5. THE FAMILY AS THE TRAINING CENTER FOR LOVE

For what is man born? It is for love. One receives parents' love from the womb until marriageable age. One meets his partner and falls in love. One comes to experience God's love by having one's own children. Through this course, you learn how to love God as you love your children, partner and other family members. The course is the most basic step for man to go to the Kingdom of Heaven. A family has grandparents, parents, husband and wife, brothers and sisters. Humankind as a whole consists of the amplification of the components of a family, so a family that can love another family is able to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. It's a surprising fact. They can inherit all the God-given privilege and powers.

Even in a noble family a long time ago, the most sacrificial and effort-making person was supposed to be the heir of the family, no matter how many candidates there were. (143-285)

Everybody! Have you ever known the origin of love? [Yes.] So you have to love your family. The family is the textbook which shows how to get the ticket to the Kingdom of Heaven. The family is the training center for love. The world is an amplified family where there are a world of grandfather, a world of grandmother, a world of parents, a world of husbands and wives, and a world of sons and daughters. So the straight and proper way to the Kingdom of Heaven is for you to love other people as you love your family and God.

So the first commandment says, "Love God, the Lord, with your all heart and mind." The second one says, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." Love God, love people; that's all. Training will be in vain, if you can't do so. Religion teaches how to train yourself. Without loving people, the universe and God, it can be nothing.

Frankly speaking, the family is the place where you experience love and practice it in the world, where you and your parents have grown up and lived. It's like a microcosm, and the Unification Church has built a new type of family as a new training camp, centered on True Parents.

So you have to love your parents much more than you love your wife. It doesn't mean that you have to abandon your wife. If you love people like that, people receiving your love will come to love your wife. There is no more glorious thing than that. (142-242)

What is the family? It is the training center to realize the ideal nation and world with love. Furthermore, it is the place where you can experience God and the heavenly world. The power of love attracts this world, the spiritual world and even God. Just think of the day when God will feel happiness at last.

Then, what is the ideal family? That is the place where you fish in the universe with love. Realize that the family is the place to fish with love! So, you will still feel happy, even if hooked. For this, we come to have a home, the ideal home. Also, it is the ideal man who can live in such an ideal home. (106-26)