What I want to say to the brothers and sisters of the Family Federation

What I want to say to the brothers and sisters of the Family Federation

1) We must have a faith that maintains its life force.

As people of faith, what kind of religion do we need to practice? In order to grapple with this question, let’s consider religion as being divided into two categories. One category is 'closed religion' and the other category is 'open religion'.

The primary feature of a closed religion is that it teaches all adherents to submit unconditionally to a self-defined absolute authority. A closed religion teaches the following formula: all answers, every aspect of the code of conduct, all actions and doctrines are absolute and unchanging, and have already been given. Consequently, as long as an adherent accepts these literally and obeys them by believing them without question, then the adherent will be blessed and rewarded. If the adherent does not obey them, however, he or she will receive anger and punishment.

In contrast, an open religion teaches us not to treat the world we take for granted, the world of everyday life, as an absolute. It teaches us not the be satisfied with this world. Instead, an open religion teaches us to treat the transcendental world as the true real world, and to confront that true world as is. To help us do this, an open religion guides us to humbly recognize that, as human beings, our current thinking and appreciation of the world is inherently limited. Such a religion requires us to make the effort to continually investigate with an open mind so that we discover and perceive deeper and broader dimensions of the truth. In other words, in a nutshell, a closed religion is one that clings to the 'surface structure' of reality, while an open religion is interested in the 'deep structure’ of reality.

So then, which religions are closed religions and which ones are open religions? Actually, if we try to divide all religions down-the-middle in a manner that says this religion is an open one and this religion is a closed one, this does not help. Trying to divide religions into sheep and goats like this is not an applicable approach. Why? Because most religions can be both closed and open. In other words, closed religion aspects and open religion aspects can both exist together within a single religion. Whatever the religion is, if the people following that religion do not deeply grasp the true purpose of the religion but instead continue a suffocating religious lifestyle forever, fixated on the superficial words, then that religion will become a closed religion. On the other hand, if the adherents of the religion invest themselves to ever more deeply realize the true meaning of the religion and strive to live a life in which they experience the freedom and liberation that the religion is intended to foster, then that religion will become an open religion.

If we take stock of our own approach to the life of faith, we will probably realize that it is not a good thing to either unconditionally accepting or unconditionally rejecting anything that others may say to us. Unconditionally believing everything that someone else says to us is a foolish 'blind faith'. At the same time, while it seems different, the approach of rejecting everything in fact comes from the same 'blind faith' attitude.

In his famous work "On Liberty", the English philosopher John Stuart Mill discusses a variety of reasons why it is critical to guarantee freedom of speech. According to Mill, it is beneficial for people who have brilliant ideas to share those ideas with others on the basis of freedom of speech, but even more importantly, and fundamentally, it is in the process of freely presenting and discussing those views that the strengths and defects of those ideas come more clearly to light.

In a society where everyone thinks the same and says the same things, or a society where people are forced to behave like this, only stagnation will occur. It doesn't matter what is said, even if it seems preposterous or ridiculous. As long as free speech is allowed, then what is said can undergo an animated discussion process. If the content is excellent, it will be accepted and developed even further. If the content is truly useless or bad, then it will naturally die out because of the rejection it experiences.

According to Mill, a society can only free itself from a state of mediocrity and achieve continuous development through this kind of free discussion process, where people are allowed to listen to other's ideas and then organize and express their own. For this reason, freedom of speech must be guaranteed. Even more than being a matter of human rights, free speech is indispensable for the development of human society. (From 'The one question that Jesus ignored’, Prof. Oh Kang Nam) A little while back, I had the opportunity to have a very candid one-on-one talk with a brother from the Family Federation. I got the impression that he was experiencing a lot of worry and was struggling internally. Having dedicated both his youth and his future to the providence, he had overcome opposition from his family and ridicule from those around him. And although he had followed the movement up until this time with conviction and hope, all of a sudden he found himself in a dead end and he spent a lot of time questioning his own choices.

"As it is today, can the Family Federation achieve the ideal of Cheon Il Guk?"

"In the midst of all the confusion that exists today, am I going in the right direction?"

