TRUE LOVE AND FORBIDDEN LOVE

An Investigation into the Cause of
Immorality and Suffering,
its Historical Origin and its Solution

Chapter 5
IMMATURE AND ILLICIT LOVE
BECAME THE ORIGIN OF ALL
HUMAN TRAGEDY AND SUFFERING

The first couple established a pattern of family life for all history to follow. Adam and Eve began history by embracing each other prematurely under the control of false love taught by the fallen archangel, instead of God. In other words, they began their matrimonial life in adultery and fornication.

From that moment the problems began. Adam accused Eve of tempting him and Eve accused Adam of letting himself be seduced. Their life became one of mutual accusations, with fighting, discord, remorse and anguish.

These parents felt shame in front of the younger generation, unable to show a good example or give true orientation to the children concerning sex and love.

All this suffering had to become visible in daily life. The children inherited those feelings from the parents. They saw and listened to the fights of their parents. The children were naturally influenced by growing up in such circumstances. As a result of such an atmosphere they also fought between themselves, to the point where one brother killed the other.

The first family planted the seed of infidelity, adultery and murder. Unfortunately, human history began to develop from this model and multiplied into a world full of distrust, adultery, fornication, conflicts and murders. People learned to hurt and accuse each other rather than to love and forgive. This false tradition was passed on from generation to generation.

Because we are different from animals, human beings have few instincts to guide them. How to love and live, we learn basically in our family and culture. For this reason the pattern of behavior of the first family was essential in order to establish the true tradition that eventually would shape human life for hundreds of future generations.

Yet at the present time we continue to follow a tradition of immature, temporal, changing and conditional love which is quite contrary to what was planned originally.

Unfortunately, this incomplete and immature love is still the biggest force in the relationship between man and woman. The experience of love on this level blocks and impedes the realization of the ideal of an eternal, unconditional and unchangeable love.

At first, this love feels and promises to be authentic, but in the end we discover that it is only an imitation, in the course of time becoming incomplete and immature.

Now, as in the past, we are influenced by romantic histories, songs, poems, movies and soap operas plagued with examples of this type of false and immature love. In the famous legend of the womanizer "Don Juan," we find the classical Lucifer type personage, the prototype of the conqueror and cheater of women, the "heartbreaker." This glamorous and arrogant man attracts women, seduces them, abandons them, forgets them and quickly substitutes them in a frenzied and untired experience in which he rejoices and enjoys the seduction and the conquest, but is incapable of feeling love. Literature offers us many examples of this satanic attitude of enjoying the destruction of pure, true and eternal love. In "The Burlador of Sevilla" of Tirso of Molina, Don Juan admits: "... the greatest of all pleasures that I could have is to deceive a woman and leave her without honor. " This attitude or tendency is completely destructive and radically opposed to true and authentic love and must be expose as such and completely eradicated.

As it occurred to Eve, it is also interesting to observe the gradual confusion, weakness and impotence of the victim of seduction. This is the response of the seduced Inés to the words of Don Juan Tenorio in it famous book of Zorrilla: "perhaps you possess, Don Juan, a mysterious amulet, that attracts me secretly like an irresistible magnet. Perhaps Satan put in you his fascinating looks, his seductive word and the love that he refused to God. And what I am going to do, Oh my God!, but fall in your arms, as the heart in pieces you are robbing me from here? "

Often, our relationship begins with a feeling of happiness and hope, but frequently finishes with deception, hate and resentment. Instead of liberating us and developing our spiritual potential, it makes us inhibited and distrustful.

We live in anxiety, fearing that our relationships could change, finish, or that we no longer will be able to satisfy its conditions or demands.

At the center of these situations we often find a selfish attitude. Immature love always seeks to sacrifice others for its own benefit and cannot satisfy the need in our hearts for true and unchangeable love, which we so desperately seek.

Even so, this immature love continues to be the strongest temptation for us until we reach perfection and finally experience eternal love centered on God.

The fall caused the total destruction of God's dream of true love. It degraded and changed love, the most sublime, beautiful and sacred experience, into something casual, obscene, impure and very often vulgar. Each experience of love should have been a rejoicing and heavenly explosion of energy and creativity.

