The True Tradition Of Love Is Centered On The Higher Level

If you are not yet familiar with the moving short video about the heart of Jeong Seong of our True Parent please take the time to watch it at vimeo.com/19615979

On February 5, 1989 True Father spoke about the theme “The Tribal Messiah” and pointed out core aspects for us to consider, like the following: “The destiny of the individual is to live for the family, the family for the tribe, the tribe for the nation and the nation for the world. If the nation lives according to that destiny it is qualified to receive the blessing of the whole world. The course which will have lasting success is the one which sets the tradition.

The individual who can set the tradition for the course of the family or the nation or world will be the one that will prosper. The true tradition of individual-level love is one centered on the family. The true tradition for the family is one that is centered on love for the tribe, the greater group. The true tradition of the nation would be a love centered not on the nation, but on the world.”

These are such clear words of our True Father: We are called to establish the true tradition by manifesting the kind of love which is always centered on the higher level. This represents such an essential core principle; and still we have been widely doing poorly in practicing such an attitude.

As individuals we may have done our best to focus on our families, but when it comes to our Blessed families being centered on greater tasks, we have to conclude that we did not do very well because otherwise more of God’s blessing could have reached our families; and we would not have the many serious problems with Blessed children we find today.

The same applies to our work as Tribal Messiahs. There has not been enough investment from our side for the sake of the national level, otherwise our church would have seen greater development in all the mission countries based upon our living up to the Heavenly standard.

When taking a closer look at how well we have been doing, living for the sake of the greater purpose of world-level restoration, we have to conclude that we have been lacking quite a bit in this respect. Even though there have been sincere efforts to sacrifice for worldwide tasks, it is obvious that in our church there has not been enough of the consciousness that ‘my community’ exists for the nation and ‘our country’ for the world, otherwise realities like the ones I will mention in this reflection could have never come about.

Let us look at the example of what kind of consciousness prevails in the community of 120 national messiahs who gathered in the NM list community. To which extent are national messiahs concerned about the well-being and development of the mission in countries other than the one to which the individual national messiah family was appointed?

I have shared with you about the recent discussion in connection of my being allowed back on the NM list. As a matter of fact, when my family was appointed as national messiah we moved directly from

Russia, where we worked as missionaries to Andorra. There we lived for one and a half years together with other national messiahs until they left or had to leave. When we, ourselves, could not stay any longer because of visa restrictions we continued our work in Barcelona, the capital of the region of Catalonia, to which our mission country belongs. In 2000 we had to move back to my home town due to external circumstances.

Sadly, investment on a higher levels like sacrificing one’s own country in order to help in other nations, is not enough appreciated by leaders and members of our church, while the awareness of the importance of sacrificing substantially for the sake of developing the mission in countries other than one’s own is also rather poor. Otherwise there would have been much more investment into the mission lands which all Blessed families received through the lottery. If you doubt this fact, you only need to check how much our members have worked in recent years in the nations to which they were appointed.

To come back to the discussion contributions in connection with my having been nominated to re-join the NM list - the following message was sent addressing the brother who likened me to the dictator of Libya: “Dear [name of this person], It would probably be wiser for Nikolaus B. to focus on his NM mission country, period, and forget about trying to reform the entire movement. And I’ve told him as much.

What rules of the NM List did he break that got him kicked off? Was he posting too much ‘ideological stuff’? Everybody deletes most emails these days anyway. Was he antagonizing people like a prophet of old? Telling everybody to shape up? Maybe he just rubs some people the wrong way. He doesn’t say anything unprincipled. He maybe could be more diplomatic in correcting what he thinks is wrong.

I suppose we’d agree that unity of heart is most important, because without it our united efforts will all fall flat. Even though we may disagree, we can have unity of heart centered on our love for God & TP and our desire to accomplish our God-given mission.

So, to me, to shut out our fellow NM brother who is not unprincipled because we find what he says disagreeable is wrong and counterproductive. I believe we’re bigger than that, or at least we’re expected to be…

BTW, everybody, I’m not going against the moderators wishes to stop discussing this particular thread, only just answering to direct questions. Please don’t hold it against me.”

