Book Three - True Love
Chapter Four - Love and Family
Section 1. The Ideal of Love is Established in the Family

The family is an unchanging point of origin, a timeless cornerstone that cannot be altered even by the father, by brothers and sisters, or by the system of government of any country. Nothing can alter the sovereignty of the family -- not the world, not heaven and earth, not even God Himself. For this reason, the concept of revolution will never be needed in the family. No revolution is necessary since the family is the throne of love. (25-85, 1969.9.30)

Why do we like our parents? And why do we like our husband or wife and children? It is because they have love. For the children, parental love is absolutely necessary. Similarly, conjugal love is essential between husband and wife. The love and friendship among brothers and sisters in a family is also necessary, as is their heart of loving devotion towards their parents. (112-291, 1981.4.25)

Why do we like our family? People long for their hometown and their family -- their parents and brothers and sisters -- because the family is the basis upon which they can freely share love and prosper. (38-328, 1971.1.8)

A true family is a place where the husband loves and serves his wife as he would his mother, the wife serves and loves her husband as she would her father, and they love each other as brother and sister. The Kingdom of Heaven, where ideal families live, is a place where a husband and wife each love and respect each other as they would God Himself. Such a tradition should be established on this earth. (Blessed Family - 924)

There are three kinds of love in an ideal family, each governed by God: the eternal love of parents, the eternal love of husband and wife, and the eternal love of children. (Blessed Family - 913)

An ideal family is where the parents, children, husband and wife, and brothers and sisters all desire to unite through true love. In this situation, they are all eternally on an equal footing; from there, the Kingdom of Heaven on earth begins and the Kingdom of Heaven in heaven is automatically established. (Hero of the Future - 172)

Where does happiness come from? Where can we find an environment that makes us feel like humming? We can find it in the family. However, family happiness cannot arise in an environment fraught with emotional difficulties, nor can it be realized in an absence of love. (23-120, 1969.5.18)

How do you think misfortune comes about? It begins from the time when the love nest disappears. A happy family is a family where there are parents, who serve as a fence around the house. Vertically, such a family attends the parents who represent heaven, and horizontally this attendance binds the husband and wife together. They obey the law of heaven and pass this on through their descendants. (19-305, 1968.3.10)

What kind of love have you been seeking? If you have been seeking God's love, then your mind and body must be completely one so that God's love can come. Then, extending this pattern, you should create a heavenly kingdom as a couple and a heavenly kingdom as a family. The family heavenly kingdom is realized only when the mother and father love each other in complete oneness and their sons and daughters each acquire a partner who is like their mother or father. When the parents become the plus and the sons and daughters become the minus, this will become the family heavenly kingdom. (96-28, 1978.1.1)

The family; consisting of the parents, husband and wife, and children is a microcosm of the world. You should know that the path of life for humankind lies in the expansion of a family-type of love to the relationships amongst all people. We should love elderly people like our own grandfather and grandmother, and middle-aged people like our own father and mother. Furthermore, we should love those who look older than us like our own elder brother or sister, and love those who look younger than us like our own younger brother or sister. (God's Will - 613)

Where does the heavenly kingdom begin? It starts from our families. Then, what is our ideology? It is the way of the family. The cosmos-centered ideology we pursue is the ideology of the heavenly house. The word cosmos consists of the character for cheon meaning "heaven" and the character for ju meaning "house." (26-102, 1969.10.18)

The family is a miniature nation based on a society. It is a small nation, a small world and a small cosmos. Therefore, you cannot do anything separate from your family. (24-230, 1969.8.17)

The family is the ethical basis of society and the most exemplary, fundamental, and primary organization in the human world. In such a family, love is the highest standard of value. (Blessed Family - 924)

The most important times of someone's life are the time of birth, the time of marriage, and the time of death. Then, at the time of birth, under what conditions should you be born? You should be born into a good lineage and circumstances. Next comes the time of marriage. You marry in order to have a family life, that is, in order to form a four position foundation. God's will and human purpose will be realized only when laws of the universe have been established on earth. The family is the place where we strive to align ourselves with such laws of the universe. (24-230, 1969.8.17)

The family is the basic unit for perfecting the heavenly kingdom. The heavenly kingdom is the kind of place that once you enter you do not wish to leave. It is also a place where lives the one whom you would want to see again even after seeing Him a hundred times. If all people desire to go there, desire to see Him, and desire to live with Him, the world will be unified. Our goal is to go towards that place. But this will not be realized all at once. First, the individual foundation must be established, then the family foundation must be laid, and then this has to expand to a people, nation, and world. (12-180, 1963.4.1)

