6. Predestination
A fundamental paradox of religion is that God, the Creator of all things, is almighty and good, but the world people live in and know through history is full of evil. In other words, the sinful world of human experience does not mirror the sinless, perfect God who created it.
This paradox is further complicated by the widely-held belief that an omniscient and omnipotent God must be in control of all human affairs and thus predetermines the course of human lives and history. Taken to its extreme, this traditional theory of predestination obviates the need for human effort altogether, including the practice of prayer, meditation, fasting and other religious disciplines, since an individual's life course is decided by God irrespective of that person's thoughts and deeds. If God were in full control of human lives, how could they be so steeped in ungodliness? How could it be that a good and loving God created a world of sin and suffering?
The key to resolving this lies in understanding why God gave a portion of responsibility to human beings, according to which human life is determined both by the will of God and individuals' voluntary response to God's will. If human beings fail in their portion of responsibility, the fulfillment of God's will is postponed until such time as they become responsible. An individual's life is predestined for goodness by God, but the fulfillment of that purpose depends on his or her response to God.
Love and Free Will
As discussed in Chapter 3, men and women were created to receive love from God and to return love to Him by sharing it with others within the paradigm of the three blessings. Love can be given and received only out of human free will. Any human expressions of affection and passion that are forced or contrary to God's will are not in fact true love, but merely simulations of it. They cannot truly fulfill men and women and they do not give joy to God.
It is the essence of God's nature to give love. God's desire to experience joy by giving and receiving love inspired the creation of a man and woman to receive and reciprocate His love. But God would not force His children to respond to Him and His love because to do so would violate His own principles of love, principles by which God exists and by which He created. Therefore human beings are free to love God or not to love Him.
God created human beings with the expectation that they would grow in their capacity to receive and give love, passing through the three stages of the learning process: formation, growth and completion. Thus God created His children with only one purpose and destiny: to grow to maturity as true men and women who would develop their love in the creation of families, clans, tribes, communities, nations and a world of true love relationships, centered on God. This purpose is unchanging and absolute, a manifestation of God's absolutely good nature. Therefore, it is right to believe that human destiny on the individual, family, tribal, national and global levels is predetermined to be one of goodness and ultimate fulfillment.
Human Responsibility
The timing of the fulfillment of humanity's original, good destiny is determined by the response of individuals to God, in particular the fulfillment of their responsibility to learn how to give and receive love. Until human beings fulfill that responsibility, they will not be fulfilled and will not create the world of love and goodness that God intended.
It is not in any way a diminution of God's power for Him to endow His creation with a portion of responsibility. On the contrary, to do so is to confirm His omnipotence in that all His creation ultimately lies within His domain and belongs to Him. Regardless of what people do with God's gifts to them, eventually God's will shall be done. The unchanging will of God is for human beings to create an ideal world by completing the three blessings.
Thus the traditional view of predestination, which holds that all things (including human salvation and damnation) are predetermined by God as part of His overall scheme for the creation, is correct in recognizing the absolute nature of God and His will but wrong in ignoring the role of human beings in the accomplishment of that will. Without understanding the human portion of responsibility in salvation, such a concept of predestination provides a theological basis for individuals to maintain fatalistic views of life instead of responsible attitudes towards God, other people and nature. A traditional predestination theory may also negate the value of religious figures who have appeared in history as guides and saviors for fallen humans, begging the question: if the destiny of men and women is pre-determined, why would God send prophets and messengers to turn fallen people from ways of error to paths of goodness?
Conclusion
The evil that exists in the world today, and has made human history such a tragic record, is not part of God's dispensation for humanity, but rather the product of men and women failing their responsibilities. Not until people take full responsibility for their lives will evil end and good begin. All people are predestined to live lives of goodness, in the fulfillment of God's ideal, but the timing of that fulfillment depends on them. To believe that human life is determined by God's will alone can lead to irresponsibility and fatalism, whereas to recognize and carry out the human portion of responsibility in the fulfillment of God's will leads to a life of spiritual growth and the completion of human purpose.
The next chapter will show how the first man and woman failed to fulfill their responsibilities, and how this affected fulfillment of their predestined purposes. Instead of completing the three blessings, they destroyed the ideal world intended by God and created hell instead of heaven. Their error is the root cause of all that has been wrong in human history and all that is wrong in the world today.
