1) The Ideal Family

The ideal family is the place of the eternal love of parents, the eternal love of husband and wife, and the eternal love of children centering upon God.

Even though a person with lots of property and fortune sings songs of happiness, these external belongings cannot be the cause of his or her happiness. Even though they may come along with happiness, they cannot be happiness itself. Then, what decides happiness? There should be loving parents, a couple, and children. You cannot deny this. In proportion to any part missing among those, there will be a proportionate sadness and dissatisfaction in one's heart.

There must be parents, husband, wife and children in a family-such a family can be the site of happiness. God's purpose in looking for humankind must also be to grope for happiness, for without human beings God Himself cannot establish a site for happiness. Unless God has the proper relationship with human beings, He cannot accomplish His ideal of happiness. When the world of emotion is filled by a family, we feel happiness; God also feels happy in such an atmosphere.

Where does unhappiness start? When the nest of love disappears, unhappiness starts. A happy family is a family in which parents are vertically attended as representing Heaven. The parents are like a wall protecting the family and the family is represented by a husband and wife in love, who were strangers before but who are creating the moral law and are carrying on the lineage.

From where does happiness come? It comes from a family. If there's an emotional problem, happiness cannot be established; neither can it be established where heart and love are lacking.

A formula is not something special. If there's a subjective content which can be applied everywhere in order to maintain one specific type of relationship, it becomes a formula. When we can come to a conclusion by using one specific term representing the same phenomena everywhere, it becomes a formula. That is the Principle. The formula means the center. The center is a vertical standard; the vertical standard is not two, but one.

Who is the center of a family? The oldest one is the center. If a great-grandfather is alive, he is the center. In the time near his death, if the family members neglect the great-grandfather it will be the same as neglecting the vertical world. Even though he is in his dotage, the center of the family is the great-grandfather. At mealtime, we should serve him first. Even if the father is the president of the nation, the family members should serve the grandfather first because a son is in the horizontal position.

Whom do you like best in your family? Your parents, right? Why do you like them most? Because they are the nearest ones with whom you can sustain a love relationship throughout your entire life.

The one you love next best is your husband or wife. Unconditional love between a husband and wife is the best way to bring happiness and harmony in the family, even though such love is not the closest to God's absolute and unchanging love.

Finally, there is the children's love for parents. If the children can love and sacrifice for their parents in a positive manner, while longing for an ideal environment in which the hope of the future can bloom, their love will be a pure and sincere contribution to the happiness of the family.

The family with parents' true love, couple's true love, and children's true love must be the most ideal family in the world.

The most valuable in a family is not determined by you. Then, who is the one of the most value? The parents are. Take yourself as an example. Authority, knowledge, fame and money are precious to you, but none of them are more valuable than your parents. Next in value would be your spouse and finally your children. Is there in fact anything more valuable than your parents, spouse or children? No, there is no such thing.

Then, why do we like parents, spouse and children? It is because of love. Parental love is absolutely necessary for children. Conjugal love is absolutely necessary for husband and wife. Sibling love toward brothers and sisters, and filial piety toward parents are also absolutely necessary.

If a parent is sick, what will a child do? The child will do whatever is necessary to cure the sickness, to the extent of selling all of the family's property. Why? Because of the bond of love.

The willing effort to do whatever is necessary to save one's parents is rooted in the force of love. It is the same between husband and wife. If one of a couple contracts a serious disease, conjugal love compels us to cure the disease by any means necessary. It is the same for parents toward children. This is the universal truth that no one can deny.

What is true love? It is parental love, conjugal love and children's love. Without a tradition of sacrifice for one another, love is broken easily. Isn't it true? Because parents sacrifice for children, the bond of parental love never breaks, and if children grow up in true parental love, they can never disobey their parents. When the degree of sacrifice and sincere effort for one another is extended beyond themselves, blessing comes to a couple; such a family is the blessed land that God visits.

Ideal love is accomplished in a family. However, God hasn't had true sons and daughters, true brothers and sisters, and true husbands and wives, and He couldn't become the true parent. Accomplishing all of that is God's Will. Love dwells in such a place. People will come to such a place, abandoning everything which belongs to the world.

Even if a father has bushy hair and looks ugly to others, if he has a full bundle of love in his mind, his children will love him. Even though others cannot stand looking at his ugly face, the more the children look at their father's face, the happier they will become.

By having love, God can possess authority and can be a parent.

A woman can play the role of bride by having love. Without love, a man cannot function as a bridegroom. A woman who wants to play the role of bride without love is not a woman; and a man who wants to play the role of bridegroom without love is not a man. With love a man can function as a bridegroom and a woman can function as a bride.

Can a son play a perfect son's role without love? Can a daughter play a perfect daughter's role without love? They cannot.

How should children love each other? What should be their standard of love? They should love each other just as their father loves their mother. People learn love from their parents. Children should be able to say, "Our parents are the best parents in the world; they exist in place of God." When children, after looking at the unchanging mind and love of their parents, say things such as, "Let's become one as our parents are one," an ideal family can come into being.

When children reach adolescence, they are to look for the object who can be one in heart with them. This can be accomplished through marriage. A man and a woman are to respect each other sincerely and are to endeavor to establish a heartistic standard, so that finally a family where parents and children are one with God in heart and love can be established.

An elder brother is to sacrifice himself by representing his parents in loving his younger brothers. This is the order and tradition of love. An elder brother has responsibility to suffer more than the other brothers. Parents are in the same situation: they are to suffer instead of their children. If parents do not abandon their children even at the crossroads of tears and hardship, their children in turn will follow their parents in tears wherever they go.

When we become one centered upon God, we are to revolve around Him in all varieties of forms and figures. The older brother is to love the younger brothers by following the example of parental love. When parents and children become one in such love relationships, the love of the family will bloom; then this becomes the love of society, nation and world. But such a love is difficult to find nowadays.