Where is the Kingdom of Heaven? It does not fall from the sky. The Kingdom of Heaven is a place in which parents and children can develop their abilities in mutual giving. It is where joy is felt through interacting with creation in our daily life, a joy that we experience as our ideal circumstance, the experience of joy to the full. (78-35, 1975.5.1)

You cannot go to the Kingdom of Heaven alone. However, through the Blessing you can jump lightly over the gate of the heavenly kingdom. The Kingdom of Heaven is a place you enter as a family. It is a place you enter by connecting three generations. (12-265, 1963.5.25)

Religion is a preeminent teaching; it has been God's primary means of education by which to instruct and love humankind. There is nothing else. So true parents are to teach their children what the world likes and what God likes. (102-240, 1979.1.1)

However, one does not go to the Kingdom of Heaven through someone's teaching; it is only those who live according to their conscience that will go there automatically. When the sun rises, all the buds on the trees turn towards the sun. So if even plants and trees know to turn in the right direction, there is no way that human beings, the lords of creation, should be ignorant of their own path. Nevertheless, such a phenomenon occurs. (75-41, 1975.1.1)

The Kingdom of Heaven is a world of love; a world that exists for the sake of God, the center. It is a world that lives entirely for God. (98-33, 1978.4.8)

You go to the Kingdom of Heaven by riding along the rail of love. It seems realistic when I talk like this, right? That string of love does not get thinner like a rubber band as it gets pulled. Whereas a rubber band gets thinner and thinner the more it is stretched, the string of love does the opposite by getting thicker and thicker the more one pulls on it. (57-162, 1972.5.31)

Human beings need to have a parent-child relationship, husband-wife relationship, and brother-sister relationship. In other words, these three relationships must intersect at the same point; there must be one center for all three. The center of above and below, left and right, and front and back cannot be different from one another. If the center differs, the balance of these three relationships that are represented by above and below, left and right and front and back will be disrupted.

So, eventually the number seven will be realized when above and below, left and right, and front and back all intersect at the one center. To form number seven in this way means to become a family where all become completely one in true love together with God, resulting in a perfect sphere of harmony and unification. (299-114, 1999.2.7)

All over this world live people who are just like my grandfather and grandmother, or my mother and father, or like my husband or wife, or like my sons and daughters. These four kinds of people are living throughout the whole world. For this reason, we should understand that the family is a textbook, a type of scripture, that educates the countless people of the world and through which they can become citizens of the heavenly kingdom. (130-267, 1984.2.5)

The family is a textbook through which you can connect to the heavenly kingdom. It is a textbook for your education. If you apply this family education to the nation, you will be a patriot; if you apply it to the world, you will be a saint; and if you apply it to heaven and earth, you will be God's divine sons and daughters. (137-77, 1985.12.18)

The family is both a textbook and a training ground of love through which, at the time of death, you can receive the right to take residence in the heavenly kingdom, the royal palace of peace. Our world is the expansion of the love that is developed in the family. There is a world of grandfathers and of grandmothers, a world of fathers and of mothers, a world of husbands and of wives, and a world of sons and daughters. Each of these expands to form the world. (142-242, 1986.3.11)

God wants to realize the kingdom of love. This is God's will. God's will is to develop the ideal setting for love and then globalize it. The family is the workshop based upon which one meets the qualifications to graduate from primary and secondary school, on to university -- even to earn a doctorate. Furthermore, the family expands into the world. Looking at the world carefully, we can say that there is a world where the grandfathers and grandmothers live, a world where uncles and aunts live, a world where elder brothers and elder sisters live, a world where young people live, and a world where children live. So these places where the elderly, middle-aged, adolescents and children dwell may be larger and more populous, but they are expanded versions of the family. (147-281, 1986.10.1)

The center of the family is the parents. Why is it the parents? Because the parents exist for the family as a whole. (124-51, 1983.1.23)

People need a family just as they need a nation, a world, an original environment in the world and universe. (141-300, 1986.3.2)

My view is that in the love-centered family, the parents are the representatives of the nation and of God. The family is where all phases of training begin. The first stage of education and change is the family, and the second stage is the nation. There, a patriot is needed. Next, the third stage of education and change is the world. There we need a saint. The spirit world is the fourth stage of education and change. After that, we become God's sons and daughters. Just because one is a saint does not mean that he or she is God's son or daughter. So everyone should become God's son or daughter. Finally, we attain the status of a divine son or daughter, become one with God's love, and reach the point where we can possess God eternally. (141-300, 1986.3.2)