Are You Needed? -- Ideas developed from recent speeches Sun Myung Moon

In the recent Senatorial race in New Hampshire, the first ballot count gave the victory to former Congressman Wyman by 200 votes. His opponent challenged the result and in the re-count he won the race by ten votes. Wyman again challenged the result and a third counting gave him the victory by only two votes. Now the Senate Rules Committee had to decide what to do about the disputed sent. Some ballots were strangely marked, and each disputed ballot is being carefully checked, and each pencil or pen mark is studied for any possible meaning.

Were the voters in New Hampshire really needed by Wyman? In this case, there is no doubt that each ballot is vitally important to him.

But there are so many people who feel no sense of worth or value in themselves. Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown is lined with young men and women doing nothing but aimlessly wandering around or staring off into space. When they are asked what they think about the problems facing humanity or our nation or our city, they don’t care. After all, they ask, what can one person do about the problems of our time? Better to just think about my own.

Is he needed? Are you needed? Am I needed? If people around you really need you, then your answer is yes. You may stop to think, if you are married and have children, “My husband needs me. He can’t even boil water. If I’m not around who will cook the meals?” Or you may think, “My wife needs me. If I’m not around who will fix the broken screen door? Who will teach our son how to fish and hunt?” And, of course, your children need you-whether to give them their bottle and change their diapers or to help them with their homework…

Maybe you are single and are working full time for the church, and you probably realize that you are needed. Somebody has to order the food, somebody has to answer the phones, somebody has to raise funds for center or team expenses, somebody has to pay the bills, somebody has to type the leaflets, somebody has to strip, print, and fold them. Maybe you are the only one who can do this. So you realize that you are needed.

But still, blue Mondays come, and black Thursdays, and all those other terrible days, and you wonder, after all, if anybody would really miss you if you would sneak off and disappear. After all, who wants to face the same problems and the same faces day after day?

Are you really needed? Who needs you?

The most valuable thing is the one which is eternal and unchanging. Diamonds are always valued, and it is reasonable to assume that future generations will value them too. Gold has been universally cherished (reaching prices of $200 per ounce in recent months), and much of the world’s monetary system is based on gold. Gold and diamonds are universally and always valued.

If we apply this standard of measure to people, we can conclude that people of unchanging qualities are the most valued people. The ultimate standard, of course, must be God. Great saints in the past have been loved because of their unchanging faith, courage, or service, or love. When we find such a person we want to unite with him and follow him.

What is the one relationship that never changes, even when the two parties are separated by thousands of miles or scores of years or varied life experiences? It is the relationship of parent and child. In all cultures of all times, the relationship of parent and child is valued and cherished. Parental love never changes.

When God created Adam and Eve, He felt the great happiness and joy of a parent. He must have done beautiful things anticipating their birth. He must have thought beautiful thoughts of them. He must have sung beautiful songs to them.

When Adam and Eve were born, were they needed? Absolutely. God felt the happiness and joy of a parent when His children were given birth. Therefore, the children conceived in God’s heart would want to make Him happy. Each of us was born from our mother’s womb. Even this life on earth is like a womb. We live by the air and are sustained by the environment around us — all given by God — as we were sustained by our mother for nine months before birth.

We want to live in a happy environment. That is part of our basic human nature. But would we be happy if we have one set of parents today and tomorrow a different set, and perhaps still another the next day? No. We want unchanging parents. And we want both a father and a mother as well, not just one or the other.

If you receive unchanging love from your parents, then are you needed or not? You were born out of the love of your parents. You are an object of their love. Without you, their parental love would not have its object. Even if you betray your parents and become their enemy, their love will continue. If you realize how blessed it is to receive your parents’ love, you cannot help but respect and love them. So you are needed by your parents first of all.

You may feel that in your particular case your parents did not give you everything you needed as you grew up. It is popular in American society for children to criticize and rebel against their parents.

Yet, even if your parents were criminals, they are the encapsulation and representation of all your ancestors in spirit world. You are the fruit of all your ancestry and lineage, even including God. So if you realize that your parents are the totalization of the love of all your ancestry, your value of them rises even higher. You cannot trade them even for God.

In our church we have the unique ideal of True Parents. The union of perfect man and a perfect woman — son and daughter of God — is the most complete embodiment of God on earth. It is God’s intention that children learn His love through their parents. Unconsciously our ideal of what parents should be comes from this inborn, original ideal of True Parents. When we have True Parents, and when we can be good children to them, then we are the most blessed and happy people on earth.

