4.4 The responsibility and attitude of a blessed couple

When a husband does something wrong, his wife should straighten him out. When a wife does something wrong, her husband should correct her. Only then could God bless that family. Being chastised can become an educational tool for future generations. If your life would have taken a totally wrong turn because of not being chastised, and if being chastised to the point of overflowing tears had resulted in shocking you into making a decisive change in your life for the better, then your life story would serve as a textbook to educate future generations. People who can bequeath such a legacy should be proud of themselves. (28-36, 01/01/1970)

I will educate you to be able to live together with the world. What has history looked forward to? It has looked forward to the day when the world can live together in harmony. You must also go and work, strive, teach and die for that day to come. If you die for the cause, you will live again in spite of dying physically. (28-205, 01/11/1970)

Parents must set the right example in their daily lives. They must demonstrate a life of prayer and service. You must not be found lacking in your life of faith when compared to Christians. You should teach your children the importance of being on time for the pledge service, which should not be just for reciting the family pledge, but a time to educate your children.
In order to teach your children, you as parents must put into practice whatever you teach them. Parents must set the example of loyalty to God's Will. You must educate your children to the standard that they will not contradict you. You should naturally win their respect; otherwise, they will never obey you.
On Sundays, before the church worship service, you should begin making special conditions at dawn to completely devote the day to God. Instead you do whatever you like...You claim to live a life of faith, but you don't pray, you don't make conditions, you don't study the Principle, and you don't go out witnessing. You don't do anything. If the service is scheduled to commence at 10:30, you should arrive early. Instead you sneak in as a habitual latecomer. If you carry on like that, you'll be judged later on. Then, however hard you try to teach your children, they will not listen to you.
You must become an integral part of the neighborhood in which you live. How much you live for its sake matters deeply to your children's education. You should really distinguish yourself through your life of faith, through the exemplary lifestyle and the exemplary relations you create with others. Your own children will judge all these things. Therefore, you should really practice what you teach with a public mind.
From the children's point of view, their parents had not changed one bit, and so these parents could not educate their children. Hence, your life should change from what it used to be in the past. Your manner of conducting yourself at home and in relating to your neighbors is of great importance in educating your children. They have their own view of how a religious person should be and observe you through their own filters.
You should be parents who can influence your own children. That is your primary mission. You should lead your church life and public life with utmost sincerity and be exemplary in your private life. This is absolutely necessary for your children to follow the way of God's Will. (31-267, 06/04/1970)

Fathers should teach their children with tears in their eyes, "Your mother has worked for the sole existing holy mission in the world. I must follow her course and you must follow ours.
Your mother endures suffering for the sake of our nation and the world. She may be sleeping in an unheated room on this cold winter night. We should feel ashamed of being able to sleep without needing warm blankets in our bedroom. The reason your mother is doing what she does is to care for our well-being and to pave the way for us. She is working for you and for me so that we can have a better life. She is irreplaceable. I must go the same way. You will follow that course when you grow up." You should speak such words to your children. Centering on the mothers, fathers and children must forge tearful bonds. That is the only way in which the family can inherit their mother's course.
Now is the time when you must give this new ideology of the family to the people. You should not be thinking of anything else day and night. You must not shed tears because of missing your husband and children. Your tears should solely be shed for God and the world.
God's sorrow was that men and women could not become the true fathers and mothers who could truly love the world. That is the sorrow caused by the Fall. If your husbands tell you that they love you, then you should tell them that they must love the country, the world and God first, and only after that are they allowed to love you. You should not demand of your husband that he should love you and not care about God or the nation. Men should never love such wives.
Aren't there many such wives thus far? They may say, "Why must you care so much about God's Will? My will is the only one you should care about!" Men must never love such women. You men, do you understand? That is my belief. That is the very thing I have been teaching Mother. (38-291, 01/08/1971)

Women should guide their husbands in the correct way. Eve did not properly educate her husband, which is why they both perished. Eve sold away the foundation of love, which is the basis for creating a good life and good relationships, to Satan. Today, you must set the path of righteousness for your husbands. Women are responsible for that. Then you should create the educational materials of righteousness for teaching your children.
You should live your lives in such a way that your husband will hold your baby and sing the lullaby, "Sweet baby, your mother is the most wonderful in the world, more than even the angels in heaven, more than the First Lady of our country, more than the First Lady of the United States, more than the Queen of England, and she is God's most beloved princess!" That's the kind of song your husband should be singing of you.
Your husbands should be telling your children, "Your mother lives for the sake of the nation and for heaven and earth as a sacrificial offering. As I pray for your mother every morning and evening, you should love and respect what your mother is trying to achieve." You should teach all this with tears. Your husbands should teach your children how precious you are as their mother. This is where the right education begins. This is where the husband of goodness comes into being. (39-110, 01/10/1971)