It is indeed sad that this brother has to once again defend himself for the simple fact that he is speaking about me when the list owner had requested not to do it – just as he had asked 5 years ago that my name and the one of the national messiah who was kicked out at that time along with me, should not be mentioned any more on the NM list.

Another national messiah responded to this quoted message referring to the note “It would probably be wiser for Nikolaus B. to focus on his NM mission country, period,…” with the following lines: “I agree with your point above. As far as I am concerned, I am mainly interested in ‘stories of success’ of brothers and sisters in their mission, not so much what someone else preaches. I can’t even follow all the sermons by True Father, Hyung Jin Nim, and In Jin Nim.

While I understand and agree with some of the points that Nikolaus raises again and again, … and again, I think he needs to present his arguments and criticism to the top leadership in our movement. That is where a change of policy and style of leadership can be enacted. He is mostly preaching to the already converted.

Regarding the topic ‘Unity of National Messiahs’ it is my viewpoint that this applies first of all to the

four NM families within each country. This is what I clearly remember from True Father’s and from Rev. Kwak’s guidance. The four families within any given country should work together, live together, share with each other, etc, etc. And this of course does not mean we cannot and should not share beyond national borders, such as on the NM mailing list. Best wishes to all,…”

Again it is obvious how little awareness is present for the need to work on higher levels than one’s own mission country. Concerning the advice for me to reach out to the top leadership I have to say that the situation has deteriorated to the point that I am cut off: The continental leader says he is waiting for the reports from the national leader, who in turn told me the issues I am dealing with, false reports by leaders, should be resolved by my dealing with them directly - to what they are not ready - while my local leader also says that these issues are not his responsibility. So I have, presently, no way to move ahead on that level because the way is blocked by the chain of command in the church hierarchy.

I was not even informed of the European leaders’ meeting in the Czech Republic last week while my home town borders this country and it would have been easy for me to attend. The invitations from the Korean Headquarters, address first the national messiahs after the continental directors and then the national leaders; but what kind of attitude is practiced in reality towards national messiahs in many countries?

Father stated in his speech about Tribal Messiahs: “If we live according to the heavenly destiny we are qualified to receive complete protection from God. What then is the core element of this protection? It is centered on love.”

What kind of tragedy did the European church encounter last year? Our brothers and sisters around the world know because Hyung Jin Nim spoke about it in his sermon after visiting Europe - the ascension of Tony Yuen, and our sister Tiffany Maldonado having come close to dying but recovering miraculously while Tony had no chance to survive after having been thrown out of the bus of the Eurolines.

I wrote extensively about the spirit of kicking out one’s brother which is still firmly established in our midst. Most sadly even this ever so painful situation of losing exemplary Blessed children (Sarah Hanna also ascended last year) did not move brothers and sisters to check their attitude thoroughly. I do not speak here of the families involved who are in the position of an offering or sacrifice for the sake of the whole. Our Heavenly Father could not protect their children’s life here on earth to the extent as He so desperately wanted because there was not enough foundation for Him to do so.

True Father continued in this speech with telling the audience: “Only if our love is based on true love can it create real happiness.”

From this viewpoint it is easy to check ourselves, how far we have grown in our ability to practice true love by having an honest look at how deeply we are happy internally. We, as individuals, need to ask ourselves this kind of question and search deeply, within our hearts, in front of our Heavenly Father.

We know it is true when Father says: “In history, love has not been rooted in true love, so true happiness has never been achieved.”

If we are to show to people that we understand the root of the problems then we should also represent the solution by being able to convey true happiness to others, coming from the depth of our hearts where our beloved Heavenly Father resides…

Father went on to explain: “Only when the relationship between God and man has entered into a true relationship where there is an absolutely vertical connection will there be a love which is impossible to separate. On that foundation the horizontal axis of love will be matched with a perfect 90 degree angle. Only then can true love start to spread.”

We are called to spread true love in our nations and accordingly we should have a close relationship with God vertically and with one another on the horizontal level.

Let us make therefore sure that our priorities are set right with the higher purpose at the center of our decisions so that we will manifest the Heavenly tradition in whatever area we are working.

Sincerely yours,