Why did God create human beings? God is the source of true love. Yet the joy
of love wells up in the heart only in the context of a relationship. A solitary
being cannot experience it. Even God could not experience any stimulation as
long as He existed all alone. Alone, He cannot love. For His love to blossom,
God needs objects to love. For this reason, God created human beings to be His
children, partners in His true love.
God is the Father of all humankind, and we are God's sons and daughters. In
creating us, God invested everything — the bone of His bone, the flesh of His
flesh, and the marrow of His marrow. Parents raise their children hoping to
reach that most exalted place where parent and child come together — that
central point where their loves converge, their lives converge, and their ideals
converge. In this way, the omniscient and omnipotent God created us to grow into
a position on par with Him and equal to Him in rank.
Then, what is required to complete God's ideal of creation? Beyond anything
God can do, there is the human element. Because God's ideal is the oneness of
God and human beings, God cannot be perfect until human beings reach perfection.
How God must have yearned that the first human ancestors, Adam and Eve, would
become beings of infinite value reflecting His image. Yet because Adam and Eve
fell, God no longer had His own true sons and daughters. Tragically, God could
not establish His family capable of possessing the deep bonds of true love and
propagating a divine lineage.
Instead, Adam and Eve were seduced by the false parent. Their family was
entangled in the chains of false love, false life, and false lineage. As a
consequence, we — their descendants — suffer from an incessant struggle between
the mind and body.
Adam and Eve fought constantly, and so did their children, resulting in
murder. They did not become the exalted beings whom God could relate to as His
eternal son and daughter. God could not glorify them as the true ancestors and
true parents of humanity. Yet with their fall, God lost the only son and
daughter He had.
What happened between Adam and Eve that caused them to fall? Was it, as the
Bible literally says, that they ate the "fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil"? Could merely eating a piece of fruit be the original sin? Could
our ancestors by eating a piece of fruit doom thousands of generations of their
descendants to be sinners? No. It is because the root of sin was planted in the
lineage that it continues on forever in accordance with the laws of inheritance.
The only transgression that can have such lasting impact is a mistake of love,
committed between two people of the opposite sex.
Eve committed adultery with the archangel Lucifer, and they became one. When
Eve then joined with Adam, she bound him in that same oneness. As a result, Adam
and Eve built their family on a conjugal relationship that centered not on God
but on Satan, the fallen archangel. Consequently, all human beings, because we
are descended from Adam and Eve, have inherited Satan's lineage.
According to the Principle of Creation, love determines the right of
ownership. In a relationship of love the partners possess a right of ownership
with respect to each other. By this principle, Satan used his ties of illicit
love to claim ownership over fallen human beings. Satan took over the role of
the "father" of humanity, even though the true Father of humanity is God. This
is why Jesus, in the Gospel of John Chapter 8 verse 44, chastised the people as
children of Satan, saying: "You belong to your father the devil, and you want to
carry out your father's desire."
Christians today may think that almighty Jehovah sits on His royal throne,
and because He is omniscient and omnipotent, He can give orders as He pleases
and have everything go exactly as He wants. In reality, God sits in a place of
wretchedness and harbors tremendous grief.
God had intended Adam and Eve to become the ideal counterparts for His pure,
essential love. Can you imagine the sorrow in God's heart when they fell? It was
infinitely worse than the sorrow that Adam and Eve experienced; indeed, no one
in this world has experienced anything nearly so painful. The most tragic loss
is to lose what is most precious. Carrying this grieving heart, God has to this
day pursued the path of restoration in order to recover His lost children.
There is nothing vague or ambiguous about God. He possesses a definite
character. He desires to form a relationship of the highest true love with human
beings. He desires to share with each of us the most exalted love and joy
eternally. But God lost the starting point for this, due to the mistake of the
first human ancestors. The fall of Adam and Eve caused such damage.
God is the original True Parent, yet He was robbed of His rightful parental
position. How heartbroken He is over this! God looks upon His fallen children,
who inherited the lineage of the enemy Satan and refuse even to recognize that
He exists. How excruciating must God's heart be each and every moment, as He
observes humanity's wretched condition!
For God, nothing was more precious than to have flesh and blood counterparts
who could share His true love. God would not have traded His beloved children
for the entire universe. His sorrow upon losing them was as if He had lost the
entire creation. He felt that His entire purpose for creating the universe had
collapsed. He became a God whose enemy unjustly robbed Him of His cosmic throne.
The fact that God invested His love so completely, in keeping with the
principles of absolute faith, absolute love, and absolute obedience, only made
the results of the fall even more devastating. God was plundered of His ideal,
plundered of His beloved son and daughter, and plundered of His sovereignty over
the cosmos. And yet, forbearing all these years, the innocent God has had to
endure Satan's false accusations.
Seeing the history of lamentation that befell the world following the fall,
the Book of Genesis says that God grieved in His heart. The Apostle Paul said,
"Creation groans, our ancestors groan, and all humanity groans, waiting in eager
anticipation for the appearance of the sons and daughters of God." All creatures
desire to escape this realm of lamentation.
God's inmost heart is broken as He surveys human beings struggling, leading
lives of no value, having lost the glorious value with which they were
originally created. God cries out in grief and agony, saying, "You are supposed
to be my direct lineal children, possessing My love, My life, and My lineage.
