Discovering the Divine Principle Session 5 The Fall part 2 - Script

1 Welcome, my name is__________________________ , and it is my great pleasure to be your host for this segment of our series, Discovering the Divine Principle, the Fall, part 2.

This content comes from the Divine Principle chapter, a revelation from God that was given to the Rev Sun Myung Moon.

2 In the previous segment we introduced the analogy of the tree as a symbol of humanity. If the first man and woman had kept God’s commandment, if they had remained pure, they would have reached maturity as God’s 3 true son and daughter. 4 Then God would have blessed them in marriage. The family that would have emerged from that marriage would have been the healthy seed, the seed that would have brought forth a beautiful tree, the tree of human civilization. It would have been a civilization of freedom, peace and happiness, 5 where we could share a culture of heart as one family under God.

6 What was the primary result of the Fall? The sin of the first man and woman was not just a minor case of bad judgment by a couple of young people. It was the corruption of love itself. It was the corruption of the seed that would determine the nature of human civilization.

7 By corrupting love, the archangel, together with Eve and Adam, changed our lineage. They changed the ownership of the human family from God to the fallen archangel. This is why Jesus, in John 8:44 tells us that the Devil is our father (John 8:44) and in John 12:31, he describes the archangel as the owner of this world. The archangel was able to claim in front of God that the descendants of Adam and Eve were not born out of the love that God had initiated, they were not born out of a love that was based on God’s words or God’s will. The archangel could claim, rightfully, that humanity was born out of the love that he had initiated, according to his will and his words, through his work of temptation and seduction. That’s why the Bible calls Satan “the accuser.”

8 All the people living in the world today are extensions of that original seed, that family that sprouted in the beginning. It’s the same family; it’s just that it has gotten much bigger. This is the tree you and I are connected to. This is the reality of original sin.

And what has been the result of the original sin? One result, which up until now religions have not emphasized, is the pain that this has brought to God’s heart. 9 God is the Parent of all humanity. He is the Parent of absolute unconditional love. Because God’s love is the greatest, His suffering is also the greatest. In Genesis 6:6 we learn that God’s pain was so great that He ”repented that He had made man…” God had to watch as his beloved children were seduced by the false love of the archangel. And God has watched ever since, the history of fallen humanity – from when the first son, Cain, murdered his younger brother Abel, and the thousands of years of human suffering and tragedy. Still today, people wage war and individuals allow their selfish desires to take precedent over the voice of their conscience. God watches as a grieving Parent,

both Father and Mother, shedding tears over the loss of His children and longing for their return.

10 Then, what is sin? We define sin as anything that separates us from God and connects us with Satan. It can be a thought or it can be an action. 11 Sin can be divided into four categories.

12 First there is original sin. We have already spent some time describing the original sin. Everyone has the same original sin. Your station in life makes no difference. Our original sin is the same. It is the simple fact that we were all born into a family that was started by a fallen love relationship initiated by the archangel connects us to him. He gets between us and God.

13 Next there is collective sin. This is the sin that is committed by a particular group. It affects us, even though we may not have personally committed the sin. For example, years back, members of the US military serving in Japan raped and killed a young Japanese girl. That sin was not just their sin. All Americans felt responsible. The president repented on behalf of our nation and gave money to the family in an effort to compensate them.

14 And then there are sins that affect a particular family and its descendants – we call this inherited sin. When parents sin, it is going to impact their children and possibly future generations. It is common sense. We know this is true when it comes to external situations. For example, many diseases are inherited. If parents fill their house with tobacco smoke, their children will suffer the consequences. The same principle is true when it comes to spirituality. If parents are unfaithful to each other, that is going to impact the spiritual state of their descendants.

15 And finally there is personal sin. These are the selfish things we do as individuals that we are responsible for, that create distance between each other and between us and God.

So it’s clearly not enough to just take responsibility for our personal misdeeds. It’s a good start, but that by itself will not remove the gap that separates us from God. We also need to deal with the other categories of sin.

16 And it is most important to understand how critical original sin is. If that is not solved, no matter how much you work on the other sins, it’s not going to get you back to God. You can work on becoming a better person, you can work on correcting the sins of your parents and you can even work on correcting the sins of your nation, but if you don’t cut the root of sin, the branches are going to grow back again. In human history, no matter how great a people may become, corruption always creeps back in again.

17 This is why we need a Messiah, whose heart and love are one with God. We need someone who can restore what Adam and Eve lost, who can re-connect the human family, you and me, to God – so that our lives, our families, and our culture, are rooted in God’s love, not the love initiated by the fallen archangel.

