5) Faith and Study

To lead a religious life is to drink the milk of life as a baby sucks the mother's milk. When a baby is hungry, it cries for milk; likewise, when your heart is thirsty, you should visit the church and listen to the words of life.

The mother who truly loves her baby doesn't only nurse the baby, but she disciplines the baby and teaches it to do what it doesn't like to do. Parental heart is to train the child to be strong enough not to fall. Likewise, human beings need to be disciplined to restore what was lost in the beginning of history-God and the universe. If religion had taught human beings to go over the fence of evil, resurrection would have happened.

If God truly loves human beings and leads all the religions, and if He really wants human beings to be resurrected through the religions, persecution and opposition are inevitable; they are the discipline. Therefore, unless you gain victory in the midst of the severe persecution from the individual, family, nation, and world, you cannot be resurrected.

The education of faith is more important than secular education. Father's thought is centered upon the Will, but your thought is individualistic. Originality develops when you believe and act.

The schools of society don't teach "marriage," even though it is a very significant matter. A man doesn't know of a woman and a woman doesn't know of a man, yet today's education doesn't give much weight to the problem. We lack education concerning problems which arise after being married. How to create a happy married life and how to educate children are not being taken care of. The problem of science and mathematics gets more attention and density of focus. This is one of the malformed phenomena.

In order for your present being to develop into a future being, you shouldn't be habitualized. All the Blessed families from the 36 Couples to the 6,000 Couples became secularized. Because they became habitualized into the secular customs, problems occur. All the parents think, "We should let our children go to the good universities. Studying leads to success. In order to send them to school, we should make money and they will finally be successful." Father doesn't think so. To know the Principle thoroughly is more important than to study. In order to be successful, you should know the Principle clearly. The standard of success depends on how much you love your nation and God.

God didn't create human beings so that they could collect all knowledge. Understanding the ideal of creation is not the gaining of knowledge. It is not determined by the amount of knowledge that you have collected in your brain.

The ideal of creation is not established by knowledge, power or money. It is established only by love. Parents who teach that the only measure of success is knowledge or studying are making a serious mistake.

Some of you may be boastful because you went to a first-rank university and make a lot of money. That is stupid. The knowledge that you learn in school is important, but more important is love. You can gain knowledge in several days or years, but you cannot have love rapidly. Love is absolute and eternal, so you cannot master it even in your whole lifetime. You cannot get the graduation certificate of love, even though you study 30 or 40 years. You can become professor or receive a doctorate after studying a field of secular knowledge for a certain period, but you cannot be a professor or gain a doctorate in love even if you study for 1,000 years, because the field of love is limitless and eternal. Love never produces the feeling of repugnance or disgust. It produces the feeling of the utmost joy and gratitude.

Our mind can grow infinitely by heart but it cannot grow infinitely by knowledge. The heart of love embraces the universe, yet there's still more space remaining, so once you cultivate the great original site of love even God wants to take a nap there. We cannot comprehend God by knowledge, so we should realize the greatness of heart of the Unification Church.

When you study for yourself, you will quickly feel sleepy; but when you think the survival of thirty million people depends on the one page or one sentence that you are dealing with, you will never get tired. Study with seriousness so intense that you feel that the retention of one vocabulary word will save the thirty million people and the loss of one word will doom the same number of people. Don't say that your memory is lacking! You never forget what happened in an extremely serious moment, do you? Study at the risk of your life. You can feel the pulse of your heart when you are serious. In such serious moments, you even forget things that you were determined to do.

Because your mind is scattered, you cannot remember. If you hit on a brilliant way to survive when on the verge of death, will you remember it or not? When you study, invest your life in page after page. After starting seriously questioning a certain passage in the Bible, I would endeavor even for three years to solve the mystery of it. Until I shouted, "Eureka!" I would push myself to penetrate the root of the problem.

In order to be a great person, you should make all the excellent teachings of the prominent teachers your possession. Otherwise, you cannot be a great personage. Being a Ph.D. holder is not enough; you are to absorb all the systems of knowledge of the world's prominent scholars and digest them as a factor of your life by comprehending the overall value of them. Then you can appear as a new figure of knowledge by adding your originality to the existing systems. That is the way to be a world-class scholar and a world-class philosopher. The same method applies if you want to pioneer goodness.

In order to develop and accomplish a certain purpose, you need stimulation. To accomplish the complete purpose, complete determination is needed, and you must pass through a time period. In order to complete the time period, some power of propulsion is needed. The driving force is produced by periodic stimulation. Stimulation is necessary for development.

The Blessed families, especially the elder Blessed families centering upon the 36 Couples, seem to ask Father for help with their children's schooling. I doubt there is anything wrong with them, and of course there are many reasons for what they ask. But when parents get deeply involved with their children's schooling, they will encounter obstacles in going the way of God's Will. Parents are supposed to give a general direction to the children and let them solve detailed problems by themselves. Father was a self-supporting student. Tigers let cubs experience severe trials and harsh discipline in order to rear them to be the kings of the mountain by developing their wild nature. Iron gets stronger by heating. This is an important lesson for educating children.

