While our name has evolved from the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity to Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, our mission has also grown. We are more than just a church: we are a global movement. We focus on creating world peace through the family—the school of love. We offer the Blessing to do just that. 

Meet the Founders

This unofficial outline of the purpose and potential of our life from the Family Federation’s perspective of God’s original plan and ideal for life on earth seeks to convey a simple but profound vision that it is hoped might help the reader overcome inner suffering and embrace life more fully.

The Existence of a Heart at the Center of Our Universe

• All entities in the known universe are in relationships, and each relationship (whether between two atomic particles or two human beings) leads to a higher level of existence, a higher entity. These relationships are typically between entities of complementary characteristics, such as positive or negative ions in the atomic world, the stamen and pistil of flowering plants, or male and female in the animal and human world.

• Living beings exist for a purpose beyond their own life. For example: honeybees work to make honey to feed their young and in the course of collecting the nectar from flowers, provide the vital service of fertilizing flowering plants (even if an individual honeybee does not understand its value as deeply as we do). Not to mention that humans also like honey!

• The Principle, as the Family Federation’s teaching is known, answers these questions in the affirmative—yes the universe was built, or at least set in motion; it did not come into existence by itself. And God exists as the living heart of the universe. (One reason to accept that our universe did not arise by chance is that fact that human beings are capable of thinking, learning, planning, creating, living for a cause beyond the purpose of their own survival, and loving both each other and the world with commitment – thus exhibiting a consciousness, vision and heart that could not arise from pure matter.)

• The Principle explains this mind and heart of the universe as a parental being who created the universe as a home for his/her sons and daughters who would enter a full relationship of love and sharing of heart and life (compare a human parent with grown up sons and daughters). This being of heart at the center of the universe is known by various names including God, Allah and Jehovah.

The Essential Nature of God Reflected in Human Relationships

• The patterns of yang-yin (Korean: 양-음) or masculine-feminine throughout the universe represent the Creator’s dual characteristics of masculinity and femininity that have been brought into existence as separate beings, and which then come back to unity through their relationship. For example, a man and a woman represent the masculine and feminine aspects of God respectively and become, in a sense, a higher entity based on the unity in love of two complementary halves, in this case husband and wife. Thus, God can more completely expresses his/her love through husband and wife together than through either one or the other.

• The human potential is fulfilled in relationships of love (rather than by material wealth, or position in society – which are often pursued as substitutes for real loving relationships). It is our central purpose in life to become unconditionally loving people, and this is achieved in relationship with others.

• Marriage and family are thus part of God’s plan for humankind, the system God designed for us to learn the essential aspects of unselfish love, first as children, as a brother or sister (or friend), then as a spouse and then as parents. This is not merely a strategy that human beings have stumbled upon, it is a designed system for ensuing generations to inherit the Heavenly Parent’s love.

• It is not just parents that teach their children, children also teach their parents many things. Brothers and sisters, and husband and wife also learn about love through each other. The bequeathal and inheritance of the various kinds of love is multi-directional.

The Higher Purpose Principle and the Maturing of Love: Growing Ourselves

• We believe that a couple can create a lifelong, even eternal bond. Even neuroscience explains that the “value-neutral” human brain can develop the “software” to love just one other person as a lifelong partner. Thus, even our bio-chemical structure suggests that the realization of the human potential requires our conscious effort. But this is nothing particularly groundbreaking: most of us learned about thinking of the needs of others when we were children. And as we work on it, our heart of love grows and expands, and we feel more complete as a person.

• Indeed our course of life on earth is filled with experiences and challenges, sometimes very difficult ones, so that enable us to grow. We speak of “uniting the mind and body,” meaning that the mind has dominion over the desires of the body and reaches upward to a higher purpose.
  This includes managing time and space, our environment. It means caring for the temple that is our body, but not letting its desires (including just to be comfortable) dominate or dictate our course in life. Rather, our mind, heart and ideals should be guiding our daily actions and effort.

• The reality of the higher purpose (developmental) principle is clearly exhibited in human life:
  1st purpose: Maintain the self (survival) – eat, sleep, shelter, keep safe, keep warm

• 2nd purpose: Developmental – Live for a purpose beyond the self – family, service project, teamwork, workplace, patriotic vision, willingness to sacrifice one’s own time and resources for these purposes. Thus in our daily life we should choose to live not just for the purpose of comforting or entertaining the body, or even just striving for our personal benefit or individual success, but to look outward to serve a greater purpose (family, workplace, service project, patriotic endeavor etc.).

• Growth of our body is guided automatically as long one can maintain good health and safety. But other aspects of growth, some of which are indicators of human beings’ unique status in the universe, are not automatic. These aspects include learning new skills and gaining new knowledge. Skills such as learning a new language, how to play a musical instrument, how to manage an NGO, or developing the mathematical algorithms that permit space travel, require not only time but also effort—whether mental or physical. Yet the most important aspect of our growth to become truly human is the maturing of heart, the perfection of our love in all its various aspects. In all areas of love, this requires developing the capacity of empathize with the situations of others, the willingness to sacrifice one’s own comfort in order to help others, willingness (even) to defer or align one’s own ambitions to support a common cause that will benefit a larger whole (a family, a project, an enterprise, one’s nation), or indeed even to live at personal the purpose benefiting all humanity.