You love your children, don't you? Children are inclined to follow their parents. This is why you should serve God first in your family. Your children must remember you as the father who prays. They should remember you as the father who always lives for the sake of God and for the sake of others. You should earn your children's unspoken respect. Paving the way with sacrifice and selflessness, you must establish such a foundation. (47-328, 08/30/1971)

"Our father suffered so much in the past to raise and educate us. He didn't mind undergoing hardship for our sake." The greater the misery children uncover in their father's past, the stronger the motivation this provides them to be filial children. It would not discourage them at all. We have seen this happen time and again. Children who are acquainted with the sorrowful tears of their parents cannot disobey them. (48-72, 09/05/1971)

The mission and responsibility of the headquarters is very important. Your actions in the headquarters don't just affect your life but also directly concern mine....
There will come a time when I will no longer be able to address you at dawn. I will have to spend time in personal prayer or in educating my own children. Do you understand what I mean?
As their father, I haven't had the time to educate [my children]. It's not as if you tried to teach them either. Now that my children are growing up, I should be taking the time to raise them.
I have nearly fulfilled my responsibility in caring for you. This should be completed by 1972 or 1974 at the latest. With the end of the second seven-year course...I believe that I will have fulfilled my responsibility toward our church. I would have to shift my focus upon the education of my own children. That is how I think. Do you have any objections?
In order for me to do that, you should be exemplary in forming a protective wall around my children. From that point of view, what you do will become a global issue, and my children will also become a global issue. Owing to the multiplicity of issues that arise, it is necessary to adapt a variety of approaches according to the standard of the Principle.
From that perspective, not just anyone should be allowed into the headquarters when I am here. Only blessed families should be admitted. I need to make people undergo some special education; it is time to implement such programs, instead of regular courses. Churches exist at various levels, namely the formation, growth and completion stages.
The time will come when people from other regions and countries will view your actions as examples to follow. This is why you must be very serious in approaching your mission and responsibility as headquarters personnel. (51-276, 11/28/1971)

"Be couples needed by the Messiah and give birth to children needed by the Messiah. Be the children that preserve the tradition of the nation. Follow the tradition of the ruler of the nation." That is what you should say to your children.
Your love for them should not stop at the level of calling them lovely or cute, but you should tell them, "Do you know with how much pain God has been waiting to see men and women exchange love with Him for thousands of years?" That should be the level of discussion between you and your children. Only when there are children with such a level of heart can there be such a nation and such a world. That is how I think.
You should even be teaching your children correct sleeping postures. Do not wait until you are on your deathbed to impart your last wishes to your children, but teach them with your living example while you are yet alive. Do not just die on your children, leaving behind but a few do's and don'ts.
Share your secrets with them and work for the common goal. Having established your goals, dive in with renewed zest. That is how Unification Church parents ought to be. Become the couples the Messiah needs. Create families and then tribes of the blood lineage of pure love. Throughout the millennia, God required innumerable sacrifices in order to effect the change of blood lineage.
Strive to create families that are needed by the Messiah. Be serious about preserving the tradition of goodness and purity before God. Let that be the center of your prayers. Take much interest in your children's education. Move their hearts through your sincere concern for their well-being. Educate them based on that. (55-84, 04/23/1972)

Bequeath your children the legacy of a life well lived. We are toiling assiduously all over the world in order to leave behind something worthwhile for posterity. You will be able to recount to them with much pride, "I've worked under extremely adverse conditions..." providing them with valuable educational content. Your lifetime is your only opportunity to perpetuate that tradition through your descendants. You must take the unchanging and eternal tradition most seriously. (71-17, 03/24/1974)

Parents should be able to stand in God's stead, teaching their children, "Love your brothers and sisters, your neighbors, your nation and the world more than you love us." Only those who do this deserve to be called true parents. Why? It is the only way for children to improve themselves and achieve greatness centering on goodness. (95-147, 11/11/1977)

Leave three things behind when you die. First, live a principle-centered life of following God's Will. Second, raise up your offspring to become better than you. Third, bequeath the education itself that you imparted to your children for them to achieve greatness. Those are your three responsibilities. (101-195, 10/30/1978)

I loved the 36 blessed couples absolutely as the elders of humankind, even to the point of death. You should teach my children from the position of archangels.
Who educated Adam? It was not God, but the archangels who were supposed to educate him, and to protect and raise both Adam and Eve, until they reached maturity. The Unification Church must follow the same principle; otherwise, you cannot accomplish restoration through indemnity. For this reason, I loved the 36 blessed couples more than my own children. (121-237, 10/27/1982)

