3.5 Education in sacrifice, service and public life

The wounds or injuries you get while sacrificing, serving or living a public life will be an essential and substantial form of education for both you and your future descendants. (27-297, 12/22/1969)

Imagine you are an elementary school teacher. It is not easy to teach young children. They always want to do as they wish. If the children are like that, you cannot train or educate them. As a teacher, you have to love them, bear with them, observe and help them. It is not simple.
If a child feels his teacher loves him more than his own parents, or his older brothers and elder sisters, then that teacher is a qualified and truly wonderful teacher. The lesson learned in this example of an elementary school student also applies to our efforts to educate the people of the world, and to the eternal unchanging education we are seeking to implement.
To educate and train those people, those souls, how much more preparation do we ourselves have to make? Without our service, sacrifices and dedication for the people, we cannot accomplish this historical task. There is no other way. Even distinguished religious leaders have no means to guide the world or people's lives except for the service and sacrifice that Rev. Moon is teaching. (52-272, 01/09/1972)

If God has a means of educating fallen men, what will it be? Fallen man cannot stand in the position where he can directly deal with God. If there is one way for God to approach mankind, we can draw the conclusion that it must be through the mind - the way of showing that He is a loving God.
If God intends to love and to bring salvation to humankind again, what method can he use? He can only teach us to sacrifice ourselves for others. You must understand that this is an indisputable iron rule.
The Bible states that there is no greater love than for a man to lay down his life for his friend. We can discover similar teachings anywhere in the Scriptures. Through the Holy Book, we can find the logical conclusion that God exists and is alive. (69-44, 09/09/1973)

I have been teaching you to sacrifice yourselves for America and the world. When I arrived in America, I laid bare all my property and possessions. I am making the Koreans, Japanese and Europeans suffer in order to save America.
If you only try to evade hardships, you will no doubt perish. Thus, I will push you even harder, and make you suffer more than the Koreans, Japanese and Europeans. Then you will receive love, and then good traditions will be established. (106-74, 12/09/1979)

The core teaching of mainstream religions is to walk a path completely opposite to the path of the physical body. The main religions teach us to serve, sacrifice and humble ourselves. They teach us not to hold our heads high, but to keep them down low. Hence, Satan has nowhere to go except hell. (251-117, 10/17/1993)

Do you wish to receive blessings? Do you want eternal life? Then you must be a public figure. You should not love your children simply as your own sons and daughters when you teach them. You have to love them as offerings, as sons and daughters for the sake of the world's people.
When you hug your baby in your bosom and breast-feed it, you have to feel you are nursing a baby representative of all humanity as a woman representing all womankind. You have to be a mother who can love the baby of another person with the same standard of heart as you would love your own.
Babies who suckle on the breast of that mother will grow up to be great people. It may not happen immediately, but after a generation or two, a man of fine character who can govern and guide the world will be born into that blood lineage. This is the formula. (31-168, 05/24/1970)

Private matters and affairs belong to evil, whereas public matters belong to the sphere of goodness. It is the same for history. Personal and private history is Satan's history, and is destined to perish. On the other hand, public history is God's history of goodness.
You have to teach these concepts. When you look at, listen to or smell something, are you doing it with a public mind, or an individual mind? When you work or walk, are you doing so with a public mind, or an individual mind? All problems have to be solved with this kind of standard. (36-68, 11/15/1970)

Of all the education you are receiving, which is the true one? A genuine education is one that teaches a person to offer his life for others. No other education is higher than that.
Those among you who want to perish, raise your hands. Those who want to flourish, put up your hands. The way to prosperity is simple. If you become true, you will thrive. Why? Because everybody stands on your side and gives everything they have to you.
On the other hand, if everybody wants to devour and dishonor you, you will perish. If you run amuck centering on yourself, you will not last long. If you center on others, however, you can continue for a long time. The origins of good and evil divide at this very point. (37-133, 12/23/1970)

Old people have to think like this: "If God gives me a son, I will raise him so that he can fulfill anything of God's Will that I have left unaccomplished." You have to teach and bring up your children this way. So the one thing you must never forget is that in proportion to the sacrifices you make, in proportion to the blood, sweat and tears you invest, blessings will be bestowed upon your future generations. You should always keep this in mind.
If you live a miserable life for the sake of the public good instead of a happy, cozy life for your own sake, if you suffer for the sake of the public purpose instead of leading a life pursuing your own happiness, and if you can be happy about that kind of life, your sons and daughters will receive blessings tenfold, even a hundredfold. (90-116, 12/21/1976)

Rev. Moon has been teaching Unification Church members to be patriots among patriots. This is a declaration, Article 1 of the Unification Church education. What is after that? I tell them that they have to stand in a higher position than any other churchgoer or follower of any religion. (113-111, 05/01/1981)

What is the teaching of a great parent? "No matter how difficult it is, you have to sacrifice yourself and be an example for this village and neighborhood." Parents who teach their children to be like this are truly parents of goodness.
Love precedes education. Love came into existence because this basic principle started from love before the existence of anything in the world of creation. That is the nature of the essence of things. Material things are like that too. Every person has a body composed of material elements but also has a mind which seeks to return to the love contained in all material things, to return to God's highest love. That is the way that the original mind works. (147-297, 10/01/1986)

How can we set up educational principles? An education system that focuses only on the benefit of America will drop behind in its standards. We have to implement education that can transcend national borders to guide and raise all the people of the world. We have to think like this: "The world is one: therefore my study, our study is for the sake of the entire world." In the end, things are such that the world has no choice but to become united, to become one, and that is what will happen in the end.
When we think about education from this viewpoint, we come to realize that religious education is important and necessary. Religious education can transcend national boundaries. After that we need ideological education. Ideological education is global in nature. It too can go beyond national borders. Thus, education has to comprise both religious and ideological elements. In the future, then, any country which does not base itself upon the principle of education for the sake of the world will be unable to stand before humankind. (207-65, 11/01/1990)