A Steady Standard of Value in a Shaken World
[Summary: “It depends on the person.” From Protagoras to postmodernism, humanity has come full circle over 2,500 years and once again stands confused about values. The Divine Principle gives a clear answer to this question. Value does not exist on its own, either in my mind or in things themselves. It is born only when I and my object partner form a relationship centered on God’s ideal of creation. God is the subject of intellect, emotion and will, and His love blossoms into truth, beauty and goodness through the human body. The emotional force the subject gives is love; the force the object returns is beauty. So we do not love someone because they are lovely; they are lovely because we love them. That is why God cannot bring Himself to abandon even His fallen children. Goodness is fulfilling the Three Great Blessings centered on God; evil is what results when that center is replaced by Satan. Righteousness is the small, everyday practice of walking toward goodness. Yet righteousness is the bone and love is the flesh, so righteousness must always be wrapped in love. The Divine Principle is Heaven’s answer to humanity’s age-old questions. True value is completed in a life of giving thanks at the dinner table, seeing people through the eyes of love, and picking up a piece of litter where no one is watching.]
Before I begin, let me ask you a question. If you ask people today, “What is right? What is truly valuable?” what will most of them say? “It depends on the person.” That is how they answer. “If I like it, it’s good; if I don’t, it’s not.” Is that true? But you know, this is not a new idea. Humanity has been hearing it since the very beginning. Today, let’s first take a short journey through philosophy to see how much the world has wandered over the question of “value.” Only then can we truly appreciate what an incredible treasure the Divine Principle is.
The Greek philosopher Protagoras, in the 5th century BC, left a famous saying: “Man is the measure of all things.” In other words, I am the standard by which value is judged. Whether the wind is cold or warm does not depend on the wind; if I feel cold, it is cold, and if I feel hot, it is hot. The standard of value is “me.”
Then Plato pushed back: “No. True goodness exists on its own, in a realm above.” He was arguing for objectivism: that value exists objectively in each thing.
Yet Plato also raised a question about goodness that he never resolved: “Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?” The first means something became good because God declared it so; the second means God called it good because it was already good in itself. What do you think the essence of goodness is? This is a question humanity has been unable to answer for thousands of years.
In the modern era, the great German philosopher Kant appeared. He wrote three major works over his lifetime: the Critique of Pure Reason, which deals with “truth” (What can we know?); the Critique of Practical Reason, which deals with “goodness” (What ought we to do?); and the Critique of Judgment, which deals with “beauty” (What is beautiful?). Kant divided his inquiry into three branches corresponding to intellect, will and emotion. It was a truly great achievement. However, Kant said that God, who ties intellect, emotion and will together into one, cannot be proven by reason. So although he dug deep into truth, goodness and beauty, he was never able to uncover their root.
Then, at the end of the 19th century, Nietzsche appeared and cried out, “God is dead!” It was a terrible thing to say. His point was: why is God silent in such a cruel world? That is why he declared God dead. Having declared God dead, Nietzsche fell into nihilism. And what happened afterward? In the first half of the 20th century alone, two world wars broke out and tens of millions of people lost their lives. History showed us how cruel a world can become once the standard for judging good and evil collapses.
After the war, the existentialist philosopher Sartre came along and said, “Existence precedes essence.” Since there is no predetermined essence, each person must create his or her own values.
Today, postmodernism goes even further: “There is no absolute truth. Everything is just interpretation.” So after 2,500 years of going around in circles, we have ended up right back with Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things.” “It depends on the person.”
So how do people measure value today? In the marketplace, value is measured by price. For YouTubers, value means “views.” In politics, “approval ratings” decide value. People laugh and cry over that single number.
Friends, humanity has still not found definitive answers to these five questions.
First, how is the original value of creation determined, and what is its standard?
Second, where do truth, goodness and beauty come from, and how do they become one?
Third, what is love, and what is beauty?
Fourth, what is goodness, and what is evil?
Fifth, what does it mean to live a righteous life?
When we weigh the value of a physical object, there seems to be little problem. It is only natural that a glass of water is valued differently by someone who is thirsty and someone who is not. But when we move on to the rightness or wrongness of values, such as how to view homosexuality, the Bible or the Quran, democracy or communism, people become deeply divided. Wars have broken out over these questions, and countless people have been sacrificed.
But don’t be surprised. The chapter “The Original Value of Creation” in our Exposition of the Divine Principle answers these five questions precisely in fewer than five pages, and it does so through the principle of the four position foundation centered on God. By the time you have heard this whole message today, I believe you will find yourself saying, “Ah, without True Parents’ words, the confusion of values in this world can never be stopped!” That does not mean right and wrong will become clear the moment you hear this message. The point is to set the starting point of our value judgments on the right foundation. Now, let’s explore these five themes together.
