The Seventh Principle: Be sexually pure to create the culture of heart

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LESSON 28: The Family Culture of Heart

A. We are entering a new age, where true love will prevail in all aspects of culture, creating the culture of heart.

1. The Blessing of marriage and true family life is the key to participating in the new age. The most important single virtue, through which we can participate, sustain and develop in this life of goodness, is sexual purity.

2. Through sexual purity, true love is protected and can expand freely and without limit.

3. Sexual purity will liberate divine and human creativity for a culture of unimaginable beauty and goodness, the culture of heart.

B. What is heart?

1. Among intellect, emotion and will, emotion is the most basic function of mind.

• God's motivation for creation was emotional: the desire to gain joy through loving His beloved object partners.
• Human beings seek many things: wealth, fame, knowledge, etc., but all these things are ultimately for the sake of joy and emotional satisfaction.
• The function of intellect is to guide our actions for the sake of this emotional goal.
• The function of the will is to give us the focus, direction, encouragement and power to strive, all for the sake of the emotional satisfaction we experience when the purpose is fulfilled.

2. Heart is the deepest core of emotion.

• It is not a superficial emotion, like temper, infatuation, frivolity and self-pity.
• Heart is the deepest desire which drives one's life.
  • It gives the basic orientation to life.
  • It may be evil (self-centered) or good (for the sake of others).
• It begets surface emotions according to circumstances and the quality of interaction and love.
  • For example, a parent gets angry at a disobedient child and disciplines him with sadness, but the core heart is loving concern.
  • For example, a player feels aggression and confrontation during a sporting match, but the core heart is the desire to excel at the game.
  • For example, a teacher strongly emphasizes the subject matter, but the core heart is to enlighten the student to help him with his life.
• Surface emotions can be feigned, but the heart is always revealed in the long run.
  • For example, an ambitious woman seeks out a millionaire and seduces him with much expression of joy and happiness, but deep down her heart craves money more his welfare. Should he fall on hard times and lose his money, she will abandon him.
  • For example, many men may speak out for their country, but true patriotism is revealed when the battle begins, and some stay to fight and some escape.

3. The definition of heart.

• Heart is the irrepressible impulse to love an object partner and gain stimulation of joy when that love is reciprocated.
• The purpose of heart is completed when human beings become God's good object partners, multiply God's love in their own relationships, and thus establish the kingdom of God.
• For our purpose, "heart" will refer to good heart, the mature human heart rooted in and one with God's heart.

C. Fallen cultures are not cultures of heart.

1. The imperfect love of man and woman, rooted in the fall of Adam and Eve, corrupts the quality of love in families.

• False love expands to all relationships in society. Were society to allow such immature, wayward hearts to run human affairs unchecked, civilization would never develop.
• As philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote, the society which leaves the fallen human desires uncontrolled is the state of nature: "nasty, cruel, brutish and short." This is not the name of a law firm, but is a good description of the fallen condition.

2. Therefore, society required that the desires of the immature heart be fenced in by something more steady and reliable.

3. To accomplish this, cultures have had to uplift more external aspects of the human person as the basis for cultural unity.

• Service to the gods (Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia)
• The Law of God (biblical Israel)
• Reason (ancient Greece).
• Law (Rome).
• Ethics (Confucian China).
• Faith (medieval Europe).
• Religious freedom and constitutional law (America).

4. By building on these pillars in order to fence in the wayward heart, civilization could develop to a certain level. However, as Augustine said, these societies were merely based upon honor among thieves. They are partial measures to insure order within an evil world in which, at the end of the day, rule is by force, not conscience.

5. These external pillars for culture cannot transcend their essential limitations. They are compensating for an internal corruption of the heart. The quality of heart of the people in the long run determines their fate.

6. The cultures based upon external virtues are temporary.

• They rise, mature and decline.
• They strive for beauty, truth and goodness. They produce great accomplishments, but then fall short and become decadent.
• For example, with internal decadence and selfishness, Rome even with its great legal system collapsed. European Christendom collapsed. America is collapsing.

7. Why do human beings destroy what they have worked so hard to create? It is because we are created to live in a culture of heart, and we will never be satisfied with anything short of that.

• The human heart was created by God to be the central motivating factor of life. Heart also is the motive for the development of civilization. Therefore no culture based on any other value can endure.
• On the other hand, the culture of heart when our hearts our pure will be an eternally developing civilization.

D. What will the culture of heart be like?

1. A culture of heart gives primacy to love.

• True Love is the primary value and the standard of judgment.
• Because true family love is absolute, Heart can be lifted up as the primary value for the first time in history. That means that Satan cannot accuse the human heart anymore, because it is completely one with God. Therefore, heart can set the norms for all human activities.
• Education, government, economy, law and culture will be in the service of true love.
• The family will be the central foundation of culture, the wellspring and anchor of society.

2. Heart is the fount of the creative impulse which produces culture.

• Heart is expressed in each individual through the faculties of emotion, intellect and will.
• Heart thus leads us to seek and create beauty (to satisfy and express our emotion), truth (to satisfy and express our intellect) and goodness (to satisfy and express our will).

3. Heart is expressed in culture as:

• The search for beauty in art and literature;
• The search for truth in science and philosophy;
• The search for goodness in ethics, religion, economy and government.
• The seed of this search is found in the family. The home is the seed expression of art and literature, science and philosophy, ethics, religion, economy and government.
• All culture is an expansion and manifestation of human heart.
  • For example, the medieval heart was centered upon faith, and medieval culture celebrated faith and religious belief in every field.
  • The American heart is centered upon individual freedom and fulfillment, and American culture celebrates individualism in every field.

4. God is at the center of the culture of heart. God, the origin and Lord of true love, bequeaths true love to humanity, His children. In true love, humans resonate with God and experience God's heart as their own. Living by our conscience, which resonates with God's heart, we ever act and create for the benefit of others.

5. The culture of heart is unified and moves as one.

• People practice investing and living for the sake of others.
• They surmount habits of self-centeredness, individualism, selfish privacy and materialism.

6. In love, people naturally wish to live together, cooperate, and help each other. All feel the pain of each other's suffering. All act to keep each other from evil.

7. The four realms of heart in my family naturally expand outwards, so I can love:

• . . . all young people as my children;
• . . . all older people as my parents and grandparents.
• . . . all people my own age as my brothers and sisters.
• There is no more heartistic boundary . . .
  • . . . dividing my family (whom I love) from other families (who are strangers);
  • . . . dividing my nation from foreigners;
  • . . . dividing my people from other races.
  • . . . dividing my actions from their impact on the public.
• True Parents love other people's children more than their own children. This is an example for us, to end all resentment between families.
• Similarly, true presidents love other nations more than their own nation.

8. When this heart is felt and experienced, the one family of humankind that manifests the ideals of freedom, peace, unification and happiness is realized.

The internal moral foundation for the culture of heart is sexual purity. This will be discussed next.

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