Credo

Divine Love is the basic creative force in the universe. It needs to be ordered, just as the universe is ordered. Thus, orderly behavior - virtue - is the ordering of love in such acts of justice, courage, and compassion. Honoring one’s parents, empathic friendship, and loving, committed marriages are also examples of how love can be ordered over time.

In early childhood education, children need to learn how to order their creative energy so that they learn self-control and caring relations with others. Older children and adults need to order their relations so that the powerful, creative force of love is used in caring, compassionate friendship, where the purpose is to draw out the good, the beautiful, and the loving from one another. We are all meant to be true friends in all of our relationships. When the creative force is not ordered, it leads to hostility, hatred, and all kinds of chaos and ugliness. We become enemies to one another.

Artists need to use their creative energy to order - in many different ways - their work and create beauty. In song, dance and the play of language and story artists are often “inspired”, they channel a force of creative energy into the various forms of art.

People for whom the brain and the mind dominate their creative energy study society and seek to understand the truth of social behavior. Psychologists help individuals unlock the blocks that limit the creative force within. Sociologists help us understand the nature of the good society or the forces that undermine and cause breakdown of loving relations between social groups,.

Entrepreneurs, whether storekeepers, chefs, florists, X-Box creators, auto mechanics, or bicycle repairmen and women, create value, wealth, by using the creative force of love in imaginative ways in service to others. Thus, the importance of business ethics. Government, when it is ordered to protect individual freedom and equality, provides the arena for individuals to flourish as they harness the creative force of love in endless ways. When trust breaks down, love turns in upon itself, and the beast of chaos destroys the self and the other.

The creative force of love is present and constant. Our challenge is to harness it for creative use in our personal lives and in directing it to loving friendship, family, and compassionate communities.

Mose Durst is an author, educator, and the former president of the Unification Church of the United States. He received a master’s degree and PhD while studying English Literature at the University of Oregon. He taught at a number of colleges and currently teaches literature and history at the Principled Academy in San Leandro, California. He has published eight books including Principled Education, Shakespeare’s Plays, and Oakland, California: Towards A Sustainable City.