Co-Creatorship and Why Love Must Be Learned

• Thus God implemented a plan for us to freely and fully relate to him and each other in love. But perfecting our love so that we can fully relate with God (and understand God’s vastness of heart) is a process.

• God created the universe and yet God reserved one part of the creation for human beings to complete. This is our own character, our own depth of love. This we sometimes call the “human portion of responsibility” in the completion of the creation of the universe. Without people perfecting their love, the universe remains, in a sense, barren. The love between human beings and God, and between each other, is the warmth that lights up the human world—and it lights up the rest of the world also. God cannot reach out to and love the animals and plants directly but will love the world through human beings who are united in heart with God.

• One reason that we don’t start our life as adults, but as babies, is that the period of growth – both physical and spiritual – is needed for us to become mature. By its nature, love has to be learned and grown, it cannot be “bestowed.” God thus designed us to grow in love—giving us our earthly life for this purpose. The principle of inheritance from one to the other is enhanced by the fact that we are all at different stages of growth in our life (due to age difference, varying experiences in life, etc.) and we support each other. Those who are more advanced help and guide those who are nearer the beginning of their path. Children, for example.

• In giving human beings a key role in the completion of the creation, we are, in a sense, co-creators of God’s ideal. Our relationship with God would enable us to feel great joy, a joy that God would also share.

• If husband and wife fully mature their love, God’s manifestation through them is more complete than his manifestation through either the man or the woman.

Life Continues after the Death of Our Body

• Human life continues after we die. The dense physical body that we have used for the duration of our life—and which has been instrumental in helping us grow our heart while we are on earth—dies and we are then free from the weight of our earthly life, taking with us the love we have developed through dealing with the challenges of life in the physical body.

• In a sense our body has been an instrument of our growth: in managing its constant desire for comfort and stimulation we have the chance to develop our character. Living in the body is therefore like weight-training for the spirit and heart.

• The time we have on earth allows us to develop all the love we need for life in the next world, which is our eternal home. Compare a baby in the womb, which grows arms, legs a mouth, nose and eyes (among other things)—all of which are being prepared for the next stage of life. Similarly our life on earth is meant to be the time when we prepare for life in the next stage. Even when we are grandparents we are still learning. And our love is the most essential thing we grow.

Our Failure to Fulfill Our Potential, God’s Suffering and Commitment

• Why do we not see the ideal outlined above flourishing in our world?
  If we examine the world through the lens of the above-mentioned understanding, we can see that people are not relating together based on true love. In fact, instead of working to grow their hearts, we see that many people think of love as something they are entitled to or something to be taken for themselves. Instead of thinking of love as something that is given selflessly for the sake of another or others, people think of love as something they should get—and the world is thus filled with people searching for love for themselves. Thus we might say that the human condition is characterized by immature or self-centered love.
  This is an indication that the inheritance of the complete love of God has not happened between the generations. Because people have never known the fullness of a loving relationship with God, they have not been able to pass that fullness of love down to their children.

• As a Parent whose essence is love, God suffers deeply over the fact that the purpose of the universe has not been completed, over the loss of the relationship with his children.

• God does not send people to heaven or hell depending on what they believe, or as a punishment. If God were like that, he would be less loving than human parents, who always look for the way to help and save their children from harm.
  Our belief and experience is that, rather, God seeks to bring every last human being to know his/her love—whether that person is living on earth now, or has already passed into the eternal realm.

• Through many great teachers and saints, some renowned, others whose lives are not recorded, God has worked to help us understand that God is constantly unfolding a plan to revive human understanding of these principles. The content of the Bible and of other great scriptural works reveal the course of this work throughout history.

The Messiah Embodies the Ideal that Was Lost

• In this context we understand that Jesus came as the first person that had attained the level of heart to be called the Son of God. Traditionally we think of him as having been sent, yet we know he was born on earth as a baby, and he had to grow, face the trials of life as every human being must, and use them as his vehicle for growth. That he succeeded even amid misunderstanding, persecution and his eventual execution is testimony to God’s special investment in him but perhaps more important (from the point of view of a person on earth) that someone who sets him- or herself to the task can become the embodiment of God’s love. (Matthew 5:48 – Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.)

• From some of what Jesus said, it is not unreasonable to conclude that God desired that people receive Jesus, learn from him and apply his spirituality to grow and to imitate his love. (E.g. John 6:29 – Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”) The view held by some that God sent Jesus specifically to die is puzzling when one considers that God had specially prepared a people over 4,000 years of biblical history (as recorded in the Old Testament) with the purpose that they would receive the Messiah when he came. The Family Federation’s view is along these lines. We hold the belief that Jesus nonetheless offered his life for humankind when God knew that no other course remained to him.

• However, the question can be asked, supposing the people of his time had accepted Jesus, followed him and done their best to reach his standard? Supposing he hadn’t been betrayed, but instead welcomed and loved? Then our view is as follows:
  Knowing that a truly good man, the incarnation of God’s love, is still incomplete without his counterpart, God would have wished for Jesus to marry a truly good woman who also embodies God’s true love, and that together they would have a family that would be a model of true love for other families. Jesus would have then assumed the position of the second Adam (Ref: 1 Corinthians 15:45-47) and would succeed where Adam and Eve could not.

[To be continued]

This is my brief though incomplete personal view of the essential principles of our movement. Readers’ questions and comments are most welcome. I can be reached at jmgraykorea@gmail.com.

Julian Gray
Gapyeong, South Korea