The ultimate fulfillment and true satisfaction of any man or woman will be found, without doubt, in true love; nothing better can exist. Sexual intercourse between a true husband and wife is the state of true love. This union is meant to be the most valuable and beautiful, the holiest of all holy things. The experience of true love will always be the supreme experience, the climax, ecstasy of life. The anchor that will give us permanent stability. Although we can have many different experiences in the course of our life, we will always remain connected to that central anchor. Once our life on earth is ended, we will bring this lifetime anchor with us to the spirit world, where it will be anchored in the heart of God.

God made man and woman into very special privileged beings, capable of carrying out the act of love over and over again throughout their life and continuing it forever afterwards in the spirit world.

The experiences of true love are our true treasures which shape our personality, identity and character. That is the only wealth or possession we can carry with us to the spirit world.

Adam and Eve were created to be the temples where God would dwell. The human heart is the place where God should reside and manifest His love. Man's spirit body should vibrate in oneness with the love of God, directing the actions of our physical body.

True love is the power of vibration that God created in order to reach every man and woman, a force which will lead us to harmony with Him.

Therefore, Adam and Eve represented the visible and walking manifestation of the invisible God on earth. They would have been the personification of God. God wanted to live in them and through them have dominion over the whole creation. God, being invisible, cannot do all that He would desire to do. He needs us. Through each one of us He can experience love, joy and giving to others. Only working through us can He make this world into a better place. The shocking reality is that without us He is unable to establish His ideal.

This is the secret of the universe, which nobody throughout history managed to explain with the depth and clarity of the revelation received by Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

If the fall had never occurred, God would have loved Adam and Eve completely, they would have become the sacred temple where God's love would dwell forever. But Satan invaded this most sacred place. This was the worst disaster in history. That is why, the misuse of love was, still is and always will be the cardinal sin from God's point of view.

Before many religious leaders who participated in the Assembly of World Religions in August 1990, Rev. Moon asked: "Where do God's love and man's love meet?" In front of the silent participants, he continued: "In the sexual organs. That place is the palace of love, the palace of the origin of life and the palace of lineage. The power of Satan misused that place and the mission of Rev. Moon is to eliminate Satan from that place. That is the mission of Rev. Moon and the mission of religion."

According to the original plan of God, the sexual organs would be the place where man and woman would unite and consume their eternal love centered on God.

That is the way how God planned to pass on His love, multiply life and transmit His lineage. For this reason the sexual act was supposed to be the ultimate experience where love would be sealed and consummated God, Adam and Eve would dwell together for eternity. This is the way men and women originally would have united with God.

Through that act they would create and multiply the children of God. Children are born when husband and wife unite in love, taking the form of God. Man is an instrument in order to give birth to a child; however, the power to create the children comes from God. Consequently, when husband and wife unite in the realm of God's love, they conceive, procreate and give birth to a child of God.

In the same way that each one of us could not change the parents who gave us birth, once a man and a woman get married under the absolute blessing of God, they could not be separated. They would be husband and wife on this earth and also in the spirit world, for eternity.

The starting point of the ideal world is always a perfect man and a perfect woman and their divine marriage, established with the blessing of God.

From where did humanity originate? Not from the eyes, the nose, or the head, but from the most sacred place: the reproductive organs, the organs of love, the sexual organs.

God's ideal, our existence, life and happiness, everything would be connected to that central place where love would be consummated. It is the place where true love would reside, the seed of life and true blood lineage.

We need to realize that in those organs we can locate the most valuable foundation for life, love and blood lineage. They connect the past, the present and the future.

Satan profaned that sacred place, planting his seed of corruption in the first human ancestors. That seed has been transmitted ever since, from generation to generation.

The act of sexual love between a man and a woman was always supposed to be the most sacred, pure, sublime and beautiful experience in our lives. Because this act fell under Satan's control it often turned into an obscene or vulgar experience.

Fornication, adultery, prostitution, incest, abortion, rape, pornography, homosexuality and all sexual perversions are carried out through these love organs, tainted human life in all races, cultures, religions, etc., throughout human history.

The sexual organs became the temple of evil and completely destroyed the heavenly principle. Through these organs false love, false life and false lineage were planted.

Dirty jokes and the most obscene and vulgar language are often used to describe the act of love and the reproductive organs.

The adolescent years are often spent experiencing satanic and immature love, instead of using that time in a pure and serious preparation for eternal, heavenly love.

