Reflection on Hyung Jin Nim’s lecture on July 20, 2012 (Part 3)

In his address to our members from around the world Hyung Jin Nim spoke about the Fall of Man and the destruction of freedom in that process. God gave all things to His children but through the Fall Satan inherited the three Blessings: “God gave Adam and Eve the freedom to choose to live or to die…”

Our international president asked the question: “Can True Love exist without freedom and responsibility?” and then he emphasized, “Even True Love cannot exist without the prerequisite of freedom. Do you see? Freedom is so important to God, so important. The free choice and the responsibility, that is so essential.

Of course God could have taken away man’s freedom. I had one sister ask me. I was hoping for some kind of world, maybe many generations later, when our children and Blessed families have repopulated the world and we have the true lineage and now there will be a world of no sin. — You should be laughing, because even now we have sin.

She was saying, ‘I was hoping, I envision there would be a world without sin.’ I said to her: ‘Sister, the Principle, what did God give to Adam and Eve? God gave them free will. There is a danger with free will…”

I was indeed saddened to hear Hyung Jin Nim speaking in such terms “You should be laughing…” at the ‘naive’ sister who believes that there will be a world without sin! To speak in such a way shows to me that even our international president has lost faith in the ideal world without sin and he even asked brothers and sisters from around the world that they should be laughing at those who believe in the ideal where sin is completely eradicated from the earth.

How could this very sad reality come about that even our True Parents’ beloved youngest son lost faith in the realization of God’s ideal where no peace police is necessary? Clearly he was misled just as Adam and Eve were misguided by the archangel, lured into a distorted understanding that Adam and Eve chose death while in reality they did not choose to die but Lucifer managed to confuse their mind and emotions so that they acted in the wrong way due to their confused state where they could not reason clearly…

We know they should have stopped in that decisive situation and have asked God about His point of view – just as our international president needs to ask the question whether his understanding is correct or not in front of God in deep prayer. I trust that he will have the humility to question seriously whether his concepts are fully in line with how God sees the Fall of Man, its consequence and the elimination of sin.

What Hyung Jin Nim’s explanation comes down to is the thinking that there will never be a world where a peace police is not necessary – which means that from the beginning God had in mind that there would be a peace army in order to secure His ideal of creation. Such a thought is nowhere rooted in the Divine Principle and still our international president is teaching sincere brothers and sisters from around the world such content. Most of them did not laugh about that faithful sister who does not believe in the need for a peace police and army in the ideal world which we are building in the form of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth where the Living God is present in the Hearts of His children.

Hyung Jin Nim explained: “On one hand Adam and Eve can choose to love God. So with freedom you can actually have the possibility that True Love can exist. That’s the awesome upside. The downside, the risk of giving freedom is that they may choose death over life. Doesn’t this make sense?

God could have played it safe; he could have made them just robots and thus been happy with puppy dog obedience which is pretty good. I have puppies, I raised dogs, but it is nowhere near with my relationship with my wife. So God could have made Adam and Eve without freedom and have those nice robots…

But God chose trust. Did God believe in human beings or did God not believe in human beings? Come on people, wake up, I know you are sleeping…”

Unfortunately even our international president has fallen asleep when it comes to distinguishing clearly between God’s eternal and unchanging truth and the distorted version offered by the archangel who wants to make people lose faith in God’s ideal.

The fact that man is free to sin does not mean that he will actually sin — which is according to the definition offered in the Divine Principle a condition for Satan to invade.

When a culture of heart and an environmental kingdom is established as Father had asked us to concentrate on in his Historical Children’s Day address, or had Adam and Eve realized God’s ideal, the likelihood of God’s children falling would be remote, not impossible, but very remote. With the realization of a successful and completed four position foundation God’s original ideal of goodness would multiply. This is the most important point, that a substantial perfected family is realized on earth. That would create the blueprint and model for future generations.

“God’s ideal of creation, which He has longed for since the Garden of Eden, will appear only when a family settles down, becomes recognised by the world, and bears fruit. Through sons and daughters, that family must expand horizontally to become a tribe that will automatically connect itself to the people.” (Cheon Seong Gyeong, page 2361 LHS, April 8, 1997)

In the meantime it will take an unspecified period of time for evil to be completely eradicated from the face of the earth, and during that restorational period the peace police and army are necessary but their task and the need for weapons will naturally come to an end once the world is restored.

