Part Four - Family and Society
Chapter - 19. Family
1) The Basic Form of Life
2. The Family as the School of Love and Virtue
World Scripture
Lord, give us joy in our wives and children, and make us models for the God-fearing. Qur’an 25.74
The moral life of man may be likened to traveling to a distant place: one must start from the s stage. It may also be likened to ascending a height [of public responsibility]: one must begin from the lowest step [one’s family]. Doctrine of the Mean 15.2 (Confucianism)
If a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for God’s church? 1 Timothy 3.5
What is meant by saying that “in order to establish moral order in his state, one must first guide his family properly” is this: One cannot convince others of what he cannot convince the members of his own family. Therefore the wise governor does not need to go beyond his family in order to find the principles needed for governing his state. Here he finds his own son’s respectful obedience to his father, with which a governor should be served; affection for one’s relatives, with which higher officials should be treated; and paternal kindness, with which all people should be regarded. Great Learning 9.1 (Confucianism)
When the family declines, ancient traditions are destroyed. With them are lost the spiritual foundations for life, and the family loses its sense of unity. Where there is no sense of unity, the women of the family become corrupt; and with the corruption of its women, society is plunged into chaos. Social chaos is hell for the family and for those who have destroyed the family as well. Bhagavad-Gita 1.40-41 (Hinduism)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
The family is the most important school in human life, for it is the school of love. (271:80, August 22, 1995)
The family is the training ground of the heart. You are trained in brotherly and sisterly love, so treat your classmates in school with that same heart and your fellow citizens in the nation with that same heart. Hence, the education your parents give you to be loving brothers and sisters is for the sake of the school, the community and the nation.
Parents should bequeath their heart and sensibility to their children and descendants. As parents you are role models, but this involves more than teaching by example. By your love you are laying the emotional foundation for your children, so that they are able to live for the family, the community and the nation. (180:131, August 22, 1988)
The ideal family is a school; it is also a textbook. The husband and wife are its joint authors. When their children can live by the lessons from that textbook, they can make it anywhere in the world. This is a formula. (131:112, April 22, 1984)
The family is the textbook for attaining the Kingdom of Heaven. God prepared it for human beings as an instruction manual for connecting with Him. If you take its lessons and apply them to the nation, you become patriots; apply them to the world and you become saints; apply them to heaven and earth and you become the divine sons and daughters of God. (137:78, December 18, 1985) Morals are the universal virtues acquired by training in the family. The Chinese character for virtue (德) contains the character 十, ten, with the shape of a cross whose vertical and horizontal lines symbolize heaven and earth—hence the entire universe, as well as man and woman—two beings. Next it has the character 四, four, which represents the four-position foundation; then 一, one, and 心, mind or heart. It means that virtues (德) are established when the four (四) parties of the fourposition foundation of heaven and earth (十) become one (一) in heart (心). Since the character 十 means ten and also two, it symbolizes twelve entities: grandfather, grandmother, husband, wife, son and daughter, six people each composed of mind and body. When these twelve become one, they indicate virtue. (375:59, April 13, 2002)
All around the world today, the family is changing, and the traditional family structure is being challenged in many ways. With increasing industrialization and modernization, humanity’s value systems are crumbling, and our standards of ethics and morality are in flux. In addition, selfish individualism, hedonism, and the worship of money are robbing us of our humanity, and increasingly free sex and immorality are furthering the destruction of the family.
How tragic it is that we are faced with such trends! If nothing is done, in the future humanity will not have any hope. No matter how social conditions may change, the importance of the relationship between parents and children is unshakable. The value of the family does not change. I repeat— love is the source of people’s happiness and joy, and the family is the foundation for happiness and peace. (271:80-81, August 22, 1995)
These days, when we prevent families from breaking down and teenagers from falling, we liberate God’s sorrowful heart. It brings God the happiness that He could not experience in the Garden of Eden, where He could not intervene [to stop the Fall]. (305:273, August 21, 1998)