First: How the Original Value of Creation Is Determined, and Its Standard
The Divine Principle explains this value as follows.
“The original value of an individual entity is not something absolute that is inherent within itself. Rather, it is determined through the reciprocal relationship between the purpose for which that entity exists as an object partner, centered on God’s ideal of creation, and the human subject partner’s desire to pursue the original value of creation as he or she relates to it.”
Do you realize how remarkable this one sentence is? The Exposition first introduces the common view of value that we have held until now. We have believed that the value of an object is determined by the purpose for which it exists and by the desire of the person relating to it to pursue value. In that view, the absolute center of value is each individual’s desire. As a result, Protagoras said value depends on my mind, while Plato, on the contrary, said value exists on its own, beyond things. But the Principle says this: “Value does not exist alone, either in my mind or in things. Value is born in the reciprocal relationship between me and my object partner, centered on God’s ideal of creation.” In other words, this single sentence settles the thousands-of-years-old dispute between subjectivism and objectivism.
For example, who decides whether the Exposition of the Divine Principle is true or false? If Christians judged it, they would throw this book away, while we would hold it close to our hearts. Then who should judge right and wrong? If there is a great King of truth who created heaven and earth, then only when He judges will truth and falsehood be clearly sorted out. The same goes for whether homosexuality is right or wrong. It depends on whether it helps or hinders God’s ideal of creation. Value is decided neither by me nor by the thing itself. Value is determined only when I and my object partner form a reciprocal relationship centered on God’s ideal of creation and a four position foundation is established. This means human beings have no choice but to judge with the desire to pursue the original value of creation. Here, “the desire to pursue the original value of creation” does not mean my feelings or personal tastes. It means the desire to pursue value centered on God’s ideal of creation.
The Exposition explains this using the example of a flower. Every morning the sun rises, flowers bloom and fruit ripens. Yet we take it all for granted: “Of course the sun rises, roses are naturally pretty, and apples are naturally delicious.” If we fail to recognize Heavenly Parent’s love and devotion within these things, we are being ungrateful to God. Imagine a mother who has poured her heart into cooking a delicious meal for her children. If a child says without a word of thanks, “This food is always here, and stew is just naturally tasty,” how hurt she would feel! Nothing in this world came about by itself. Good surroundings exist because someone worked hard for them. That is why, when we live always giving thanks to Heavenly Parent, Heaven, humankind and all things rejoice together.
Then why is the world in such confusion today? The Exposition states it clearly: because fallen people have centered not on God’s ideal of creation but on their own thoughts and desires. That is why the world is in confusion. Value is neither something I decide nor something fixed in the thing itself. True value is born, centered on God, within the relationship between the purpose for which an object exists and the person who seeks it.
Second: The Original Intellect, Emotion and Will, and Truth, Beauty and Goodness
Let’s move on to the second theme. I mentioned Kant at the beginning. Kant studied truth, beauty and goodness by dividing them into three books, but he could not uncover their origin. The Exposition resolves this problem in a single paragraph.
“Since God is the subject of the human mind, He is also the subject of intellect, emotion and will. Therefore, only when people, through their desire to realize the original value of creation, respond with their minds to God’s original intellect, emotion and will, and act on them with their bodies, do their actions manifest the values of truth, beauty and goodness of the original creation.”
As the passage says, God is the original source of intellect, emotion and will; human beings, resembling God’s heart, have minds of intellect, emotion and will; and this intellect, emotion and will are expressed through the human body as truth, beauty and goodness. Thus an order arises: “God’s heart → the human mind → the human body.” The root of these three branches, intellect, emotion and will, is Heavenly Parent’s love. This love appears in three directions: as truth through human intellect, as beauty through emotion, and as goodness through will. That is why love is felt as something true, beautiful and good. Because Kant did not know this, he could not unite his studies of intellect, emotion and will through love.
That human beings resemble the image of God means that we resemble His intellect, emotion and will. The proof is our endless desire to know, our hearts that race when we see something beautiful, and our longing to do what is right. But there is one thing we have that God does not: the human “body.” So God is, as it were, saying to us: “You have My heart, but I do not have your body. I want to live within your body.” Friends, that is how precious our bodies are. God’s love longs to be manifested through human beings as what is true, beautiful and good. In all of history, only the Divine Principle describes Heavenly Parent and humankind as a parent-child relationship of such close resemblance. This view of God and of humanity will become the key to solving every difficult problem in the world. Aju (Amen)!
Third: Love and Beauty
The third theme is “love and beauty.” If you ask people to define “What is love? What is beauty?” no one can give a clear answer about their origin. But the Exposition defines them like this.
