1) What a "family member" is in the Unification Church

We Unification Church members call each other "family members", right? What does the word "family member" mean? If you translate the Chinese characters then it means "the mouths that eat meals". So a family member is a brother you eat meals with, it's a family member you eat meals with. (14-164)

What do we call our church members when the Unification Church members gather? We call them family members. Don't we call them that? [Yes] What is a family member, a family member? It's not just a mouth that eats meals. Then what is a "family member"? You have to have a brotherhood relationship, you have to be born clinging to the same heart of your parents. Only by that you can be a family member. (155-211)

Today our Unification Church uses the name "family member". But you also call the members in your families at home "family member". Then what are we centered on that makes us call each other "family member"? We are calling "family member" centering on the love of God, on God's precious relationship and connection of wanting to love the human race, and centering on the ideal of the creation that God was seeking from the start. (25-287)

We are the family members of the Unification Church, as you know well. If we talk about family members, of course everyone has different assigned positions, but regardless of the environment or the situation one can't avoid going on a united course of life with the others in terms of life style and feelings. If there are a father, a son, and a daughter, then they do different tasks but their field of emotional life is the same. We know that one can be in the position of a child to his parents only if one can feel sad when the father feels sad, even though the child's situation is different than his. In this viewpoint, we, the Unification Church members, say, "We are family members". The original way the family members have to go will unite with the purpose of going the way of the Will. It is important to unite like that; however, the emotional life should not be different.

Family members have to unite, especially when the family is in a position where there can be difficulties. If the parents are sad, then the children and the family members living together will also be sad. If you want to solve that sadness, then you must take the position that you don't value anything more than that; not even the position you are assigned to or the work you are doing is more important. If you consider them more important, you can't say you are united with your parents, and from that point we cannot help but consider that your emotional life is separated from theirs.

But if you cast that all aside no matter how much your external environment changes, and even if those things disappear, if you stand in the position where you can feel together with your parents the pain of their bodies and their minds because of the sorrow that they are going through by uniting your mind and will with theirs, then even if the family possesses nothing, has nothing to do, and has nothing to brag about, in reality a new thing to brag about is starting there. You can go a totally different way from this point. You must know that when you determine and start from there, a new way appears such that you can go over even the point of death.

We commonly call each other family members. Then if you look at it centering on family members, it goes without saying that this is true for parents' sorrow, but it is also true for children's sorrow; the children's sorrow is not only their sorrow. The children's sorrow directly connects with the parents' sorrow. It doesn't matter if there are lots of kids and lots of other members. The whole family becomes involved if one person in the large family is struck with sorrow. They become harmonized there. Centering on sorrow they become one, not two or many.

We come to know that being united is something to brag about; it's the power of the family; it's the origin of the life of the family. If one family member's sorrow is considered only his own sorrow, then if there are ten members and all ten of them think that way, those ten members can't unite. Even if those ten members want peace or happiness or rest, there can't be any rest among them. If some person wants to rest peacefully, even if he finds his own peaceful rest, that can't be the foundation for the whole to rest peacefully. If there are ten places in order to find peace for each of the ten persons, that becomes the foundation for uneasiness and the basis for trouble or unhappiness between them. We know this through our lives and through the stories of our members about the situations of those around them. Viewing it from the position of being a family member and thinking about it centering on this content, we can see that we are different from worldly family members.

Worldly family members can be considered happy if they found the way of happiness in which they live together for their whole lives and help each other and comfort each other, uniting in heart through that. In life they might be family members or a family which brags much more than other family members or families. But the concept of family member which we talk about is different. We don't say family member centering on the world; we say it centering on the Heaven. We say it centering on the parents of heaven. They are not the parents who rule one time period. They are the parents who rule history, and rule this era. Also, they must rule the time after this, which is the future.

As we, who are attending the parents of heaven, think again we must know that the parents of heaven are facing the fallen human race. We know we ourselves are not liberated from the realm of the fall. (60-14)