People should love their neighbors’ parents, grandparents and children just as they love their own. Only then will the relationships of above and below, left and right, and front and back arise. Only when they arise will the vertical standard of heart be established and the heavenly way emerge. Hence, they should practice this.
Since members of the Unification Church practice it, they can build ideal families.
The church is the place enabling the expansion of the vertical foundation horizontally in all directions. The more, the better. Why is that? Because we are crossing from the family level over into the tribal realm, and from there into the national realm. Thus, as you witness to more and more people, the heavenly foundation arises through you and the standard of value of character advances toward God. So what must we do with this vertical standard? I am saying that we should manifest it horizontally. (70-152, 02/09/1974)
On the day of the union between mother and father, the family progresses, and on the day of the union between children and parents, it progresses to a higher dimension.
Then what will happen on the day of the union between the family and the tribe? A new spirit for the race will emerge.
We should not forget that when we are prompted to go toward a higher dimension, everything will be integrated at the national level and we will be able to live as the kindred of loyal subjects. (Blessed Family-301, 01/01/1975)
Now, even I will become a grandfather before long. This is the same for you: when you get old, you will become grandfathers and grandmothers. We are born as a son or daughter, get married to become a father or mother, and then become a grandfather or grandmother; that is the course of our life. Thus, because grandparents, parents, spouses, and children constitute the formula course of life, the failure to love them runs counter to the heavenly way. If they are not fundamentally bound together, there would be no way to bring the world into order.
If you go to the West, you will see that grandmothers and grandfathers are pitiful. You do not know how much they long for Oriental customs. They are saying, “Oh, Oriental thought reveres grandparents like God, and sons still go to consult their aged parents even when they are in their seventies and eighties. So how wonderful it must be!”
Thus, those who do not know how to love their grandparents cannot love God.
Who is the oldest grandfather? He is God. Since God is older than all grandfathers and younger than all babies, without loving people as a whole, you cannot love Him.
So if you say God is old, He is the oldest person, and if you say God is a youth of the future, He is a youth more than anyone else. As we want to love Him, we have to love all the people in between, and since people of the past in the spirit world also want to find hope and live within that realm, we must love them as well. It is only logical that we will then be able to go the way of following and loving God. (70-152, 02/09/1974)
END OF BOOK CHAPTER