The Fourth Principle: Dedicate Your Own Family to the Global Family of Humankind

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LESSON 19: The One Family of Humankind

A. The global village.

1. Philosophers from Plato to Marx have dreamed of a global commonwealth of humankind. But none of these visions has succeeded because they neglect the central role of the family. The family of true love is the key to establishing a global family of humankind.

2. Today the political, media and technological elite speak of our "global village" or "new world order," based upon the globalization of transportation, communication, economy, language and mutual awareness. Truly the physical tools necessary to build a world of peace are in place.

3. Yet our global village is full of ethnic, tribal, moral and ideological conflicts. There is no authority of love or justice through which the brothers of this world can resolve their differences short of violent struggle.

4. As explained above, this true authority can be called the "kingship" of God, and it is a form of parental love which can expand to embrace the brothers in natural bonds of kinship and mutual recognition.

5. The global village we are seeking is one in which peace, freedom, unification and happiness prevail. These qualities are those which the parents introduce and sustain within the family. The human family needs common parents.

• God is our vertical Parent. Vertical Parent means the omnipresent, internal, invisible origin of each personas life. But God has always existed, and war has continued. What has been missing is physical true parents, on earth.
• Humankind also needs horizontal parents. Horizontal parents means the first true parents on earth.
  • Let's just imagine that a true man and woman could fulfill the responsibility originally given Adam and Eve to create a true marriage. They would be the True Parents, the horizontal parents of all humankind.
  • They would be the root of God's family line.
• Through the love of True Parents, genuine brotherly love and respect would be possible across the world. As siblings love each other following their parents' love, so too would we love our neighbor. This is the power of parental love.

6. Racism and nationalism are overcome by parental love.

• God is color-blind; parents are too.
• Unbiased true love will naturally lead to more and more interracial, inter religious and international marriages, which will eliminate barriers of color, language, culture and nation once and for all.
• Also there will be increasing travel and migration, which will help humankind to become one family and one culture, and connect the isolated communities of the past which resulted from family and clan level conflicts.
• Through interracial marriage, all the rough spots and elements of conflict embedded deep in the culture of each race can be smoothed out and the races harmonized, especially in the children.

7. The family of humankind embraces the physical world and spirit world.

• The spirit world embraces all of time: past, present and future. The material universe extends in all spatial directions.
• Heaven and earth includes all of nature.
  • The earth is our mother.
  • All things are the extension of the human physical body (male and female). An American Indian expression expresses that all creatures are clans in the global family and God cares for winged people (birds), tall people (trees), and long people (rivers).
  • We must restore the environment and bring peace and joy to the physical universe.
• The fellowship of humanity extends to the spirit world.
  • The spirit world is the extension of the human mind.
  • Every culture has give and take with the spirit world. Ancestor worship east and west; aboriginal worship of nature spirits; the Roman Catholic communion of the saints.
• Spirit world extends to all generations, past and future.
• We are the product of spiritual as well as physical lineage and cultural heritage.
• We are divided by historical fear and resentment nursed by generations of ancestors, between Jews and Christians, blacks and whites, men and women, etc.
• To create one great family, we must deal with the history of suffering, which remains festering with passed-away people in the spirit world. We will discuss this under the Fifth Principle.

B. God's purpose of creation is a world of freedom, peace, unification and happiness. This is the world of one great family which reflects God's divine image.

1. God created us as His manifest, tangible form-His image.

• Human beings are created in the image of God.
• Human true love is the image of God's love.
• Human beings have a divine nature, in potential.
• Human beings embody God's image when they are free to grow to complete their potential as mature, loving and true.
• Therefore, freedom is a prerequisite to realizing the divine image.

2. God created us as His partners of love.

• The beloved resembles the lover, and there is peace and harmony between them.
• Human beings are God's love partners.
• Peace and harmony in human relationships constitute the divine image.

3. God created us to multiply Himself and fill God's kingdom with His true children.

• Human family and society are the horizontal multiplication of God in manifest form, that is, it is the expansion of God's love.
• God's image thus expands, and the potential within God, which is infinite, develops in beauty, truth and goodness.
• Multiplication in nature occurs through intense and intimate give and take, achieving unity.
• Unity is the divine image.

4. God finds joy when He senses His own nature reflected and expanded in the creation.

• Joy is the fulfillment of the purpose of creation.
• Therefore the divine image is full of happiness.

5. The divine image.

• It begins with the individual family and is completed in the one great family of humankind.
• It encompasses the cosmos.
• It is a world of freedom, peace, unification and happiness.

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MEANINGFULL ENCOUNTERS