“The emotional force that the subject partner gives to the object partner is called love, and the emotional force that the object partner returns to the subject partner is called beauty. Therefore, the force of love is dynamic, while the stimulus of beauty is static.”
Simple, yet how clear it is! The emotional force the subject gives to the object is love, and the emotional force the object returns to the subject is beauty. Heaven and earth are made of dual characteristics, so there is nothing that is not in a subject and object relationship. God is the subject of love, and human beings are the objects of beauty. Human beings are the subjects of love, and all things are the objects of beauty. Because these are vertical subject-object relationships, love and beauty appear clearly distinguished. But husband and wife are not a vertical but a horizontal subject-object relationship. That is why, between husband and wife, love and beauty overlap. For example, a wife works hard at home for her husband. To the husband, this is both beautiful and felt as love. Likewise, a husband works hard outside to support the family. To the wife, this is both admirable and felt as love. Because a couple is a horizontal subject and object, they experience love and beauty overlapping. But in vertical relationships, like those between God and human beings or between human beings and all things, love and beauty appear distinct.
Here the Exposition says something else astonishing. The beauty that a subordinate returns to the love of a superior is called loyalty; the beauty that children return to the love of their parents is called filial piety; and the beauty that a wife returns to the love of her husband is called fidelity. Friends, for over two thousand years Confucianism has taught loyalty, filial piety and fidelity. Yet when asked, “Why are loyalty, filial piety and fidelity precious?” the only answer it could give was, “Because they are a person’s natural duty.” The Principle, however, teaches that they are precious because they are the object’s response to the subject’s love. These virtues, emphasized by Confucianism for two thousand years, now have their value clearly revealed by the Principle. This is how the Principle fulfills other religions rather than rejecting them.
Speaking of love and beauty, let me ask you something. Do you love someone because they are lovely, or are they lovely because you love them? A relationship in which you love someone because they are lovely falls apart when that beauty fades. But in a relationship in which someone is lovely because you love them, they always look lovely, because you love them. That is why it is not “beauty and love” but “love and beauty.” When a painter is unhappy with a painting, he tears it up. But parents cannot throw away their children just because they are not pleased with them. God did not make us merely as the finest work among all things; He gave birth to us as His own children. That is why, even though humans fell, He could not abandon them and has struggled to save them. Jesus said, “You must be born again,” and True Parents have fulfilled those words by unfolding the providence of rebirth through the Blessing. This is the heart of Heavenly Parent’s love, which cannot bear to abandon fallen humankind and longs to give birth to us anew, even if it means taking us back into the womb. This is exactly why God could not abandon us even after we fell. So our relationships must be ones in which people are lovely because we love them.
The Exposition explains God’s love this way: when Adam and Eve reach perfection and multiply children, they come to experience the love of three object partners: parental love, conjugal love and children’s love. And God’s love is the subject love at the center of these three kinds of love. In other words, God’s love is not a love of an entirely different quality from human love. God’s love is revealed through the very love of the three object partners that people experience in the family. In this way, the Principle establishes God and humankind in an inseparable parent-child relationship of lineage. This is what makes the Principle great. In Islam, comparing Allah to a human being is condemned as blasphemy. Christian theologians enter monasteries or study the Bible to seek God. Then where do we go to meet Heavenly Parent? To the True Family. It is a great proclamation that the most complete model of God’s love is found within the family.
Fourth: Good and Evil
The fourth theme is good and evil. Do you remember Plato’s question from earlier? “Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?” The Exposition answers this question as follows.
“When a subject partner and an object partner give and receive love and beauty well and unite in oneness, they become God’s third object partner and establish a four position foundation. An act, or the result of an act, that fulfills God’s purpose of creation in this way is called goodness. An act, or the result of an act, that goes against God’s purpose of creation by establishing a four position foundation centered on Satan is called evil.”
In other words, goodness is neither a command God issued on a whim nor some goodness that exists apart from God. When God and human beings become one through love and beauty and accomplish the purpose of creation, that is what we call goodness.
The Exposition makes this goodness concrete through the Three Great Blessings, the purpose of creation. First, the act of becoming one in mind and body centered on God and perfecting one’s individuality, or the result of that act, is goodness. Second, the act of a husband and wife centered on God multiplying children and forming a true family, or its result, is goodness. Third, the act of perfected human beings exercising dominion over all things with love and fulfilling the Third Blessing, or its result, is goodness. Accomplishing these centered on God, and the results of doing so, is goodness; accomplishing the opposite centered on Satan is evil. Augustine (354–430), the early Church Father, taught that evil is the absence of good; but according to the Principle, evil is not simply the absence of good. Evil is what results when the center is replaced by “Satan.” Brothers and sisters, is there any clearer standard of good and evil than this? This standard holds true in every era, for people of every religion and of every race. The Principle has made clear a universal standard of good and evil to which all humanity can say “Aju.”