7. The Human Fall
There is no denying that our world is far from the ideal of God's original purpose for the creation. Instead of being populated by happy and prosperous individuals living in harmonious families within a peaceful global community, the world is torn asunder by conflicts at all levels. Typically, life is an exercise in frustration and unfulfilled hopes that offers only occasional glimpses of a joyful and satisfying existence. Anyone who tries to do good finds himself confronted by strong opposing forces, both from the unprincipled aspect of his own nature as well as from evils within society. The struggle between good and evil that characterizes human activity on earth is the result of battles between good and evil within individuals.
Human history has seen some improvements in life on the external level, but these developments have been achieved against a background of unreconciled divisions between individuals, families, tribes and nations, divisions which have produced unending bloodshed and countless wars. The supreme efforts of the best men and women of history have failed to resolve the internal and external conflicts of humanity. Yet the God of true love could not have predestined humankind to live in a world of suffering and misery. What went wrong? What happened to God's ideal? How did human beings come to be at war with themselves, other people and nature? Why is it so difficult for humans to live the life of goodness they were made for?
The Bible and Koran offer specific accounts of the origin of evil in the first human beings, Adam and Eve, but these are symbolic stories of the human fall. Nevertheless, when properly interpreted, they reveal a real history of the original human alienation from God which is the source of unprincipled behavior that characterizes fallen relations in history and the world today. By understanding the meaning behind scriptural symbols, one can unlock the secrets of human sin and suffering and recognize the nature of the solution needed to restore humanity. This chapter offers an explanation of the human fall based on the Principle.
Adam, Eve and Evolution
Evolutionary theory contradicts a literal reading of scriptures, but the notion that God created the universe, including human beings, can be reconciled to scientific theories of evolution. The Principle recognizes the need for living things to grow through stages to reach completion, in this fully agreeing with evolutionary theories. Undoubtedly, the first human ancestors appeared on earth much earlier than the 6000 years ago suggested by scriptures. Evolutionary theories tend to confirm the origin of the human species in one place (most generally believed to be Africa), followed by dispersion to the four comers of the globe. This agrees with the Principle teaching that God initiated the creation of human beings with one man and one woman.
However, people are qualitatively different from animals, plants and minerals. The fundamental difference is precisely the human spirit, which enables men and women to know God and transcendent reality and to develop a high degree of love. Humans are the pinnacle of the creative work of God and as such are distinct from other beings, and cannot breed with them. The step from animal to human was realized through God's investment of His heart and dual attributes into the creation of man and woman. The Principle accepts the figures of scripture, Adam and Eve, as the first man and woman. It affirms that they were part of the evolutionary process and that they were endowed with the godly natures ascribed to them by religion.
The Origin of Evil and Satan
Before a doctor can prescribe treatment to cure a patient's illness, he must correctly diagnose the sickness. Likewise, before humans can rid the world of evil, they must discover evil's origin and learn how to eliminate it. A satisfactory explanation of evil must provide a true analysis of the root cause of human alienation from God and the sinful behavior that causes this alienation (with the resultant psycho-social ills and global problems). It should also give a credible basis for interpreting scriptural accounts of the origin of evil.
God is only good, wanting only love and goodness for His creation. For this reason, with the exception of fallen humans, everything in the cosmos exists according to one, perfect order, reflecting the goodness of the Creator, God. Within a nature of pure goodness how can there be a base for creating an evil being? Many Christians and Muslims attribute evil to Satan, but who created Satan? God would not have created Satan as an evil being because there is nothing evil within God. Furthermore, God's unceasing efforts to save His children from Satan and evil imply that human beings can indeed be saved. In other words, Satan's existence is not co-equal with God's, with Satan a competing creator of evil instead of good. If it were, the presence of evil in the creation would be everlasting, and evil would be a part of human life forever. This would mean that salvation from evil would be impossible and God's work to save humankind a fruitless exercise. This leads to the conclusion that Satan was created as a good being but failed to fulfill his original, God-given purpose.
Why does anyone need to know Satan? The identity of Satan is important insofar as evil is specific: certain attitudes and actions alienate humanity from God and thereby destroy the ideal of creation intended by God. Locating evil in the behavior of an individual being responsible for setting in motion a chain of events that plunged humanity into the darkness of ignorance and continuous suffering enables people today to identify and avoid (or oppose) evil behavior, which is the repetition of original evil acts. Satan is everywhere in the thoughts and activities of fallen men and women and needs to be identified in order to be defeated and permanently removed from human life.
