Cheon Seong Gyeong Ⅱ - 418. World Peace through Religion
1 Religion exists for the sake of the world. The purpose of religion is to establish the framework of peace for humankind. That is why religions pursue world peace. Yet world peace is not only for human beings. God too must rejoice in it. This must be a world in which the peace that God desires is in accord with the peace that human beings desire.
These two goals come into accord not centered on the people of the world alone and not centered on God alone. There is only one way that God and people both want to be governed; that is the way of love. God’s bitter anguish up until now is that He could not be governed by true love.
Since God is the true King, He wants to be governed by a person with true love, even if that person is of the lowest rank. There is nothing that true love cannot permeate. There is no gap in true love. The Fall gave rise to gaps between light and darkness, front and back, and left and right, but true love can traverse them all. (139-061, 1986.01.26)
2 Philanthropy as we witness it today originated from a central trend of religious thought in history. Religion in a broad sense refers to the mainstream of life that centers on God’s side.
That is why it advocates love, benevolence, civic virtue and goodness. Religion does not pursue its own ambitions. Rather, it radiates goodness by benefiting the public. Through this it transforms the spirits of the evil world and restores the evil world to the side of Heaven.
It does not directly fight evil, but promotes harmony and peace centered on goodness and so creates an atmosphere of reconciliation. In order to deal with this evil world, the religious world needs to make a new beginning.
That is, in order to influence its environment, it has to invest something new. Harmony, unity and peace can come only when religions continually work for each other’s sake, rather than telling their believers to work for them. This is the mainstream thought that has guided good religions throughout history. (213-007, 1991.01.13) |