So, first of all, we are needed by our parents.

Next, we are needed by our spouse. Every parent wants his child to find a wonderful husband or wife. So parents may ask their daughter, “Do you have a boyfriend?” Or they hint of how nice it would be to have grandchildren to help take care of.

Some American young people consider marriage irrelevant and do not want to make any permanent commitment to an individual. One reason for this reaction may be that they had not seen marriage bring fulfillment and happiness for other people. Your parents are unique, unchanging, and eternal. Your spouse should be also unique, unchanging, and eternal. There is nobody who deep down inside wants to have six husbands. There is nobody who thinks of having ten ideal wives. For each person there is only one ideal spouse.

Male and female represent all mankind. So a family of a man and a woman united is the condensed form of mankind. That is, the union of a man and woman centered on God represents the union of all mankind.

You as an individual are the fruit of all your lineage. Your spouse is the fruit of his or hers. The union of the two therefore represents a union in the spirit world as well as of two individuals on earth. If you are not married now, somewhere a spouse is waiting for you, one who needs you. So you must live a pure life, in preparation for marriage.

In Western thought, one’s spouse is considered more important than one’s parents. In the Oriental tradition, it is the reverse — people think more highly of their parents. And actually, if you abide by the democratic process, two (parents) are more important than one (spouse). So the parents are more important. Also, your parents are like the root of a tree and you and your spouse are like the trunk. If a tree is diseased, you can cut off the trunk and out of the roots will come new life. So the roots are the most important.

Parental love is vertical love. It is our connection to God. It is also the connection between heaven and earth. The love between spouses and between brothers and sisters is horizontal love. Horizontal without the vertical is unstable. It is like floating in mid-air. So for an anchor, in marriage or any relationship between two people on the horizontal level, we need the true love of God and our parents.

There is another level of love which is unique, eternal, and unchanging. That is the love of brothers and sisters. How much are you needed by your brothers and sisters? You are absolutely needed. If your brother or sister is sick and miserable, you want to really pour out your love to them.

In such a situation, your love resembles parental love. When you really love your parents, then you know how much they love your brothers and sisters. So you must love them equally as much. But Cain was unable to do this, and so he multiplied the fallen act of his parents and killed his brother, Abel. Ever since, we have had problems to resolve among brothers and sisters.

Before marriage, your love towards your brothers and sisters is practice for loving your spouse. You can observe many differences in the ways that the brothers act and think and the ways the sisters act and think. Problems always come up. Brothers and sisters may argue a lot, yet underneath these quarrels is still a basic recognition of each other. Many such relationships I’ve seen or been involved in have been gradually worked out after a time of conflict. So we learn from each other. We are all brothers and sisters. We can’t change that, because spiritually we are all from the same lineage.’ Only on the foundation of vertical and horizontal love in the family can we reach out and share our love with the rest of the world.

When we can learn to love our own brothers and sisters, we can learn to love the rest of mankind. So we are needed by our brothers and sisters. We all need each other in order to grow. Sometimes we may think we are only needed for our external work-our muscles or our minds, but it is far deeper than that.

Then, you are needed by the rest of mankind. No matter how big your nation may be, it is still composed of people. So your nation is in need of you. If you think little of yourself, and think that you are not needed, you are betraying your family, your nation, the world, and even God.

These days some predict the decline of the United States. Any nation that has done wrong is doomed to fall. In the middle of such stormy times as these, we can stay afloat if we can let ourselves move with the motion of the wave. If we can detect the direction of the wind we can align ourselves with it and not be overturned. Through the Divine Principle we know the direction of the wind, or God’s will. We may go up and down, but we are headed in the direction of the goal.

In Los Angeles at the end of his 1974 Day of Hope tour, Reverend Moon spoke of his concern for America’s welfare. America is like an entire river which is contaminated. We are like a single drop of pure water. In order to really purify the contaminated water, how much clean water is needed? We cannot say to the dirty water, “Just change yourself and be like us.” We would be asking an impossible thing. Instead, we must pour in more and more pure water, and keep on pouring. Then the dirty, contaminated water will be pushed away; its strength will be more and more weakened, gradually altering the intensity of the contamination.

We are pouring this water of purity over the whole world. But we meet with resistance. We have to pay the price. We are manufacturers of pure water. Each person can manufacture ten, a hundred, or ten thousand people. The sky is the limit. In America, as we keep pouring, we will make a beautiful lake of pure water. Then God can bring His sailboat and sail upon this crystal-pure water.