To live is to compete. We cannot develop without competition. The lack of competition makes us miserable. In order to win in a competition, we need capability. To be competent, we need a preparatory period for establishing a foundation. Jesus came after the preparation period of the Old Testament era. The coming Lord appears after the preparation period of the New Testament era.

To prepare is to study as a student. Especially adolescents should prepare, while carrying big dreams. You are the ones who will be responsible for the Unification Church, so you need to be prepared most of all. By preparing ideologically, you can conquer the mental world. Then you are to act, utilizing your prepared capabilities. In other words, you should win the victory in the competition. It is the Principle that the weak ones are absorbed by the strong ones. Day and night you should never cease your endeavors to actualize your ideal with confidence. The purpose of this workshop is for preparation.

Between 1974 and 1976, while Father faced the most severe opposition in the United States, I established the theological seminary and prepared for the unity of American churches by rallying theologians. That is why the religious coalition is possible now. Father prepared extensively in the fields of economy, culture and media as well. Among these, economic independence is the most important preparation. A leader should also have the power of persuasion. Father has gone the way of preparation throughout his whole lifetime. From age 27, my life was one of struggle for the providence, and from age 40, I have been actualizing the ideal of the providence.

Thus far Father hasn't allowed the second generation to enter graduate school because they had to love God, the nation, and their tribes and families first.

Love is the criterion by which our international activities are measured with respect to God's Will. Corinthians Chapter 13 also says that among faith, hope and love, love is the greatest.

Where do you think you can utilize the knowledge that you've gained? How much can you utilize for the providence the knowledge that you've gained through the study of law and economics at a university? These are not really useful for going through God's Will. When Japan lost their national strength and economic power through the Second World War, what happened? Their knowledge of economics was of no use at all when the nation was devastated.

There's one thing we need in order to proceed in the providence. Those who study theology, squeezing your heads: there is a problem in your way of thinking; your way of thinking is extremely wrong. Do you think Father will follow the economic theories that you've learned in the school? Or do you think I will refer to the politics that you've studied? Father doesn't even want to smell such things.

Entering graduate school is presently forbidden. You are not to go to graduate school unless Father's children do so. It is not because Father's children cannot go there, but it is a heavenly law.

When a bud sprouts, twigs and leaves come out. When a bud stretches high, the tree can grow normally. If a tree has more twigs than buds it becomes a useless shrub. That is a natural law.

You should be the sons and daughters who can inherit the tradition clearly. After Father's children enter university or graduate school, you may follow them. You have to encourage Hyo Jin Nim to study quickly. Currently Hyo Jin cannot straighten out his trembling mind because the Unification Church and its members didn't fulfill their responsibility.

Your parents have been tied down to your education, praying for only your well-being. What about Father? Have I been bound to the education of my children? Father has been investing all of his power in you, in humankind and in God. So there has been no time for me to be concerned with their education. But your parents after receiving the Blessing concentrated on your family and your education. They have committed a terrible sin in front of Father and God. Now you must collectively take responsibility for it.

You also should have a special concern for other true brothers and true sisters and be cooperative with them. That is the way of the Principle.

Religions, especially Buddhism and Catholicism, have exalted the commandment not to marry. It is not that they do not value marriage. The providential revelation not to marry was sent. Likewise, it is not that Father doesn't want to send you to school; the dispensation for this age is not yet for you to go to school.

When Father mentions father and son, as in "father-son relationship" he means the original father and the original son. Without the original father and the original son, the nation cannot be established. Humankind seeks a peaceful world. Such a world cannot be established through the culture for which the present advanced nations are striving. It is to be established through the True Parents. Even if the True Parents clothe themselves in dirty rags or emerge completely exhausted from a bottomless hollow, human beings are to learn God's heart centering upon them.

The second generation of the Blessed families should inherit the proper education and the heartistic tradition to qualify as heavenly subjects. Therefore, Father is preparing the educational system for the second generation. You should establish schools and curricula for all ages from kindergarten to university. The second generation in other countries should come to Korea to receive the same education.

Centering upon the second generation, a new chapter of Unification culture will open. It is to be structured in form and content according to the heartistic tradition of the True Parents, and it will also include education for acquiring knowledge and technique. Without your realizing it, the way of global restoration through indemnity has opened, and all the required standards are established.

You should discover the root of true love. The family which can make the bud of that root sprout on earth is the family which will control the world. When love blossoms from that family, the culture of true human ancestors will emerge. The language that family uses will be the global language. The other languages will be useless.

Since one has to be a child, one might as well be born of a parent in a loving society and learn your parent's language. Then, you are to go through the nation to the new world. From there the culture centering upon love will develop. It will be the universal culture, and the other cultures will go through that culture. That culture will be the primary culture representing the world.