Why do you receive parental love? Because you provide the motivation for your father and your mother to lean on and love each other. Do you understand? Therefore, the love of brothers and sisters rooted in this parental motivation will never change. When we regard our neighbors as our body and act appropriately centering upon this motivation, a desirable social environment will be established. The family is the formation stage, society is the growth stage and the nation is the completion stage. We should surely go through such a process.

We should harmonize all families in oneness; love arises in such an environment. Then they are to become one on the national level. Here the society is to divide into various social classes. The president exists as the representative of the company. How many representatives do we have now in a nation? We have one, don't we: the national president. There should be one responsible person. In such a way, the shape or structure is unified as the form gets bigger. The principle of the four-position foundation is that divided entities are one.

All things exist for human beings. The whole of history concludes in all things, children and parents; in other words, it concludes in a family. This is the fundamental fact of the universe. Without parents, children cannot come into being. Children, born out of parents, are to dominate all things centering upon the parents. Adam and Eve are to dominate all things. All of these apply simultaneously.

What kind of bundle is a bundle of love? When we open the bundle of love in our original home, an ideal husband and an ideal wife will spring out. It is also a bundle of blessing from which an ideal family will spring. Anything coming out of this bundle of love is to be restored into the first rank so that each individual, each family, each tribe, each nation, and the world are all in the first rank. When everything is in the first rank, there's no classification of high and low. That's why brothers and sisters and the family are to be restored. In order to make such a unified foundation, a bundle of love-a treasure jar-is necessary.

After knowing the taste of this love, nothing matters. The complaining husband or wife, opposing relatives and persecuting teachers do not matter at all. A problem at school is nothing. Automatically a fireball springs out of our mind. When we can make such a heartistic volcano spurt out a living life, what will come of it? People don't know that when God is burning with this love, He provokes an explosive impulse.

The family is the unchanging origin and the pivotal point. Fathers, brothers, and any national system cannot change it; it cannot be changed internationally; heaven and earth and even God cannot change it. Because the family is a place of love it needs no revolution.

Man's love for woman and woman's love for man does not change according to historical era. There is no difference between the conjugal love of the grandfather and grandmother and that of the modern young man and woman. The feeling that all people everywhere and at all times have in adolescence is the same. But the pivotal point of the family nowadays is changing in various ways. The loving mind is the same, but the family structure is changing. This change is finally to cease.

If a family is established on the firm pivotal point in relation to which any revolutionary change is impossible, the family will not be absorbed by any kind of ideology or "ism." It will rather surpass any ideology or "ism" and control them. If a family is established on such a foundation, it will never change and will sustain the form of a nation.

Without love a father and a mother cannot become one. Why do we like love? It is because we are created not to survive without it. The stronger the power of parental love over the power of individual love, the more ideal your situation will be. It is the rope of love which can bind father and mother completely in oneness. A rope made out of metal rusts as times passes, but a rope made out of love is eternal. Money or food cannot bind parents and children; only love can bind them.

When a mother loves her child, and the child loves its mother, the father won't say, "Don't love the child whom I love." When his wife loves the child more than she loves her husband, the husband is happy. When a child loves its mother more than its father, the father won't say, "Love me more than your do your mother." Such an educational method doesn't exist.

Where can we find the situation in which people love to see their spouse loving others more than themselves? It is in the family. We can never create such a situation except in the family.

The true family is the place where a husband loves his wife as his mother, and where a wife sacrifices for her husband and loves him as her older brother. The Kingdom of Heaven is the world where a husband loves his wife as God and a wife loves and respects her husband as God. Such a tradition should be established on this earth.

The husband in a happy family consults his wife concerning everything that happened outside, and tries to find the primary factor to make progress. The family in which a couple study together for a better life is a happy family. When parents are like that, children willingly cooperate to create a harmonious family.

The heavenly family is not established by force, but is automatically established by joy. Ideal love is accomplished through proper give and take action, so don't try just to receive.

When mother and father unite into one, the family will begin to develop; when children and parents become one, the family will continue to develop into a higher-dimensional entity. Then, what will happen when relatives and a family become one? A national spirit of righteousness will break forth. When the national spirit of righteousness goes forward to a much higher dimension, people will endure as the tribe of loyal subjects.

When there are no children standing with the parents, happiness is impossible for the parents; likewise, without parents children cannot be happy. There is no joy for a man without a woman as his partner, and the same applies to a woman.

The desire of a couple is to sustain their love on a higher dimension centering upon the subject and object relationship; for this purpose children should exist standing with the couple. A family is composed of parents on the upper side, children on the lower side, and the couple.

A family should become one horizontally and vertically. Then, centering upon whom should a family be one? Complete oneness cannot be made if only human beings are involved. Because human beings by themselves cannot pursue higher-dimensional value, they need an absolute subject of love. The parents are to become one centering upon this subject. The very place in which parents and children become one in love centering upon the Subject is the place of happiness and hope.

We should congeal everything into one and generalize and expand into a more valuable and stimulating dimension, but we cannot accomplish this with human love only; it will be possible only through relationship with an absolute entity.

We should stand on an absolute standard in order to establish a sound family. Due to the Fall, two entities cannot naturally become one. Unless a man and a woman stand on an absolute standard, they cannot unite together. If Adam and Eve had not fallen, they would have become one and established a family. But they could not have the proper horizontal relationship, namely the "left-right relationship," because of Eve's fall.

The world and "heaven and earth" cannot destroy a family which is completely one with God. The new history will begin with such a family.

First we are to be perfect individuals by complete oneness of mind and body. Then we are to establish perfect families by the complete oneness of husband and wife.