Category: Religion & Spirituality

Challenges of Life: Why and How?

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By Keisuke Noda

Keisuke_NodaHuman life is enigmatic. A variety of challenges falls unexpectedly on an individual and life can seem absurd. There are religious and scientific explanations, but we still wonder: Why? How do we make sense of the challenges we face in life?

This article attempts to shed light on this extremely complex problem by answering the questions of why we have challenges and how we can cope with them.

The most common approach to challenges in Unificationism is based on the concept of “indemnity.” The underlying thesis of this model is that challenges are “caused” by sins, evils, and problems from the past. Other religions also use this sin-redemption approach to challenge.  This model is one that looks backwards in time, but is this retrospective approach the only model that Unificationism offers?

I suggest that a model based on the Unificationist concept of the “original human nature” sets out a forward-looking model.  I argue that human life is “originally” designed as challenge-and-response.  In other words, some challenges (not all) are an intrinsic part of life.

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God’s Original Design for Human Sexuality

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By Jim Stephens

Jim Stephens_edited-1I’m almost 65, but many tell me I look very young for my age. Probably the major reason for this is I have been blessed with a wonderful wife. She understood from the beginning that one of the basic emotional, mental, and physical needs of a man, husband, and father is regular sexual relations about three times a week. And we are still doing it.

I studied engineering in college and I like things that are practical and down to earth. I encountered the revelations of Rev. Sun Myung Moon when I was 24. Over the last 40 years, I’ve had profound spiritual insights and experiences with God. For five years, I co-led with my wife the Blessed Family Department and studied all about marriage enrichment and research. More recently, I became a certified practitioner of an energy healing technique.

Recently, three men revealed to me in brief conversations that they wanted more sex with their wives. Then the pieces began falling into place and a strong impression came over me to write on this topic. Brothers and sisters could be so much happier, joyful, and fulfilled in their marriages than they are. The understanding that God “downloaded” to me I’m calling “God’s Original Design for Sex: Three Times a Week.”

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The Providential Necessity of “Open” Blessings

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By Michael Mickler

Michael_MicklerUnificationists would do well to review accounts of Christianity’s rise, particularly the role of inter-marriage in its penetration of the Roman Empire.

One astute analysis is that of Rodney Stark, an eminent American sociologist of religion, who distinguishes between “primary” and “secondary” conversions in his Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (1997) and The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion (2011).

According to Stark, “In primary conversion, the convert takes an active role in his or her own conversion.” Secondary conversion, he says, “is more passive and involves a somewhat more reluctant acceptance of a faith on the basis of attachments to a primary convert.” Agreeing to “go along” with one’s spouse’s faith is an example of this.

Based upon this distinction, Stark argues that exogamous marriage (with pagans) and secondary conversions were “crucial to the rise of Christianity.”

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God as the Heavenly Parent of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother

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By Ye-Jin Moon

Note: This is an adaptation of a more detailed paper written for “The Unification Movement” course (LTR 5151) at UTS. Ye-Jin Moon consented to have an abridged version published on the AU Blog.

Ye-jin MoonOn January 7, 2013, True Mother made a truly momentous and historical announcement that from that date forward we in the Unification Movement (UM) should be addressing God not just as Heavenly Father, but as “Heavenly Parent,” which necessarily implies that God is equally Heavenly Father as well as Heavenly Mother.

In the UM, it had been customary to address God in the masculine as Heavenly Father, mainly because of the influence coming from the Old and New Testament Ages when God was regularly viewed in the masculine. However, if we are now living in Cheon Il Guk or “God’s Homeland,” the very first issue we need to address is who God is or why God is the Heavenly Parent of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother (HP of HF/HM).