Besides sin, we also have inherited from the Fall something we call fallen nature.

Actually we each have two natures. 18 We have an original nature and a fallen nature. Because God created us, we each possess an original nature that seeks God’s ideal. But our original nature was never fully developed, and therefore it is weak.

In contrast, through the distorted relationships of love that took place between the archangel, Eve, and Adam, a different nature emerged. This is our fallen nature. 19 Unlike our original nature, this nature does not exist in us only in potential. In fact humanity is so good at putting their fallen

nature into practice, we do it without having thinking about it. When a person does something wrong, we often comment, “well, that’s human nature.” But actually that is our fallen nature.

Our original nature struggles to realize goodness and live a life of integrity. Our fallen nature nudges us away from God. If you want to find God, one of the most important things you can do is to reverse your fallen nature. To do that you need to first be able to recognize what fallen nature is. The problem is that most of the time we can’t see our own fallen nature.

As we take a closer look at fallen nature, hopefully you will begin to recognize some of these qualities in yourself. There are basically four aspects of fallen nature.

20 The first aspect is our inability to see things from God’s point of view. It began with the archangel, when he first began to look at Adam and Eve through the eyes of his self-centered desires.

This is what we inherited from the Fall. We all tend to see everything from our own self-centered viewpoint. This is why we experience so much jealousy and envy. We are like students in a school. The teacher wants everyone to do well. But when another student surpasses us, we feel animosity toward them. And, when that person fails, it makes us feel happy. The teacher never feels bad when a student does well and never feels happy when a student fails, but we don’t see it from the teacher’s viewpoint.

21 Have you ever disliked someone for no apparent reason? Sometimes we even find ourselves disliking a person we can acknowledge is of good character and deep love. Yet we want to be critical and find something wrong with them. When we don’t like another person, we are exhibiting this first fallen nature.

Let’s imagine there is a young man who is arrogant and pushy. We quickly decide we don’t like him. But what does God see? Perhaps this young man was unwanted at birth and was raised in a number of foster homes. Perhaps he grew up with a deep sense of insecurity – and in order to compensate, learned to be arrogant and pushy. God does not look at that person’s behavior and then just decide in His heart “I don’t like him.” 22 God understands his situation – and with love, sees his original nature and potential, and wants to help him overcome his problem.

Because of this fallen nature, because we are self-centered and cannot see things as God does, we have hatred and war, we have racism, and all kinds of divisions between peoples.

23 The second aspect of fallen nature is about taking the wrong position. The archangel was trusted to be in the position of a servant and teacher to Adam and Eve. So when the archangel first approached Eve she we can imagine she must have felt uncomfortable and even rejected him, as the Bible says, telling him it was forbidden. But over time, the archangel was able to convince Eve to engage with him in the act of love. Through this act in violation of the Principle, the archangel Lucifer, fell and became Satan.

We see this happening in human society. For example when a teacher leaves their position and seduces a student, or a married person has a fling, or a leader uses their public power for personal benefit.

24 The third aspect of fallen nature is about reversing the proper order. Adam and Eve did not keep the proper order. They chose to engage in sexual love, before they had gained maturity and thus the blessing of God.

The archangel, who was to be in the servant position, by dominating the love of Eve and Adam, was able to put himself over them, as a false master, thus reversing the proper order of creation. This is why in 2 Corinthians 4:4, St Paul referred to the archangel as the god of this world.

25 Probably the most common experience of this fallen nature has to do with the relationship between our mind and body. God created the mind, our spirit, to be stronger than the desires of our body. A true person would have no problem in controlling his or her actions. But because of the Fall, our spirit and our mind are weak. We can’t control our diet. We are seduced by physical comforts, sitting around watching television for hours and hours. And we easily become addicted to substances, alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. Even though we know we are killing ourselves and destroying the lives of those around us, we can’t stop.

26 And lastly, the fourth fallen nature is our tendency to multiply evil. After the archangel seduced Eve, she felt compelled to seduce Adam. When we do something wrong, we want others to join in with us. It makes us feel better. We excuse ourselves, because “everybody is doing it.”

27 And when God asked Adam and Eve what was wrong, Adam put the blame on Eve and Eve put the blame on 28 the archangel. 29 We all tend to try to evade responsibility; we want to blame someone else. This is one of our most difficult problems. When we aren’t willing to face our shortcomings, when we deny our sins, we express this fallen nature.

30 Haven’t we all made mistakes? And then, instead of taking responsibility, we lie to those whom we love. Making a mistake may be a sin, but to lie about makes it worse. We are all covering up who we really are. We hide our sin in order to look good. When we do that we lose our sense of true self worth.