Another way to look at this is the analogy of a tree. God is the root, digging deeper and deeper. The Messiah is the trunk. What are we? The leaves. In the physical world, leaves absorb carbon dioxide, which is poisonous to animals, and give off oxygen. So we must absorb the evil elements from the world and give out new life in a give and take action.

Truly without you this nation cannot survive. Be responsible for this nation. Initially, people might criticize you as a crazy person, but don’t worry. In the end they will say, “This person is a savior.” Our nation will die only if we do not accomplish our mission. So the destiny of your nation lies on your shoulders.

We represent the country we are citizens of. Whichever it is, our country needs us. Our country needs young people who have hope, who have a purpose, who are willing to sacrifice for their nation.

In America we demonstrated this spirit through our three-day fast on the Capitol steps, to pray for our leaders. The Madison Square Garden campaign and the eight-city tour represented our all-out sacrifice for this country. Our brothers and sisters in other countries are working just as much to serve their country.

Reverend Moon has stood up, fighting all alone against persecution, to build the Kingdom of Heaven. Can we do that? If we can’t do that all alone, then we need each other, and most of all, we need him. He

told the American state leaders in Los Angeles, “Go out and do your own Day of Hope campaign. Then people will say ‘Reverend Moon… Day of Hope… I can’t stand it… we have our own little Reverend Moon here!”

He has promised, “However hard a challenge may come to you, you cannot be discouraged. You must take every rebuff as a challenge to overcome. The harder the situation you are in, the more you must be sure that God is always with you, fighting with you. Then our attitude is, “Come what may, the more hardships we are faced with, the more we feel the challenge!”

Each nation must realize that she profits by having young people who think so much of her. Before long, people will want to be guided by young people who love their country’s future so much. We are not so large a group, and it seems like a dream. But we are the axis upon which this country is turning.

We love this country more than any other people, and we love the world more than any other people. We know God and His heart more than other people. So all humanity needs us.

If we are needed by all mankind, can we afford to be careless or lazy or silly? We cannot afford to waste a moment.

If we are opposed by a group of people, we can move on to another. If we are opposed by a city, we can move on to another.

Reverend Moon has said, “If all mankind is against me, at least the spirit world is on my side. Even though the spirit world might rise against me, I still have one person of ultimate importance in need of me. God is in need of me, so I can never be discouraged. Since God needs me, He will open the way for me, and the world can never object against me in the end. When I think of that I can never become dark or low. I want you to be the same.”

When Reverend Moon first assigned pioneers to each state in 1972, he said that they had to think of themselves as being responsible for the salvation of all the people in that state-whether one million or ten million people. At other times he has talked about 36 million or more people who are dying every day. Without being restored, they are bound for hell. So you and I are responsible for the salvation of those who are dying before we get a chance to witness to them. Then are we needed? Absolutely.

The harder our task, the more we are needed, he says. “Is your burden heavier than mine? I would choose to pave your way and make it easier. Whatever hard things you may have to go through you must not be discouraged when you chink how much you are needed in your place. The harder you work, the more you are needed there.”

In order to be restored and in order to restore the world, we need to be the sacrifice. Like Isaac, we muse willingly offer up our lives. But we need a priest to make the offering. We need someone like Abraham. Who will it be? The Messiah. We have been given the privilege of sacrificing our hearts and our bodies for our country and for mankind.

We in turn are to be Abels to choose we witness to and to our country and to mankind. So we must seek out our Cain and love and serve him, so he can come to God through us. Then are we needed? Absolutely.

Beyond the level of mankind living on earth today, we are needed by spirit world. Without us, the men and women in spirit world cannot gain the all-important element of vitality for their resurrection to higher realms. Our ancestors and other cooperating spirits depend on us. Whatever level we fulfill on earth, they can share in that merit. They did not have the privilege to physically serve the Messiah on earth. So are we needed I y spirit world? Absolutely.

Finally, God needs you. He needs me. Without us, He cannot perceive the physical world, enjoy it, use it, care for it. Without us as His children He cannot be Heavenly Father. His great parental love and heart has no object for its expression. Without our response to His love and ideals and life, God cannot experience the true joy that He longs for.

Each of us is a unique expression of something within God’s internal nature. God doesn’t just need people in general. He needs you and me in particular. And He needs every person on earth and in spirit world.

So our desire and hope is to become the kind of person in this New Year and new period who can bring this salvation to mankind and this joy to God.