You should be enjoying all the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven. My heart is
grieved to see you wearing the mask of the defeated, struggling in pain,
lamentation, and despair until the end of your meaningless lives."
Do you think that God, omniscient and omnipotent and seated on His glorious
throne, would say to His children: "Come on up here. I'm not going to leave this
seat"? Or is it more likely that He would kick His throne out of the way and
come down to where we are?
It is important for you to know that for tens of thousands of years, even
millions of years, God has been wailing tearfully, crying out, "Oh, My son. Oh
My daughter." You may ask how the omniscient and omnipotent God could be in such
a pitiful state, but God cannot get over the shock of losing His beloved sons
and daughters. If there were a way for God to solve this problem on His own, He
would not have had to suffer as He traveled the long, lonely path of the
providence of restoration.
God is limitless love and creative energy. His greatest desire is to
express Himself fully and freely. But His expression is limited by man's
response. Jesus first asked those seeking to be healed if they had faith in
him. Without their faith, Jesus could not express the divine power. Their
faith attracted God's power and love like a magnet attracts iron.
God's desire is that man establish this deep reciprocal relationship of
faith and love with Him. Drawn by man's love, God would have passed on all
of His own characteristics to His child, as the child became aware of them
and desired to possess them within himself. At first God and man would have
been like parent and child, with man passively receiving care and guidance
from His Heavenly Father. As man grew he would want to begin to return love
to his parent, through sharing. God and man would then enter a more mutual
relationship. Finally, man would himself want to give out love more freely
to his Parent, to other men, and to creation. Man would become a creator
like God, in both the material and spiritual realm, producing and raising
his own children. In this way as man matured, he would have been a mirror
reflecting God's image, and each of the aspects of God's ability to love.
But with the fall man established the reciprocal relationship of faith
with Satan rather than with God. In this way Satan established a hold on
men's hearts and has been establishing his kingdom of fear and selfishness
on earth. Each of God's aspects of love has been distorted through Satan's
intervention. Men are not whole, confident loving beings, freely growing
through the receptive, mutual, and then giving stages of love with God and
with each other. In reality they are frightened and insecure, trapped on the
receptive (taking) level, trying to protect themselves by striking out
before someone strikes them.
If the fall had not occurred, man would have been responding deeply to
God, and expressing love to his fellow man. In turning towards Satan, man
lost his capacity to respond to love, either to receive true love or to give
it. Thus man, in never learning how to put forth true love, has never felt
true joy either from other men or from the creation. Unreturned love brings
neither joy nor power to the giver nor can it last long. This is exactly the
same for God. He has never felt love fully returned from man because He has
had no perfect vessel to whom He could express His love wholly and His power
freely. One feels only frustration and sorrow when unable to express love
fully or freely. Throughout history, God has never received true glory and
joy from man.
But God's belief in man's capacity to return to Him is steadfast. Since
man's fall, God has been seeking His lost family with all the love of His
wounded and grieving heart. Since the time of Adam, He has been calling,
"Where are you?" (Gen. 3:9)
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: "Sons
have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox
knows its owner, and the ass its master's crib; but Israel does not
know, my people does not understand." (Isaiah 1:2-3)
The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept
sacrificing to the Baals, and burning incense to idols. Yet it was I who
taught Ephraim to walk. I took them up in my arms; but they did not know
that I healed them. I led them with cords of compassion, with the bands
of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws,
and I bent down to them and fed them. (Hosea 11:2-4)
Separated from God, his True Parent and source of love, power, and joy,
mankind has been suffering from spiritual hunger and thirst. In the depth of
our being we have felt deep loneliness and a great longing for love, God's
love. We have been like orphans, cut off from our true Father and Mother,
God.
As a deer longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and
behold the face of God? My tears have been my food day and night.
(Psalms 42:1-3)
I am weary with my crying: my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim
with waiting for my God. (Psalms 69:3)
Since positive energy from God is our life, our turning towards the negative
energy from Satan has caused our spiritual death and brought about the evil
within man and the world. Diverse religions have developed as man's attempt
to restore the original God-given ability to love. If man had not fallen, he
would have been so naturally close to God that seeking Him through religion
would have been unnecessary.
The separation between God and man is reflected throughout the creation.
Wholehearted love between people is not possible. For this reason, mankind
has failed throughout history to establish a real brotherhood among men and
nations. Families continue to disintegrate. Never has God blessed men and
women in perfect marriage where a continual exchange of God's love has
flowed between marriage partners.
Alienated from God, man has exploited nature rather than cared for it as
if it were a part of himself. Fallen man has not loved the creation because
he has lost the intrinsic feeling for beauty which God gave him. Rather, man
has been proud of himself for conquering nature, using up all of her
resources for himself. But his physical environment has reacted with
hostility to this exploitation and has turned against man. The suffering
creation waits eagerly for man to mature. The Apostle Paul was aware of this
when he said:
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons
of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will
but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation
itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the
glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation
has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the
creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit,
groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our
bodies. (Rom. 8:19-23)
God, man, and all creation have been suffering because of man's alienation
from God. To end this universal suffering, man and all things must reunite
with God and establish His kingdom of joy and love. Through His great
struggle of centuries, the gate of heaven is open at last, and God is
calling all men to enter.
Excerpt from:
Exposition of the Divine Principle
The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of
World Christianity
4 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036
Copyright © H.S.A.-U.W.C., 1996
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in
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