Original love was supposed to have been the ticket to heaven for men and women, but instead a ticket to hell resulted through illicit love.

Just as a small bird knows how to build a nest, we were supposed to know how to build true love relationships. Due to the fall, human beings should be embarrassed before some of the lower forms of the creation. After choosing their mate, certain animals remain faithful and, in some cases, even after one partner's death, remain celibate.

How is it possible, that the loyalty and fidelity of rational and spiritually conscious man is so much weaker than the instinct of an animal?

Animals do not commit sins. They live within the natural law which governs the universe. On the other hand, the supreme creation of God became morally degraded to a level far lower than animals. Massacres, torture and sadism are inflicted on each other by human beings throughout recorded history. This has no parallel with any conduct known in the animal kingdom, not even amongst the most terrible predators. Nor do animals rape or engage in prostitution, homosexuality and a whole range of sexual perversions.

We read in the Bible that God, seeing the wickedness and perversity of man, was sorry that He created man and felt sadness in His heart (Genesis 6:5-6).

THE HEART OF GOD

The worst part about this tragedy is the impact it had on God Himself. Let's read some comments in this regard given by Rev. Sun Myung Moon in several sermons:

"The biggest irony is that Adam and Eve did not deeply understand how much pain and suffering their actions were actually causing God, and since then no one has ever understood God's anguished heart at the moment of Adam and Eve's fall. The fall was the pinnacle of the suffering of God ". (22 May 1977)

"God wished that the entire universe had broken into pieces rather than Adam and Eve. If His entire creation had been destroyed then God would not have been as sorrowful as over Adam and Eve. If the whole earth had broken into pieces God could easily have recreated a home for Adam and Eve, but God cannot recreate love; it has to be restored and be given voluntarily and with free will. The entire purpose of creation focuses upon one man and one woman, and if they broke into pieces then there is no hope, only total darkness. God cannot create them again. He has only one course to follow: restoration." (31 Dec. 1978)

"God's position is almost like that of a husband whose wife betrays him and runs away with some stranger. After loving her so much, what feeling would that man harbor in his heart towards her? He would feel tortured." (1 April 1979)

"In a certain sense, Eve was supposed to be the future wife of God. This is so, because once Adam would have reached the level to be one with God, the Spirit of God would have dwelled within him, then Adam would be the embodiment of God Himself. Consequently, for God His wife was raped by Satan." (4 Feb. 1969)

"Satan is the archangel, nothing more than a servant of men and God, but this servant not only raped the daughter of God; he took away all the master's property as well. Satan is an impostor and a fornicator -an adulterer. Our job is to expose and expel Satan from our planet. However, so far in human history, Satan has been trying to kick God out of the planet." (27 Aug. 1987)

"The deepest sorrow in God's heart in all of history was Adam becoming a fallen man. And secondly, the death of Jesus Christ." (11 Feb. 1972)

"Have you ever stopped to think how you would feel if your spouse and children were kidnapped? This is exactly how God feels in His heart. In God's eyes all men have been taken away and He is desperately anxious to bring them back." (11 June 1978)

"The fall of man was in the very place where God was supposed to dwell. But he was expelled. Satan became the owner. He became the occupant. Therefore, the crime of Satan is the destruction of love which is the true essence of God. Consequently, God could not forgive Satan, because if He does, it would mean that Satan himself is destroying God. It is as if Satan is in the position of the invader of a residence. He came to the temple of God, snatched His position, enslaved man and threw out God." (London 1972)

Young Whi Kim, one of the first followers of Rev. Sun Myung Moon writes:

"Through the fall of man, God lost His beloved children who were created in His image as His substantial bodies. When God saw this tragedy, He could not bear it. His heart was broken and He felt the greatest sorrow. God created man to be such a loving being, and God poured out everything He had, His heart, love and energy to make men His children, the masterpieces of all His creation.

Man was created as such a valuable being that without man, God's ideal could not be realized. However, God lost His children through the fall.

God also lost the whole creation, because human beings, as the lords of creation, were dominated by Satan. God's purpose and ideal of creating man and the universe was to receive joy and happiness by having a relationship with them.

God lost everything, and because of this God came to have no one who could completely reflect His nature. Instead God saw the most hateful relationships develop between fallen people and Satan. Men and women who were created to be God's children became Satan's children. Human beings, who were created to be the lords of all creation, became the servants of servants.

