Cheon Seong Gyeong Ⅱ - 154. My prison life and the practice of truly loving others
24 I experienced life in the prison of all prisons. I have been imprisoned a number of times, but prison life never drove me to sorrow. I looked at prison as my best training ground. Could I truly love humanity? Could I truly love my enemy? Could I truly share my breath, nose to nose, with those who were sentenced to death? Thinking about such things, I considered prison to be a good environment for training myself. Also, it was where I reflected on whether I could really feel the bitter sorrow of my people and whether I had the passion to sharply criticize social injustice. Prison is where our church began. It was there that I had to find the way to overcome the environment and set up the standard of human dignity. There I had to be a champion of the standard of character that God envisaged for the person who would become His original embodiment. My guiding philosophy has been to secure this victory; this has been my lifelong pursuit. (26-017, 1969.10.14)
25 While in prison I was whipped, beaten, tortured and bloodied, yet I never resented those who beat me. The true God is the God who sacrificed His beloved son to save His enemies. Not only that, He gave away all His treasures to His enemy. That is the love of God. God’s way is to pray with tears for the one who holds the whip. This is why I did so, and still do to this day. (32-270, 1970.07.19)
26 I have experienced prison life many times since the age of twenty-four. I am a man who never surrendered to the authorities. Even under torture, even when my nose was broken and blood oozed from the wounds on my head, even when my neck was injured, I kept absolute faith and conviction in God. I held out against my torturers, thinking, “Go ahead and hit me. The bat will break, not my body. Go ahead and cut off my hands. No matter what cruel tortures you put me through, still I will not give in.” Countless such stories are embedded deep in the marrow of my bones. In these incomprehensible places, where no one can come up with answers as to why, I came to recognize that my Father’s tearful love was right there. And still I know that many thorny paths and deep valleys lie ahead of me, paths that others will not understand and which I must face alone. (025-120, 1969.09.30)
27 My parents came to visit me when I was in prison, but immediately I sent them home. I had to do that. I never accepted visits from my brother and my sisters. I sacrificed my brother and my sisters, my family and my relatives, in order to find new people. I have loved all of you more than I loved my own parents, brother, sisters and relatives. I have done so because God is like that. God sacrificed His own Son to save the world. God had to sacrifice the life of His only begotten Son. Hoping to save the whole world, He would do even that. I am following His example. (52-196, 1971.12.29)
28 In prison I met so many people who followed me. They received revelations from Heaven to follow me. But those who followed me before I went to prison dispersed. They doubted, “How can someone whom God loves so much end up in prison?” Jesus too lost his twelve disciples when he went to the cross. So I had to restore those twelve disciples in prison. In the prison cell were communist spies disguised as inmates, so I could not speak a word. But the spirit world testified and people followed me. When I was hungry, people brought me rice balls. It was because their ancestors appeared in their dreams and asked them to do so. (52-155, 1971.12.27)
29 You have no idea how relentlessly God put me through hard training. To me, God was not a loving God. Thinking of how He treated me makes me shudder. If I had the mind of a businessman, I would have run away long ago. I would have forgotten about the Will and run far, far away from God, with the fear that He would come after me. And yet, it was when I was suffering in prison that I felt God’s love the most. In that place I came to know, “Truly, truly, God loves me.” So I did not dislike going to prison. You Unification Church members need to suffer, even if it means going to a prison or a detention center. Where can you meet God? It is in the most serious and difficult place that you can meet God. (217-266, 1991.06.02) |