go to heaven. Who can deny this fact? If you doubt this, I ask you to carefully read the Divine Principle, which contains the laws of heaven that I revealed. If you are still in doubt, I sincerely ask that you pray to heaven. I'm sure that your prayer will be answered.

Ten of thousands of young people in the world who have accepted the teachings of the Rev. Moon have ceased engaging in free sex. The message of the pure love movement, which advocates "absolutely pure sex," or "absolute true love," is now spreading like wildfire.

If free sex is false love centered on selfish desires and Satan, then absolute sex is absolute love centered on God. Many literary works and stories in the press have the tendency to fan the fires of free sex.

But now, leaders of all spheres of life, including politicians, economists, philosophers, journalists, religious leaders and writers will stand together driving away free sex, a disease that cripples people and nations.

The cornerstone of world peace was supposed to be within Adam's family, which was to create the absolute values of true love. It was also Adam's family that could destroy the path to world peace. Thus, we must bear in mind the importance of Adam's family, the ancestral family of humanity.

The reason I brought an end to our "church" and established the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification is because the time had come to focus on the family.

How can we transform this world, which has become hell-like? The practice of true love is the only way of finding the absolute values. Since the attributes of God, the owner of true love, are based on eternal, unchanging, unique, and absolute standards, we must also inherit them and live according to those standards.

Dear guests, why is the family a good thing? It is because the family becomes the basis for our activities based on our original freedom, centered on the love of parents. Even though they may be shabby in appearance, when a family becomes an original family, consisting of people bonded in heart with true love at the core, humankind and even God will feel liberated. Freedom without love is not true freedom.

If you feel restrained when you go to someone's house as a guest, it means you still lack a deep bond of love with that household. In other words, because your love does not spread out in all directions you feel awkward and restrained.

Then what is the highest and greatest value in the original family? It is the original parent. Why is the original parent good? Because the original parent is the subject of eternal love. The original parents are the ones who stand closest to us in creating a relationship that lasts throughout our lives and beyond.

After birth, the first partner to whom we relate our joy to is our original parent. Thus the original parent is both the subject and object of our joy. The original parents are such that when we are happy, they are the first to be happy for us. When we are sad, they are the first to shed tears of sorrow. Thus, children without parents are called orphans, and orphans are treated with pity.

Next, one's beloved husband or wife is the second most valuable being in the family. Husbands and wives must be couples that can give and receive original love that is unconditional in nature.

Although this love may not have started within the relationship of love that is absolute and eternal in nature, if it becomes an original love created within the husband-wife partnership, based on the absolute bond between a couple, then that love will become the basis upon which the eternal happiness and joy of the family exists.

But if this ideal, original relationship between husband and wife stops there, existing only between the couple, then it will not bring eternal happiness and joy that hold an absolute value. That is to say, this couple must have their own children. If a couple decides not to have children, thinking that they will live in happiness as a childless couple, you will see the result. Humankind would die out before the second generation. Only when a couple receives the love that the original children return, can they rise up to the position of the original parents as true couples.

Therefore, the next most valuable and important thing is the love of the children toward their original parent. If the children can sacrifice and love the original parent with a bright and positive mind-set, while longing for the ideal environment, not despairing, but hoping for the future, then that love has a pure and genuine value because it exists for the sake of the family's happiness. In this way, an original family extending over three generations, completely endowed with the sacrificial, original love of original parents toward their children, the true love between the original couple, and the true love of the original children toward their parents will become the most ideal true family in the world.

What kind of person is called a happy person? In other words, what standard is used to measure happiness? Can a person be called happy due to the fact that he has external talent or authority that no other person possesses? Can a person be happy just because he has tremendous wealth that draws the envy of all? Is happiness obtained by becoming a world-renowned scholar and rising to a position which everybody envies? That is absolutely not the case.

No external condition alone can guarantee a man's happiness for eternity. It may be a reason for searching for happiness, but it cannot become happiness itself. In the end, genuine happiness comes from a family that has loving parents, a couple bonded in true love, and children that are devoted and faithful to their parents.

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, humanity will now witness a great revolution of true love that is taking place on the Korean peninsula. Humanity, which has struggled under the false love of Satan for thousands of years, will now hear a cry of joy upon establishing the absolute values of the true family and ridding this land of all sorts of false values.

Two hands must come together in order to make a clapping sound. Heaven has already opened the gates of the "era after the coming of heaven" on the foundation of the victories of Rev. and Mrs. Moon, the True Parents. Our responsibility is to become the absolute object partner before Heaven, the subject partner, and open the way for the age of the creation of a new heaven and earth.

This is an historical age where spirit world and physical world are united as one and when Cheon Il Guk (Cosmic Kingdom of Peace and Unity), the peace kingdom that God had envisioned from the beginning of time, is being established on this earth and in heaven. The time has come for intellectuals the world over to receive the teachings of Rev. Moon, who has served God as the vertical axis of humanity and upheld his mission as the horizontal True Parents. This has been done throughout his eighty-five years of life, consistently sacrificing and serving, in order to discover and to establish a true person, true couple, true parent, true family, and true world. May I ask all of you to please join me in completing this historical task for the sake of heaven?

May God bless your families to reach these ideals.

Thank you very much.