However, fallen men do not know their miserable state and often remain satisfied. As ignorant orphans, they even deny the existence of God and do all kinds of evil, establishing a tragic world. So, God lost not only His children, but rather God's children came to stand against Him as His enemies.

God stands in a paradoxical position: He cannot refuse fallen men because they were created as His children originally by Him, and He cannot fully love them, because they became evil children. He cannot destroy them, but must work to save them from the fallen state to the original state of creation.

When God sent His prophets or representatives and even His beloved Son, humanity just opposed them, stoning and killing them and the opposite happened, increasing God's sorrow and pain.

God's expectation for man was so great when he began His work of creation that the disappointment, sorrow and anguish which God felt when man fell were indescribable. We cannot find anyone more grievous than God. Whenever God sees the reality of this world, it constantly reminds Him of the fall of man and makes Him sorrowful. God desperately wants to have His children restored and wants to love them.

That is why He is doing the restoration or salvation work throughout history. Consequently, we should console Him and end His suffering, restoring our original position as His children."

The favorite word that Jesus Christ used in order to call God was "Abba" which means "father". Not only is God a close father to us, but He is also impatiently waiting for our return, as Jesus Christ taught us in the prodigal son's parable.

Through the thousands of years of human history God has never received true glory and happiness from men. Through the silence of centuries God lived in agony with a broken heart.

How long and deep have been His consternation, distress and sorrow!

In the Bible the prophet Hosea describes to us the following feelings of God:

"But the more I called Israel, the further they went from me. They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to idols. It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms, but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love; I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them. (Hosea 11:2-4).

God reveals to us through the prophet Isaiah: "The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master's crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand" (Isaiah 1:3).

Separated from God, humanity from its side, has been suffering of hunger and thirst in spirit, as Psalm 42: 2-4 reads:

"As the deer pants for the streams of water, so my soul pants for you. Oh God! My soul thirsts for God, for the living God: When can I go and meet my God? My tears have been my food day and night."

The separation from God brought man's spiritual death, causing misery, tragedy and evil to all humanity.

Since then, many religions have developed in human society. We look for God through Jesus Christ and other sacred persons. In one way or another, any religious search represents the human effort to restore the image of God within ourselves. This search demonstrates that man's deepest desire is to find God and establish a relationship with Him.

Had man not fallen, humanity would have experienced the love of God, walking and creating with Him. All religious practice would be unnecessary, just as a healthy man does not need a doctor or medicine.

Except for the passages mentioned in Isaiah, Hosea, the Psalms and Jesus Christ's parables, which hardly showed God's grievous heart, our Heavenly Father's deep pain has always remained hidden.

Just as it is very difficult for us to reveal our innermost feelings to everyone, because most people would fail to understand what we were talking about, God could not reveal completely His deep sorrow and anguish, except to someone who would understand exactly what Satan had done and its effect on God's whole plan.

In his deep spiritual exploration, Sun Myung Moon discovered the details about what happened originally, uncovering for the first time the root of this age-old hidden grief of our Heavenly Father, His innermost feelings, His unresolved pain and anguish, and His indignation which He could not express for such a long time.

Once Sun Myung Moon was aware of Heavenly Father's situation and shared His untold and hidden heart, he cried endlessly over God's anguish for days on end. After that he could no longer remain silent or indifferent.

This type of heart was his constant motivating power, which moved him to persevere with determination and courage in spite of the enormous difficulties he had to confront. With a feeling of terrible urgency, he has been constantly working throughout his life, inspiring others to unite in this cosmic battle to overcome and completely eliminate evil and sin from man's life.

For Unificationists, the purpose of salvation is not merely to obtain the divine forgiveness of our individual personal sins and go to heaven. Unfortunately, so many people still believe this and fail to recognize that true salvation means the restoration of the entire human race. It means returning each and everyone of God's children, liberating them from vice, sin and suffering. Only in this way will the final goal, our Heavenly Father's liberation, be accomplished.

From his youth, Sun Myung Moon was absolutely determined to unravel and heal the intolerable burden in the heart of God and uncover the causes of God's deep grief. The task to end and solve this cosmic tragedy became his lifelong mission.

Once God is free to exercise His loving sovereignty over creation, His great and endless joy will bring about a cosmic springtime. The entire universe will be forever radiant in happiness and harmony.

