God’s will is to realize the kingdom of love. To develop the ideal of love and expand it to make the entire globe an ideal world of love, God set up the family as the school of love. There, people earn credits as they progress from the elementary grades all the way to university and a doctoral degree.
Expand the family, and you have the world. Look at the world, and you will find grandfathers and grandmothers, adults like your uncles and aunts, peers like your brothers and sisters, young people, and children. In the kingdom of love, people of all ages – the elderly, middle-aged people, young people and children – live together as a family, like your own family only with much greater dimensions and larger numbers of people. (147-281, 10/01/1986)
The family is the smallest unit for entering the Kingdom of Heaven and the school that provides its study material. It has all the levels: the grandparents’ level, parents’ level, husband and wife level, siblings’ level and children’s level. You can extend the love you have for your family members – your grandparents, your mother and father, your siblings and your children – to the people in the world at large who are of similar age. This is the way to extend your love to encompass all humanity. Only when you love all humanity with as much love as you give your wife and your parents, and care for the world as much as you care for your own sons and daughters, can your family inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. This is a wonderful truth. Live it, and you will have the special right to inherit all the power and authority of God who created heaven and earth. (143-285, 03/20/1986)
The family is a textbook of love. It is where we can obtain the right to be registered in the Palace of Peace in the Kingdom of Heaven after we die. The family is the school of love. It teaches us how to live in the world, which is nothing but the extension of the family.
There is a world of people who resemble your grandfather, a world of people who resemble your grandmother, a world of people who resemble your father and mother, and a world of people who resemble your sons and daughters. Hence, if you expand your family, you have the world.
If you love the people of the whole world as much as you love your family, and as much as you love God who cares for your family, you will be on the straight road leading to the Kingdom of Heaven. This is how you should understand the first commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
And the second, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If you love God and love humanity as much as you love your family, that’s the basis for everything. If you cannot do it, all the spiritual training you go through will be of no use. No matter how great your spiritual discipline as you follow the precepts of religion, you will fail all the tests if you do not know how to love God, humankind and the universe.
In the family, there is an ordered process for experiencing love, like a course of training. The school that is the family is a microcosm of the world. Therefore, you can expand on its lessons to love the world. God has given you the family where you were raised and where your mother and father live as the school where you are trained in the ways of love.
You love your wife, and rightly so. But if you can love your parents more than you love your wife, love your sons and daughters more than your wife, love humanity more than your wife, and love God more than your wife, then everything will work out well.
This doesn’t mean you should abandon your wife. If you love everyone this way, then everyone who receives your love will also appreciate and honor your wife.
Wouldn’t that be a wonderful situation? The same goes for loving your husband. If you really want to love your spouse, this is the best way. (142-242, 03/11/1986)
END OF BOOK CHAPTER