Considering where our movement now stands, we need to take a step back, calm ourselves down and take some time to reflect quietly and ask ourselves:

1. Is the series of changes that the leadership of the Family Federation have adopted since True Father ascended truly in alignment with True Father's will?
2. Considering that the True Parent proclaimed Moon Hyung Jin as his representative body and heir, why did Moon Hyung Jin leave the church? Why is he criticizing his Mother and reprimanding the leadership of the Family Federation with such intense indignation and anger?
3. We see the church splitting up into two, into three, before our very eyes, yet why is the leadership of the Family Federation so disinterested in actively resolving the situation?
4. Is it True Father's will that we should have no idea what is going on inside the church, or that we remain completely uninvolved in what is going on inside the church? Should we simply follow the directions of the headquarters of the Family Federation without knowing or hearing anything?
5. We were told by Father that God would directly rule after Foundation Day, so what is God actually doing? Is the ‘Cheon Il Guk’' that has been established the correct and true Cheon Il Guk? Are we destined to continue to live like this until we die? Is this the destiny of our children's generation too?
6. Is the path that I am walking now one with the Will of God? Or am I somehow deluding myself?

Many brothers and sisters experience confusion about all these things. I mean, what is right? What is wrong? Who should I be following, the leadership of the Family Federation or the Sanctuary Church?

These kinds of complicated feelings have created a dilemma that most of the blessed families of the Unification path are confronted with today. Considering that fact, doesn't it stand to reason that it is now more important than ever to take the necessary time to examine and reflect on one’s own course of faith?

Accordingly, rather than focusing on the assertions I am putting to you here today, I think it's more necessary to pause and take an objective look at the state we, as a whole, are in. Let's take some time to be silent, to step back from who I am today, to put aside all the shouts and all the whispers, and quietly take a look at myself.

Personally, I think we need to experience a new awakening, a new perspective, in our life of faith. For example, what is the thing that we have to do in order to correctly lead a life of faith? What is it that we must avoid at all costs? Also, what is the purpose of the practice of faith?

Today, I need nothing more than the smartphone in my hand to access all of the world's data. Almost instantaneously, I can obtain a quantity of information that is far greater than the knowledge of 100 different experts. This is the era in which we live, the era of transparent information, when all the secrets of the world are coming out and when nothing can be covered up.

Yet despite this era, the leadership of the Family Federation has created a no-go zone around the issues taking place inside Cheon Jeong Gung. We only get what information they decide to give us, and everything else is covered up. Today's Family Federation is caught up in a whirlwind of struggle and stands on the precipice and yet we, the membership, have become outsiders, kept in ignorance of what the reality is. Instead, members of society who are not part of the Unification Movement are the ones who inform us about the inner workings taking place inside the Family Federation!

An organization that runs only on instructions and obedience while shutting off any approach to its inner workings has lost its life force. A group that only allows top-down obedience and rejects any bottom-up communication is a group that has no life force. When there is no communication, the nerves become paralyzed and decay begins to set in. Even if an illness exists, the ability to feel or sense that illness has been lost. Such an organization or group has only two ways it can continue its existence: Resistance and rebellion or apathy and indifference. What else is possible? Doesn’t this describe the state of affairs in the Family Federation today?

All of us were revolutionaries in our time. Led by Heaven to meet the Messiah, we shook off the shackles of the world and declared our determination to accomplish an ideal world of freedom, peace and happiness by following him. Attending True Father, the Messiah, we punched our way through the wilderness era and overcame numerous persecutions and bone-breaking situations to gain victory and together establish the kingly authority of God. Following the ascension of the Messiah to the spirit world, however, the Family Federation has been caught up in massive confusion and the Unification Church has been split in two.

Noticing that the Messiah's will was evaporating from the Family Federation, there are those who went once again into the cold wilderness, following True Father's representative body and heir Moon Hyung Jin, who stood alone in the wilderness defending God's will. Why? To keep their promise to the Messiah and revive God's will again. These are the brothers and sisters of the Peace and Unification Sanctuary, who stand in protection of the three generational kingships.

But the brothers and sisters who remain in the Family Federation have other ideas. They fear to go once again and walk the wilderness course. They don't want to sacrifice any more. These are the people who prefer to live quietly, comfortably, obediently in 'Cheon Il Guk', regardless of whether they have to attend True Father or attend Hak Ja Han, regardless of whether the leadership of the Family Federation are doing the right thing or the wrong thing. They tell themselves that now that they have finally become the central blessed families of Cheon Il Guk, they'd rather now just go along and enter into Heaven believing that everything is fine. They have been tamed. Domesticated, actually. But before we even begin to think about finding out which path is the one that leads to Cheon Il Guk, we need to think about how we should practice our life of faith. Only a correct view of the life of faith will guide us to the right path.

