An Ideal World: Inevitable or Impossible?

By Henry Christopher, UTS Class of 1980

◊ Second in a series of his commentaries on an ideal world ◊

Although many religious people consider themselves the “children” of God, the gap between God and His children is so wide, one wonders if an ideal world can ever be achieved. However, if we consider the origin and nature of God and ourselves as his children, there is ample reason to believe humankind will one day cast off its selfish nature and establish a long cherished world of peace and harmony with God, the creation and ourselves—the long awaited “Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.”

To understand why we can have confidence humankind will establish an ideal world, let’s first consider some fundamental questions about God: Who is God? How did God originate? Why do we say that God is love? Is God and His creation really eternal?

Over my years as a Unificationist, I have explored these questions. Some ideas I present may have little support in most scientific circles where atheism dominates, but they stem from a belief, shared with some of the great Western philosophers, that God exists, is an eternal being, and is the Creator of our eternal universe.

Although today many scientists assert that there is no God and the universe came about randomly, Aristotle, considered one of the first Western scientists, argued for the existence of an eternal God in his observations of the universe. In his book, The Metaphysics, he calls God the “Unmoved Mover”— a being of everlasting life who is the cause of the universe. His argument, taken up later by one of the greatest Christian theologians, Thomas Aquinas, is that things exist because they are in motion. Things cannot set themselves in motion, so something caused one thing to move, which caused the next thing to move, and so on. But if we follow the causal chain back, we can never discover what actually causes the first thing to move, unless it was moved by a being that is eternal: “The Unmoved Mover,” the “Prime Mover,” whom both men said was God.

If God really is the Unmoved Mover, who is the First Cause of the universe as Aristotle and Aquinas postulated, where did He get the energy to move things?

Many scientists claim the universe just happened by chance, that the origin of all things is energy, and that there exists no God who created it or who can hold it together forever.

I argue that the very nature of existence itself came about and is sustained through God’s Love, and without it, nothing could exist, even for a fraction of a moment, much less the billions of years that scientists say the universe has been in existence since the Big Bang.

Rev. Sun Myung Moon—a man some theologians believe has revealed key principles about God and His Providence that are laying the foundation for establishing the “Kingdom of Heaven on Earth”—has an interesting explanation how God could create and sustain the universe.

He says the origin of existence cannot be energy—as many scientists think — since energy cannot generate itself, but the origin of existence is the reciprocal love relationship of two subject and object partners, which produces energy. This concept is similar to Yin and Yang in the Oriental philosophy of complementary opposites.

In Rev. Moon’s words:

 “We see development in this order: love between subject and object, then love action gives rise to the force. Before the action comes, a subject and object relationship must come. Love is the beginning.” (12/13/1992)

 “What is the origin of the universe? It originated from love.” (Cheong Seong Gyeong, p. 1,649, 5/1/1993)

“Why and how did God come into existence? He came into being due to love. How did the origin of the universe come to be realized? The seed of love was assimilated by God with the result that God Himself came to possess internal nature and external form.” (p. 1,638, 10/21/1990)

It occurred to me that that the Yin and Yang could not unite in harmony, and remain united in harmony if they tried to unite by force — that is, by the Yin grabbing from the Yang, and vice versa. They could only come into and stay in existence if they united by giving to each other.

The very nature of existence depended upon the subject and object partners being aware that their unity could only happen by giving to the other, creating a harmonious unity and eternal existence, rather than trying to unite by taking from the other, which would result in conflict and self-destruction. Because the unity of the first seed of the subject and object partners took place in this way, I believe the energy created through their interaction can be considered the consciousness or mind of the seed, and we can call that energy or mind, Love.

We say that God is Love, therefore, I concluded that God “began” His eternal existence as the first seed of Yin and Yang, and that all of God’s characteristics originally were in that first seed of God’s Love.

Since something cannot come from nothing, the “something” which has always existed is the original unit of subject and object—the original seed of God and all that He has created. This is the secret behind Aristotle’s “Unmoved Mover.”

So God is Love, but how is He everlasting or never ending?

I considered that this first seed of God was able to create enough “Love” energy by interacting to maintain its own existence, and have enough energy left over to create another seed of subject and object partners. In this way, an explosion of Love energy and creation that began with the first seed of God has been expanding ever since, and will continue forever. We could say that God is ever-expanding like nuclear explosions constantly going off, and that the incredible explosion of energy is Love. The physical universe—which some scientists wrongly say will eventually run out of energy and die—is actually a result of God’s creative Love, and will also continue to exist eternally, powered by God’s Love.

This is consistent with another concept of Rev. Moon’s, that Love is the only source of power in the universe that increases with action, rather than diminishes, making God and His creation eternal. Rev. Moon says:

“How did the universe begin? From God’s viewpoint, everything began from the principle of living for the sake of others. Love is based on such a concept, and that is why God began His work of creation accordingly. In order to possess love, one needs to repeatedly give and forget. Why should one possess such love? It is because the more love is in motion, instead of decreasing, it increases. Scientifically speaking, any physical phenomenon diminishes the more it moves and acts. In the physical world, the more something engages in movement and consumes energy, the more it is depleted, but in the world of true love, the more it moves, the larger it becomes.

The essential energy which keeps things moving is that of doing for others. Ideal love means we live for the sake of others. This is the original source of power.” (p. 1,641, 11/13/1992)

It appears Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s “Unmoved Mover,” or God, got His start from a Seed of Love, which produced an explosion of love energy that God used to create the universe. The very origin of God is love, the universe is a result of the creative force of God’s love, and everything—God, humankind and the creation — are all connected by Love.

Then how can we bring about an ideal world from our seemingly helpless state of hatred, greed, suffering and conflict? When humankind wakes up to the understanding that the profound beauty, harmony and order of our universe is the result of God’s Love, that the very energy that moves everything is the energy of God’s Love, then we will have taken our first step towards re-connecting to God and the universal energy that is God’s love.

God is a spiritual being, and as we cultivate our spiritual senses, we will begin to see, hear, taste, feel and be bathed in God’s love to such a degree, that we can no longer bear to be selfish and unloving towards each other. We will realize there is a natural abundance of God’s love and material resources in the universe, and will re-mold ourselves into beings of eternal love because we will want to resemble God, and be in harmony with Him and His creation. This will inevitably lead humankind into building with God, an ideal world, a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.♦

Henry Christopher was for 20 years a graphic artist at The Washington Times and is currently the UTS Community Relations Director producing the UTS Speakers’ Forum broadcast on local PANDA TV.