The first step in removing our fallen nature is in being able to admit that we have sin. If we can’t be honest and take responsibility for our problems, we aren’t going to be able to even begin the journey back to God.

This is why it is so important to be aware of fallen nature – the more we understand it, the sooner we can take responsibility for it.

31 Now, I am sure you have a big question about the Fall. Everyone wonders, why did God create a world in which the Fall was even possible? Why not create a world that automatically becomes good?

The answer lies in the important role that love plays in God’s ideal, and the joy that love brings. God created the world through laws and principles. 32 The goal of God’s creation was to have a world that is dominated by love, not by laws.

33 Laws and principles guide the natural world to grow and develop. And God’s principles were guiding the first man and woman to become His true son and daughter, like train tracks guide a train to its destination. But a world in which law and principle, rules and regulations, come first, would be void of authentic love.

In order to create a world governed by love, God designed love to be stronger than the laws of nature. Therefore God knew that the power of love, if it were misdirected, would have the power to push us off the tracks that guide us to the ideal.

34For this reason God gave Adam and Eve His commandment. If they had kept faith in the commandment, not to partake in sexual love – the power of love could have been channeled toward the ideal. Later, when they were ready, God would have removed His commandment. Adam and Eve would have been blessed in marriage and their romantic love would have blossomed to an infinite degree, far far more than we can imagine.

35 Another question that is often asked is, “Why did God not intervene?” Why didn’t He step in and stop what was happening?

36 In order for God to experience the highest possible joy, the partner of God’s love must be like God. He or she must have the capacity to reflect God’s love 100%. This is why God created man and woman in His image.

This means that man and woman cannot just be another creation. The creation can never be on the same level as the Creator. God did not want just another creation. He wanted to have children who would grow to be able to create and give love just as God does.

37 In order to enable man and woman to achieve such a position, He gave us responsibility. He made it so that we participate in His work of creation in order for the ideal to be accomplished. In other words, God designed us to be co-creators with Him.

38 God did not intervene, because He wanted to preserve the principle of human responsibility. God did his best to guide the archangel and Adam and Eve away from the Fall, but at a certain point God had to leave it to us.

The Divine Principle reveals a God whose heart was breaking as He withheld His power in faith that ultimately His children would fulfill their precious and trusted responsibility, and His highest hopes for them. At a certain point, God had to let Adam and Eve take responsibility for how they chose to love. If God had interfered with that, it might have prevented the Fall, but it would have eternally thwarted the ideal God originally desired.

39 That first mistake, the corruption of love, has caused an incredible amount of suffering through human history. But we must not forget, that God has suffered more than all human suffering combined. And we must trust God’s judgment – that when we do finally fulfill our responsibility and restore the ideal – when we look back we will be able to say, together with God, that it was worth it. That’s how wonderful God’s ideal is going to be.

40 What lessons can we learn from this discussion of the result of the Fall?

41 First, we can now understand that the Fall, the story of Adam and Eve, is not a myth. Although it appears in the Bible in symbolic terms, the Fall was an actual event, centered on the misuse of sexual love – an event that separated us from God’s love and God’s truth.

And as we each examine more closely our fallen nature – 42 we will recognize that we continue to be profoundly affected by the Fall. Now we can understand why humanity struggles so much with selfishness, why it is so hard to love others, and why it is so hard to manage our contradictory desires.

We learned that love is powerful – that love, if we don’t understand God’s will, can lead us away from God. For this reason, the study of God’s word and the content of this program become even more important.

43 The good news is that God would not reveal to us the nature of our original sin if He did not also plan to reveal to us the solution. We were born into sin because the first parents were false parents. 44 Now the time is coming that God will raise up a man and woman who can restore the position of parents, and become what we call True Parents. When there are True Parents in the world, we will be able to fully engage in the process of restoring our relationship with God and re-discover our original nature.

In the following segments we will talk about how God has been working through history in order to recover the love of His children.

This sheds new light on the Bible. All the records in it take on a new dimension of meaning. We recognize that God was working to restore the love of man and woman and the beauty of family life.

So that makes this so important for today, when it is so hard to find true love in marriage, when family life is breaking down.

45 Thank you for joining us. Please think about this and share your questions and impressions with the church members you know. As you do, you will gain deeper insight into yourself and the world around you.

The next presentation in “Discovering the Divine Principle” is about Jesus, who came to resolve the problem of sin. The truth we have just heard about the Fall brings a whole new level of understanding of his life and mission. I look forward to sharing this with you.