An incorrect practice of faith can be extremely damaging. Of all the problems it can create, I think that forfeiting 'one’s right to think autonomously and rationally' is by far the worst.

A distorted perspective on faith often leads the practitioner to immerse themselves in a rigid or fixed view of doctrine and salvation, and we can already see a lot of this within the Family Federation. It's easy to find numerous structural barriers within the Federation preventing any kind of criticism, and these barriers make it impossible to investigate the facts. Moreover, everyone and anyone can see that this is happening. In that kind of environment, faith naturally becomes conceptual and the ‘faithful’ fall into a spiritual rut where the only thing that expands is the theory of salvation. It becomes impossible for outsiders to find any active breathing signs of life. Me? I call this ‘programmed robotic faith’.

People whose thinking and discernment have run dry, people whose sense of awareness is dead; such people have lost their freedom and their ability to decide. They are nothing more than robots or slaves.

This is the type of faith that puts rigid doctrine in the center place. It obliterates our ability to think autonomously and destroys our ability to experience the freedom that makes life worth living. Such a system of faith traps our thinking inside a hard, frozen fence and treats us like livestock, sapping our life force. This kind of religious institution is something we have to resolutely reject.

The true life of faith is a path in which we renew ourselves again and again, each and every day. Regardless of any position I find myself in, I have to examine myself in the light of the truth and build my awareness, always directing myself towards freedom and liberation in that truth. Faith in which free thought and action are fettered by the shackles of doctrine and ritual is neither correct nor is it true faith.

You need to experience a new realization and awaken from illusion. If you do, you will find that your vista is broadened; a bright light will shine on the road to building Cheon Il Guk, and you'll be able to accurately evaluate all the changes taking place today in the leadership of the Family Federation.

All of you are free to criticize me. Discussion is what teaches us to distinguish right and wrong. Just don't practice a dead life of faith. In the whole world, no one in more miserable than the person whose soul and free spirit have become parched like a desert, and who lives out a meaningless life devoid of thought. As True Father taught us: "there is no perfection in ignorance".

2) A free people growing in faith

Brothers and sisters of the Family Federation: in your families, are husband and wife one in true love? Are your children being raised properly in accordance with the desires of God and True Parents? Are you moving ahead to perfect the four realms of heart, the three great kingships and the realm of the royal family? Of course, if you ask me 'How about you? You are the one asking the question', then of course the same goes for me.

But then, is the headquarters of the Family Federation helping you to achieve a true family? Many of you came from Japan, crossing the Genkai Sea to follow True Parents will, receive the Blessing and establish true families. You pulled yourselves away from your parents while they were wailing and crying and holding on to your sleeves. You put aside the warnings that your families would cut you off and you came to South Korea. You put aside all ties, determined to attend the True Parent and build a four position foundation that would embody a true couple and give birth to true children.

You freely abandoned everything you had in Japan and came over here. You took this path with the determination that at some point, once the Will was accomplished and you had built a true family, you would go as a couple, together with your children, and proudly show yourselves to your brothers and sisters and parents at home. But where are you today? How have your families turned out?

Are you a proud couple? Have your children grown up as principled young people, as models for the secular world? Are your children proud of their parents? Are they grateful to their parents?

Up to this day, you have sacrificed and given your obedience to the path of God’s Will, so why have things turned out this way? It is your fault?

I'm sorry if these words hurt your feelings. That is not my intention - to damage your pride or your self-esteem. And I'm not trying to say that you made the wrong choices in life, in the direction you chose. You didn't make the wrong choice; it was the right direction to take. But the leadership of the Family Federation have made serious mistakes. The Family Federation should exist for the sake of true families, but they led you to live like you exist for the sake of the church, and that is a mistake.

They told you to serve the church, even if it meant sacrificing your families. That's no small matter. In fact, this instruction caused us to diverge from the true direction of God's will. We all received the Blessing from the True Parents. None of you chose your own subject or object partner. True Father matched you together and told you to make a true family. But the Family Federation today has no interest in your family. All they are interested in are ‘the results’ aka your performance. For them, you are nothing more than a number on their performance balance sheet.

