Abridged from a speech given February 12, 1978, New York, NY

By Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon

All of us assembled in this auditorium have various, different backgrounds. We have had different ways of life in the past and come from various cultural backgrounds, and furthermore, in your ancestral lines there are combined a variety of situations, traditions and cultures. Even now our way of life is varied because of our different cultural backgrounds.

Even though our histories are different and our ways of life and traditions are different, our goal is the same. We have one common goal around which we gather together. The most important thing to determine is whether or not that goal is self-centered or world-centered. Indeed, our common goal is the benefit and well-being of the entire world. That common goal is truly the aspiration of all mankind, and some day when we reach that goal everyone on this earth will be happy. That ideal goal cannot happen by money alone, and no matter how much knowledge or power you might possess, they will not make that goal possible either. That goal must be everyone’s aspiration, something which makes everyone on this earth happy and protects their well-being.

What is that common goal; how can we define it? We commonly call it love. We are talking about love here, and must decide whether that love is man’s standard of love or whether it transcends man, whether that love should be changing and tarnished by time, or eternal and unchanging in character. Our common goal must be love, a love which must be eternal and absolute and unchanging in quality. If that kind of love is our goal and if there is a God, then it must be linked to Him.

The question is whether we as men can obtain that kind of love. If that permanent and eternal love is an obtainable goal, then we must consider first that the prerequisite to that love is the existence of God. Why couldn’t an almighty and eternal God make that love prevail with men? Why hasn’t it been fulfilled already? That is the fundamental question which all religious men of history have struggled with. The Unification Church is no exception; however, unlike the rest we know that mankind could not obtain this permanent and absolute love of God because of the fall of man.

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