Who were supposed to care for and educate Adam and Eve? Neither God nor I, but archangels were supposed to do so. Within the realm of dominion based on accomplishments through the Principle, the angels were given the responsibility for the upbringing of Adam and Eve. The three archangels were charged with their protection. The 36 blessed couples must educate my children in line with the Principle. Don't you think angels should be involved in loving my children?
My children's life and death truly depend on you. These are not my words, but the Principle. Who are the children to inherit the tradition of the original family I have established? The question is: who will inherit that tradition? You must teach my children what I have taught you, namely the realm of familial love that can be linked to loving the world and the cosmos centering on God's love. (126-147, 04/12/1983)

Adam and Eve were meant to be educated by their guardian angels, not by God, till they became adults. Similarly, it is the duty of spiritual children to help their spiritual parents to return to the heavenly side.
When the latter go to God with His blessing with the help of the former, they can all enter Heaven together, thereby restoring the three archangels. Likewise, the three sons of Adam and also of Noah can be restored, establishing the condition of recovering the position representing the three stages. (127-53, 05/03/1983)

At what point are people supposed to establish their eternal bond of love with God? It is the time when they reach maturity. For this reason, my own children must absolutely obey me up to the point of receiving the blessing of marriage. They must absolutely obey God, at the same time receiving education from the three representative couples as well as the rest of the 36 blessed couples that are in the archangel position, come of age and then get married. Till then, they must not entertain other thoughts. That is the Principle.
Our Unification Church members must always conduct themselves with utter decorum and never dishonor themselves. Educate others, including the children of your neighborhood...I am educating people 24 hours a day, that is to say, I educate whomever I meet every day. Educate people, whether through the International Federation for Victory Over Communism (IFVOC) or through home church work. Let the church give Principle lectures, let the IFVOC conduct seminars on Victory Over Communism (VOC), and let the professors of the Professors World Peace Academy teach Unification Thought. Then, we will have done our job. (128-110, 06/05/1983)

What is the core of Unification Church education? It is to shed sweat for the earth, tears for man and blood for heaven, with the heart of a parent, and in the shoes of a servant! Have you done exactly that? Did I do it? Before teaching you, I had already put that into practice. Whatever I declare I have already accomplished myself.
What must your families do? If I am the first generation, you are the second. Seek to become true couples and true children centering on True Parents. Without educating your children, your future will be in ruins. God's historic sorrow was in being denied the third generation. As such, He had to tread the thorny path of restoration through indemnity, shedding blood, tears and sweat. If you fail to provide for the proper upbringing of your children, the entire family will end up paying for it. (213-198, 01/20/1991)

It is a great problem if your children do not unite with you. Blessed families must provide their children with the right upbringing. That also goes for your relatives. Similar to Cain and Abel, if the elder brother is on God's side, he should save his younger brother and raise him. The time for blessed families to go out proselytizing people other than their relatives is over. The Cain-Abel conflict is over. How many sacrifices did we have to make during the period of forsaking our families and relatives in order to go out witnessing? The time for working on the family level has come. (371-151, 02/25/2002)

Now I have blessed families of whom I can be proud: the first, the second and the third generation. I will begin educating families with three generations. When I reach the age of ninety or a hundred, I will teach even if I have to use a walking stick. God could not educate all three generations of humankind. We need the textbook of family tradition. Please invest yourselves fervently. (263-192, 08/23/1994)

Absolutely attend the Family Pledge and Sunday Service. Teach your children in the morning. Mothers and fathers must educate their children. Not doing so results in children who fall. If your children fall, you will have eternal regret. (269-42, 04/06/1995)

We have to truly understand what kind of debt we owe to Father. We are indebted to Father because he sacrificed his youth for the sake of humanity. Our responsibility, as the first generation parents, is to educate our second-generation children in the absolute standard and compensate for Father's lost youth. To do so, we must fully understand the sacrifice True Father has made on behalf of mankind. He lost his family and his children, the entire Moon clan was victimized and the Korean nation fell prey to Satan. We have to deeply understand this. It is not just a past reality, but still lingers today. Just as Father sacrificed his entire youth and the first forty years of his life for humanity, from now on, we should be willing to sacrifice our own lives for the sake of humanity as our mission; it is not a job, but a God-given mission. (270-326, 07/23/1995)

The goal of children's education is definite: you must belong to God and become the hope of the world. You must be kings or queens, princes or princesses. All that was lost when the very foundation of love was torn apart. (371-202, 03/01/2002)

The starting point of the love of God, Adam and Eve should have been one, but Satan interfered and became the center...God was left all alone and His ideal of true love for His children shattered. (272-280, 10/08/1995)

Even if in quality you are not 24 karat gold, at least your color should be the same. That means that your family must resemble Father's life. You must try your absolute best to become true pure 24 karat gold for the sake of your entire family and descendants. Eventually they should become 24 karat gold as well. This is the life of the blessed couples. (280-320, 02/13/1997)

If some couples are only 14 or 18 karat gold you must go into the furnace again and become 24 karat gold. Make sure that you give the right and proper education to your children for the future of your descendants. (371-152, 02/25/2002)