Moreover, they have no interest in the quality of life you live after you received the Blessing. When you were suffering in your Blessing, struggling with language and culture and communication breakdown, did they ever provide genuine care? Counseling? All they did was give you the title of 'Missionary' and then take you away from your family for witnessing every chance they could get. And service, as well. Service projects. They drew up a roster and got you to clean the church and cook the meals. At times, they would invite visitors and get you to wear 'Hanbok' (traditional Korean dresses) and have you sing before their guests. And you followed their instructions like puppets, without any pride or sense of self-respect. They told you this is what it meant to practice a good life of faith – ‘obey the church leaders’.

When your children were treated as outcasts at school for being 'multi-racial children', labeled as 'Unification Church students', and when they found it impossible to adjust to school life and suffered as a result, the church provided no counseling whatsoever, nor did it try to help them adjust to school life in any way. Most blessed children have no sense of confidence in their own identity. Instead of feeling proud of being a second generation, they had to hide their identity and live life embarrassed about who they are. The children came to feel depressed about their mothers who spent each day, every day, living at the church, and in the end, they came to mistrust their own parents and feel envious of normal, regular families. Eventually, they rejected the hopes and purposes of their parents and became distant from the church.

It has often been said 'let's follow the way of the Will so that we can realize the goals of True Parents'. Today, however, we have to be careful not to treat the 'Family Federation' as if the organization itself represents the highest value of all values. If we misconstrue things, and think that way - that we must give all our effort and all our time purely for the sake of the Family Federation - this will only create more problems.

True Father came to this world as 'the one to accomplish the will of God'. He lived his entire life with the heart of a parent who searches for his children, with no other goal than to establish true people and true families and a true ideal world here in this false and fallen world. For that goal, he shed his sweat, tears and blood. So that is why the Family Federation exists: for the sake of true families. The federation does not and cannot exist only for itself. Ultimately, the purpose of the existence of the Family Federation is to realize true families.

Historically speaking, most churches were first established as places for serving the world, but after a time they became a purpose unto themselves, so that the church itself eventually became 'sacred'. This is just like what happened in communist nations, where the communist party was first established to usher in a workers' paradise, but once it was in power, the party itself became the highest good and the most important value.

I want to emphasize this once again: the Family Federation is meant to exist for the sake of the blessed families; blessed families do not exist for the sake of the Family Federation. Moreover, blessed families should not be sacrificed for the sake of the 'donation providence' or for the expansion of ecclesiastical power. These things themselves have little if not nothing to do with a 'true family movement'.

Actually, in the completed testament era, witnessing is not something we should do by going outside and talking to people in the street. Rather, we should be building true families and showing people what they are like. Instead of grabbing a handful of fliers and tracking down people to preach to them, we should be witnessing by our actions, and beyond that, by showing people model families who embody and realize true love in practice.

In order to realize Cheon Il Guk, the Family Federation should be more concerned with "what kind of people we are becoming" and "what kind of families we should be" than with worrying about "what members should be doing for the church". Regardless of what we offer, unless our lives experience some fundamental and essential change, then all our efforts will fail to bring any substantial result.

If first of all, we ourselves become true beings and we live changed lives, then witnessing in the true sense will take place naturally and automatically. Even in the secular world, there are many people who know about True Father's amazing and noble life. There are many Ambassadors for Peace who deeply respect True Father. Many of those Ambassadors for Peace have also received the Blessing. They know well about the sacrifices made by our Japanese brothers and sisters. So why then do they not become members of the Family Federation? My personal view is that they do not join the Family Federation because they have seen our lives and how we practice our faith; they have seen our families.

I wonder if, when they encountered us, what they actually found was a blind faith and massive donations. I think they probably saw our tired, drooping faces. Perhaps the reason they don't join is that, even though they can see how great True Parents are, when they look at us they think "is this the result of following True Parents?"

In this sense, I think that being true witnessing is not a matter of being busy and doing activity by running here and there, but rather our continuous and unceasing efforts at internal growth and change - that itself is the true witness.

Rather than acting in accordance with my own free judgment and my own free decisions, when the leadership of the Family Federation thinks for me and decides things for me, then that is nothing more than moving thoughtlessly, like a slave. Moon Hyung Jin says that this is like being under a spell. He is shouting, calling for you to wake up. He is waking everyone up, telling you that you have to be liberated from this slave-like state. When he shouts 'Stupid!', he's trying to wake us up.