In 1961, the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was held in Jerusalem. A writer who had survived Auschwitz took the stand as a witness, looked at Eichmann, and collapsed in a faint. He later explained why: he was shocked that such an ordinary-looking man had sent countless people to the gas chambers. Watching this trial, the philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil.” Friends, evil does not appear as a horned monster. When an ordinary person leaves God and centers on Satan, he becomes the embodiment of evil; when he repents and centers on God, he becomes a good person.
Fifth: Righteousness and Unrighteousness
The fifth and final theme is righteousness and unrighteousness. The Principle explains it very briefly.
“In the process of accomplishing the purpose of goodness, the elements of daily life that serve that goodness are called righteousness; in the process of accomplishing the purpose of evil, the elements of daily life that serve that evil are called unrighteousness.”
Friends, I really love this phrase, “elements of daily life.” Righteousness is not found only in law books. It is found at our dinner tables, on our streets, and in every word we speak. I heard about a company president who hired employees without asking a single interview question. He dropped pieces of litter in and around the interview room, and hired only those who picked them up and put them in the trash can before coming in. A life of picking up a piece of litter where no one is watching: such a person is righteous, and such a person will help the company grow.
Let us think about True Father’s youth. What was his motto at that time? “Before seeking dominion over the universe, first perfect dominion over yourself.” Even when eating a single meal, he would say, “Rice, please become the fertilizer for the work I am preparing to do.” Because he wanted to love his school more than anyone else, he took it upon himself to clean the classroom alone. To save on laundry, he would tuck his socks into the back pocket of his pants in the evening and wear them again the next day. These are the everyday elements of righteousness.
But there is one thing we must be careful about regarding righteousness. Righteousness is like bone, and love is like flesh. Without bones, the body cannot stand; but if a bone pierces through the flesh, it is a serious injury. If you insist on righteousness without love, it becomes a weapon that destroys relationships. That is why there is a saying, “There is no sinner like a righteous man.” It means that, surprisingly, many people who live righteously end up judging others.
Suppose someone tosses a cigarette butt on the path in a park. That is clearly not a righteous act. But if you walk up and pass judgment on him, you could suffer an injury like a bone breaking through the flesh. At such times, you can simply wait until he has gone, quietly pick it up, and throw it in the trash. If there are many such people in our society, public order will change, and someday even the person who used to toss cigarette butts will feel ashamed and stop. This is how we cover righteousness with the flesh of love.
The Divine Principle Is Heaven’s Answer to Humanity’s Questions
Dear brothers and sisters, let us now return to the question we began with. Let me call back, one by one, the philosophers we met at the beginning of today’s message.
To Protagoras, the Principle answers: “‘Man is the measure of all things’? No. A human being centered on God becomes the true standard.”
To Plato, the Principle answers: “‘Value exists on its own, in a realm above’? No. Value is born when God, human beings and all things become one in love. Fulfilling God’s purpose of creation is goodness.”
To Kant, the Principle answers: “‘Truth, beauty and goodness are three separate pieces’? No. God’s love is the source of intellect, emotion and will, and truth, beauty and goodness are the flowers that bloom from it through human beings.”
To Nietzsche, the Principle answers: “‘God is dead’? No. God is our living Heavenly Parent, who even now cannot bear to abandon His children and longs, with an aching heart, to give birth to them anew.”
To Sartre, the Principle answers: “‘Existence precedes essence’? No. A human being who has fulfilled the Three Great Blessings, perfection of individuality, perfection of the family and perfection of dominion, is a being whose existence has fulfilled its essence.”
Brothers and sisters, this is the Divine Principle. It is the needle and thread that ties all values together and brings them to completion. People toil every day over what to eat and what to wear, striving for happiness. But if we lose the war over values being fought fiercely beneath the surface, war may come and everything may be destroyed. Conflict and war never cease in the world today, but in the end they all begin with a problem of values. Who will resolve this, and with what? Just as I have shared today the great philosophical puzzles and their answers, the true light of truth has now been revealed. Light drives out darkness and reveals a bright and hopeful world. That is why we can say with confidence: without True Parents’ words, this world cannot overcome its confusion of values. Aju!
I ask you to live this way during the coming week.
First, at the dinner table and before a flower, say, “Thank You, Heavenly Parent.”
Second, before you do anything, follow the command of your mind: your intellect, emotion and will.
Third, look at your family and others with eyes that find them lovely because you love them.
Fourth, when you act, ask yourself, “Is this for me, or is it for Heaven and for others?”
Fifth, live a righteous life in which you pick up a piece of litter in your daily life. <End>
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