What is the original motivation of parental love?
While conjugal love is changeable, why is parental love toward the children born of that conjugal love unchanging? Parental love does not originate from conjugal love. Unchanging love does not originate from the horizontal conjugal relationship, but is surely related to the origin of a vertical flow.
Who would such a vertical subject be? He is known as God. Vertical love is not the kind of love that a husband and wife can enjoy as they please. In the case of vertical love, it is impossible to say that you will love when you want to, and not when you don’t want to.
It cannot be severed. It cannot be severed by a man who is in the horizontal position. Thus, the love parents have toward their children never changes.
In today’s democratic society, caught in the floodtide of individualism, children say that they have changed according to the new trends of the age. They want to disassociate from conventional norms, yet even though they argue about the old ways and new ways, their parents’ hearts do not lead them to say, “You go your way, and I will go mine.” Parental love is not like that. Even animals are the same. In loving their young, they transcend their lives. (48-154, 09/12/1971)
Where did parental love come from?
If we are resultant beings of the First Cause with some relationship to Him, we have come from within some destined power of this First Cause. This is not something we as human beings can touch. As such, have you ever heard anyone say, “Let us revolutionize the love with which parents love their children; let us become the standard-bearers of that revolution”?
Let’s suppose some parents come forward with the idea of revolutionizing parental love and reinventing human history, claiming, “Even though we are parents, we will not love our children.” Yet, the moment their baby’s umbilical cord is cut, a loving heart will naturally arise in them. Every life form, whether on a higher or lower level, is created in such a way that it cannot but love its young. Thus, since the act of loving their children inspires parents to invest and use their lives as stepping stones, it is clear that parental love brings us closest to an eternal and unchanging standard.
When seeking an absolute standard, although parental love may not achieve this by itself, it can be a stepping stone closest to absoluteness for human beings. It can be the only foothold. Then, looking at the history of the world, I wonder whether it has not become a permanent foothold.
Where did such parental love come from? It is not learned based on advice from one’s father or the admonition of one’s spouse; nor does it come from one’s own decision to love. It happens naturally. Love is something that comes naturally. (48-156, 09/12/1971)
If we analyze the essence of love, there is no need to revolutionize love. When parents love their children, this is part of true love. This is why the heart with which people loved their children from the time of the first ancestors is the same heart with which we descendants several millennia later love our own children.
Moreover, the heart with which our descendants several millennia later will love their children will also be the same.
Love is eternal. True love is something pure that does not need to be revolutionized. Then, what kind of love is God’s love? If God establishes certain beings in positions with an absolute standard, acknowledges their existence, and loves them, then that love needs no further drastic change. (18-11, 05/14/1967)
END OF BOOK CHAPTER