THE ABSOLUTE AND SACRED POWER OF LOVE

We need to remember that the concept of love was first and central in God's mind. His ideal for humanity was not to plan a world of laws and regulations, but a world of love. Therefore, love was established by God as the absolute power, superior to any other power.

Love is the supreme power in the universe. God made this power so absolute that even His principle, that regulates the working of the universe, does not exclude the possibility of expressing love in a form that violates His will.

Literature and history alike pay tribute to this omnipotent reign of love over the human heart. Shakespeare immortalized how the force of love drove Romeo and Juliet to suicide, how Hamlet's uncle was driven and blinded by passion to kill his brother in order to marry his sister-in-law and how Lear became literally insane because he made a mistake about how much his daughters loved him.

In our time, we have seen how King Edward VII of England abdicated the throne for the sake of love.

Religious psychologists point out that in this fallen world the erotic impulse itself is strong enough to disregard all the moral conventional norms which society and conscience ascribe to the will of God.

The power of love was the only conceivable force that could cause man to deviate from his path to perfection. When Eve succumbed to the seduction of the rebellious archangel and prematurely united with Adam, both of them were still under the indirect dominion of the love of God.

They abandoned God and His ideal in order to follow their personal desires. They did not put themselves in a position to trust, wait and sacrifice as was required in order to attain true love which becomes perfect.

God could not exercise direct dominion over them before they reached perfection. Once Adam and Eve had attained maturity, no one and nothing could have broken their unconditional love towards their Creator.

Only at that stage could God freely pour His infinite love upon them. Until that time, the love of our first parents for God was incomplete and could be misdirected.

For this reason, a man and a woman should experience full union of love with each other, only once their individual love for God has become unconditional.

Without succeeding in perfecting our love for God, true affection for another human being is difficult, as the marital problems of our time clearly demonstrate.

WHY GOD DID NOT INTERVENE

If God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good, why did He not somehow protect Adam and Eve from frustrating His plan for the creation?

The Divine Principle suggests that this problem must take four factors into consideration: Human freedom, the absolute and sacred power of love, the spiritual immaturity of Adam and Eve and humanity's intrinsic dignity as the lord of creation.

We possess freedom because we are created in the image of God. If we are human, we are responsible for our actions. If we lack free will we become mere puppets controlled by others.

God's omnipotence is not absolute and His power is limited by the freedom that He gave to man. According to this point of view, man and God must work together to realize the goal of history.

True love by definition is free and voluntary. We cannot force anyone to love us. Not even God could violate this principle.

God wanted Adam and Eve to choose freely the way of goodness and decide to love God in response to His love for them.

True love can be born only if freedom exists. If God had intervened in the fall, He would have invalidated the meaning and value of His children. He would have violated His own perfect system and would have nullified human responsibility. Our freedom, responsibility and creativity have an absolute value which God recognizes and respects unconditionally.

Human beings were created as the lords of creation and potentially possess a greater dignity than any other creature. So in order to be completely qualified for that position, they have to rely on their own powers and judgement in perfecting their hearts according to the divine image.

God waits until man learns how to govern himself, before permitting him to govern the world. We must have dominion over ourselves first before we can have dominion over creation. To stand with dignity before God and creation, we must act of our own volition. In this way, God wants man to share in His creative work.

Man must pass through a process of maturity, during which time great responsibility is received in order to develop self- initiative and self-discipline.

We have to grow to a secure state worthy of the trust of God, our fellow men and all the creation, including the angels.

From this perspective of human responsibility we can understand that the human fall was man's affair alone. God is in no sense a responsible participant. He cannot recognize false love and evil as part of His own creation. In the same way as certain actions which violate the constitution and laws of a country cannot be accepted as valid. In the same way that nations refuse to recognize illegitimately established governments, God could not recognize the world resulting from the fall.

To intervene to stop an action outside His perfect principle would be equivalent to recognizing it as something valid as a part of his creation.

If God had acted, it would have implied recognizing Adam and Eve as mature beings when they were not. God can only have direct dominion over mature sons and daughters who have achieved spiritual maturity through fulfilling their portion of responsibility. To interfere prior to their perfection would deny Adam and Eve's ability to achieve perfection on their own.

For all these reasons, irrespective of how painful and unbearable His heart must have felt at that moment, God could not intervene and prevent the fall.