The Third Principle: Learn true love in the school of the family

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LESSON 16: The Parental Realm of Heart

A. The parental realm of heart.

1. Through the conjugal union, children are given birth.

• Husband and wife resemble God and share His creative nature. They create their own children.
• God bequeaths His love to them as parents. They, in turn, manifest fully the love of God to their children.
• In one sense, husband and wife are greater than God, because God had only two children, and we can have many more than that.
• God is joyful when true parents have children.

2. God feels His own creativity as the Creator through human beings in bearing and rearing children.

• He feels such joy in the smile of an exhausted new mother on her hospital bed holding her newborn baby.
• She resembles God's own experience giving birth to mankind.
• Because of this, mothers have the deepest connection with the Heart of God.

3. The parents act in the position of God, creating and educating their children.

• Their love is as patient, enduring and compassionate as God's love.
• They invest totally in their children. They give and give and forget what they have given, and give again. They endure any difficulty without ceasing to give.
• They give entirely for the child's sake, centering on God. Parental love is selfless, generous. The more they can give to the children, the happier they are. Parents do not calculate their giving to the children. They do not ask for repayment later. Parents like to be taken advantage of by the children, who exploit their abilities to nurse, feed, embrace, play, teach, and support financially.
• Therefore, we must be people of absolute love in order to be true parents.
• Parents will sacrifice for the child, placing their child's value as greater than their own.
  • The mother who runs without thinking in front of an oncoming car to save her child who wanders onto the street.
  • The father who rushes back into a burning house to rescue his baby.
  • Parents who deny themselves in order to put their children through school.
  • No one criticizes such actions as irrational. Everyone respects parental love. It is a universal value.
• Their love is in the likeness of the love of God, the Father. The heart of a parent feels the child's pain, but disciplines for his own good. The parent should pray in tears all night for their child, not just punish. When the child becomes too old to receive physical punishment, the parent must ask the child to punish him for not being a good enough parent.

4. The parents' goal is that their children become true men and women.

• They want their children to be better than themselves - smarter, more attractive, more loving, more resourceful, more successful. Parents are never jealous of their child's surpassing them.
• Therefore we can understand that God wants us to be greater than Him. We can understand our value to God.
• The child has universal value.
• The child represents God's personal gift, and reflects God's own personality.
• The child represents the spouse's personal gift, and reflects the spouse's personality.

5. The ideal for parents is true parental love.

• A man with his mind and body united, centering on God's will, is a true man. A woman with her mind and body united, centering on God's will, is a true woman.
• By the Blessing of God, a true man and true woman may be joined in marriage, to become true parents.
• The first man and woman, called Adam and Eve in the Bible, should have followed God's commandment and become a true man and true woman, true husband and true wife, and true parents.
• As true parents, their conjugal love would have been the dwelling place of God. Therefore, their children would have been the true children of God, and their lineage would have been the lineage of God.
• Because Adam and Eve fell, their love was not godly, and God could not participate in their family life. Their lineage was based upon false love. Their children were not true children of God, and their lineage was not God's lineage (John 8:44).
• The world is in need of true parents, who can create true conjugal love in which God can dwell. Through this love, true children and the true lineage of God can be created.
• God can be present in conjugal love based upon His Blessing of our marriage. Through His Blessing, we are connected to God's lineage.

6. This world has not seen true parental love. Although few parents are cruel and uncaring, all are limited in their ability to love, because they themselves did not receive true love as children from their own parents.

• If parental heart is not planted deep within the children, the gap between parents and children will expand.
• Primitive cultures have practiced infanticide; today there are millions of abortions a year, and increasing violent child abuse.
• Parents as defective models has led to the "generation gap."
• Children without good parents turn to crime, drugs, irresponsible sex, as they seek the affection they were deprived of in childhood.
• People ignorant of true love abuse defenseless nature, destroying the environment.
• A false model of authority arose. People in authority began oppressing those under them and lording it over the masses with tyranny and terror.

The distortion of parental love leads to civilizations ruled by false authority of force and violence. True parental love, by the same token, will lead to civilizations ruled by the true authority of true love. This is the topic of our next lesson.

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MEANINGFULL ENCOUNTERS