Hyung Jin Nim asked the audience: “Who was the one who said, ‘You cannot trust them. You want to trust them with everything? No, no you cannot trust them, are you kidding? Those kids will ruin everything.’ Who did that? Yes, the archangel did that. Did the archangel trust human beings or did he not trust human beings? Did he believe or not believe? He did not believe.

If we understand that we can actually see that government, people who are working in government are not actually bad people. If you go meet these people, they are nice. So Kook hyung is not making comments about the people who work in governments, right? He is making comments about the nature of the institution of government. You see what I mean? We’ve got to be clear about that. Because I hear many people are misunderstanding what he is saying. Oh Kook Jin Nim is promoting freedom because he wants to sell more guns…’ This kind of infantile statements. They are not even listening to what he is saying, they are judging right away.”

Yes, it is very important to listen to others and I am doing so very attentively. I watched Kook Jin Nim’s lectures repeatedly and also this address by Hyung Jin Nim. On the foundation of paying full attention and praying and reflecting on the content of what they have been sharing I am offering my reflection on these lectures – this reflection on Hyung Jin Nim’s address given on July 20, 2012 which is uploaded on vimeo for all the world to see.

How wonderful if the content of that speech were fully in line with God’s Will, but there are various grave misunderstandings and I hope very much that our international president will live up to his own credo and listen with an open heart and mind to recognize in which parts of his teaching he has a mistaken understanding or where he is missing the point.

For example, it is good to speak about misuse of power by the government but first of all we need to address the misuse of position, power and money in our own ranks if we want to be a relevant movement for changing the world for the better.

Unless we eliminate the corruption from within our own church, we will not be able to move history and the world in the right direction but we will remain an insignificant movement when it comes to bringing about substantial changes. We ourselves will be closer to communism, with our over centralized, top — down, command based, bureaucratic and poorly communicating institution that is sowing death not life. It is a serious question: What is Hyung Jin Nim doing about the actual reality of our church?

The core issue is that in our own organization it is the spirit of the archangel that rules and governs our activities which are good on some levels but when you have a closer look it becomes obvious that there is so much selfishness in the hearts of our leaders and members which then creates a huge obstacle for God to be with us as our Heavenly Parent is longing for.

Applied to the actual situation of our church Hyung Jin Nim’s lecture sounds like this: “Who was the one who said, ‘You cannot trust them. You want to trust them with everything? ‘No, no you cannot trust them…’? That is generally the spirit of leaders who do not delegate responsibility but want to keep as much power as possible in their own hands.

Consequently the answer to the question: “Who did that?” is clearly, “The “leaders” of our movement have been doing that.” And the overall answer to the question: “Did the “pastors of our church” trust their members or did they not trust them? Did they believe in them or not?” is sadly also, “They did not believe.” Otherwise we would not have a centralized leadership in our church on each continent with the regional leader deciding what activities are to be focused on in the various countries.

Nearly everywhere, it is a tiny minority of leaders who make most of the decisions for the majority of the membership, as it is for example expressed in the yearly resolutions which are decided by very few people and then signed by the couple of hundred leaders who attend the European Leaders’ Meeting and afterwards all members are asked to recite these point regularly and to focus on them – on what others decided for them.

Related to our church it is also true that if we adapt what Hyung Jin Nim said in his lecture to our leaders: “… If we understand that we can actually see that they are not bad people. If we go and meet them, they are nice.” But the decisive issue is the actual nature of our movement, the spirit which is embodied in our leadership, which is definitely derived from the archangel where Father told us directly that the Korean elders sent out by him are in the archangel position – and they should behave as un — fallen archangels.

Tragically most of them did not manage to lead absolutely God — centered lives so that their spiritual standard deteriorated without them becoming aware of it. So whilst they may be working hard thinking how dedicated they are to God’s Will, without realizing it they became distant from actually embodying the Heart of Heaven and from living up to the expectations of our Heavenly Parent who is longing for us to be His children and one in heart with Him.