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My Neurons Made Me Do It: Neuroeducation at the Intersection of Religion and Science

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By Kathy Winings

(This is an excerpt from the full 2011 article published in the Journal of Unification Studies)

kathy-winings-2The cornerstone of the Divine Principle is its emphasis on the original ideal of God and the subsequent ontological understanding of men and women. The first chapter outlines the basic principle that guided the creation and interrelatedness of all life forms with God and provides a clear description of our ultimate purpose of life as God originally intended. An important component of that principle concerns the description of human beings as having a spiritual body and a physical body. Divine Principle further explains the process of growth and development for human beings as envisioned by God and describes how and in what way these two “bodies” interconnect.

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Movement, Church or Business?

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By John Redmond

IMG_9544There is an old movie called The Poseidon Adventure, where a passenger ship has an accident and capsizes.  The passengers are all freaked out and although there is trapped air to breathe for a while, everything is upside down and all the passengers have different ideas about the best way out though multiple, dark, inverted passageways. Groups of them argue and head off in different directions, most coming to a cold and lonely end.

Feel a shiver?

Our organization is heading off in many directions. Some want to build churches along the Christian “praise church” model, with home churches becoming traditional churches becoming megachurches.  Others produce banquet events, seeking to publicize aspects of Unification values.  Still others have gone to the business world seeking to make a foundation for a future time when the money will be spent well.

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Faith and Giving

Rev. Sun Myung Moon 

By Bruce Sutchar

bruce_sutcharJesus taught us that it is better to give than to receive.  It’s hard to really believe this until we ourselves have children.  Then we realize at Christmas that it is more joyful to watch our children opening their presents than to open our own.  But there is a deep connection between giving and faith.  It doesn’t work if we give gifts in hope or expectation that we will receive something in return.

In summer 2012, I was given the blessing of going to a seminar in Korea.  On the very first morning, Rev. Sun Myung Moon spoke for about nine hours.

Mrs. Moon tried several times to get him to stop.  She explained that many of the guests had just arrived the night before, that they had not gotten any sleep or that they had not eaten since their last meal on the plane.  Rev. Moon could not be dissuaded, not even when Mother Moon asked him to meet her at the boat dock (an obvious ploy).  He said that if Mother Moon wanted to see him, she should come back to the hall where he was speaking.

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The Feminine Spiritual Tsunami Headed Our Way

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By Tony Scazzero and Jeanne Carroll

Tony 1 W.I.M.G. thumbnail copy_edited-1Jeanne CarrollThe current patriarchal culture as seen in many societies has been perceived by some as the unseen cause of many problems in the world. Societies that have a strong masculine culture are suffering the effects of the imbalance of masculinity and femininity. Although there have been political, military and economic solutions aimed at the problem, has anyone declared that gender imbalance may be the cause as well as the solution to the current crisis?

The empowering of women is a revolutionary idea that has not gotten much traction in many cultures. Paradoxically, true brotherly love is absent when there are no mothers, aunts, daughters and sisters involved. Can a solution to today’s problems be traced back to a gender imbalance that has its cause in the misunderstanding of God’s original design for masculinity and femininity?

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“You’re Not Really an Adult Until Your Father Dies”: Reaching the Highest Stage of Filial Piety

By John Redmond

IMG_9544In the current era of the development of our Unification movement, and the primacy of central blessed families, filial piety is an important measure of our behavior and an undeveloped aspect of the Divine Principle.  So what is it and how does it work?

According to Taoism.net:

“Filial piety consists of several factors; the main ideas include loving one’s parents, being respectful, polite, considerate, loyal, helpful, dutiful, and obedient.”

In our American experience, this narrow definition seems like an old-fashioned way of thinking about one’s responsibilities. The Sixth Commandment is “Honor thy father and mother,” but most Christians read that as respect, not worship.  They reserve worship and absolute obedience for the invisible God.

Confucianism does not have the common Judeo-Christian understanding of an invisible personal God. Rather, Confucius emphasized the ethical framework that automatically led to goodness, perhaps the way a good diet automatically leads to a healthy body.  His idea of the “Mandate of Heaven” was meant to occur naturally as people recognized goodness and naturally surrendered to it.

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