The Bible describes Satan as a serpent, traditionally identified as the archangel Lucifer, while the Koran describes Satan as the jinn (or angel in some interpretations) Iblis. Whatever the exact identity, clearly Satan had a spiritual nature, since, according to these scriptures, he understood God and God's word and was able to communicate with the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. In the Bible and Koran Satan is described as having a masculine nature and is said to have been created to serve Adam and Eve. In this text, therefore, the spiritual being known as Lucifer or Iblis will simply be called the Servant. This title is also appropriate because the story of the fall is archetypal of many situations involving flesh and blood human beings.
The ability to acquire internal knowledge is an essential element of spiritual nature and to have such knowledge is to have responsibility. To take responsibility for what one knows, a person must have the power of choice, which is intrinsic to free will. Adam and Eve had to choose between obedience and disobedience to the commandment of God, which, according to scriptural accounts, prohibited them from eating the fruit of a particular tree. While the Jewish, Christian and Islamic scriptures leave ample room for diverse interpretations of what actually took place among the three key players in the world of God's original creation, they agree that Adam, Eve and the Servant all committed acts of disobedience. But what did God's prohibition really mean, and what was the nature of their disobedience? What could motivate disobedience in these pure creations of God, when, according to God's warnings, they had everything (including their lives) to lose by disobedience and everything to gain through obedience?
The Mission of Adam, Eve and the Servant
Adam and Eve were created by God to fulfill the purpose of human beings by realizing the three blessings. They were to grow through three stages to perfect their giving and receiving of love, first as a true son and daughter, then as a true brother and sister. Once mature as individuals they would become husband and wife and, finally, father and mother. As true parents they would give birth to true children whom they would raise according to God's will within the realm of His true love. Their family would be the starting point of a true clan, tribe, nation and world, and its mature members and descendants would be kings and queens in human society and lords of love over the rest of creation.
Adam and Eve were to inherit from God true love, life and lineage, and, through incarnating the image of God in creation, become the ancestors of true love, life and lineage for all humankind. Their lives were to be models of individual responsibility and maturity, and of harmonious existence with other people and nature. Their family was to embody the ideal of true love, actualizing a standard of loving relationships that would last forever as an example for all humankind.
Who was there to guide Adam and Eve in their growth? Without substantial parents to educate them during the period of their growth, how could they be expected to accomplish their predestined purpose? God was their invisible, spiritual Parent, but Adam and Eve were created as immature children who lacked the character needed to understand God directly. Since God did not have true parents to use in educating Adam and Eve, He assigned the Servant to raise His children. The Servant's mission was to guide them in their growth and the fulfillment of their purpose. He was given a position of great responsibility caring for Adam and Eve.
Men and women were created to be inheritors of God's parental heart, to be His children, while the other spiritual entities were to be His servants. Although servants have their own value in the creation, their relationship to God is not as intimate as that of His children. God loves all the creation but the capacity of children to receive the love of God is greater than that of servants. Therefore, the parent-child relationship between God and humans is more profound than the master-servant relationship between God and the Servant. Furthermore, a servant must be humble to the parents and the children of the family he serves, always respecting and deferring to the special intimacy of the parent-child relationship.
The Fall of Adam and Eve
Something went drastically wrong. Instead of educating them about God's love and truth and their purpose in life, the Servant led them into rebellion against God, inducing them to lose their purity and their relationship with their spiritual Parent. In the darkness of their separation from God, they created a family of self-centered love that was ignorant of God and became the dwelling of Satan. Instead of establishing a tradition of true love, life and lineage that could be passed from generation to generation, Adam and Eve created a legacy of satanic love, life and lineage: a world of hell instead of heaven.
Inheriting the perversion of his parents, Cain, their first son, killed his younger brother, Abel, in a fit of anger, revealing the depravity of his lineage and sealing the dismal fate of his family and its descendants. Thus Adam and Eve fell spiritually from a position of great importance as the children of God to become children of Satan who created a hell of false love in which men and women lived in ignorance of the love and truth of God.
The Motive and Process of the Fall
What force could have enticed Adam and Eve to disobey God? Since they were warned of the dire consequences of disobedience, there must have been a powerful temptation for them to do the very thing that God had forbidden them. That Adam and Eve succumbed to the desire to eat a literal fruit is not credible, given the abundance of natural foods available for their sustenance. Furthermore, they were warned that they would die if they "ate the fruit," a risk even a starving person would be most unlikely to take. After eating the forbidden fruit they continued to live for a long time, implying that the fruit they ate was not literal but represented something of deep significance to their spiritual lives. What's more, when confronted by God after the fall, Adam and Eve covered their sexual parts, suggesting guilt associated with love rather than the consumption of food (in which case it would have made more sense for them to cover their mouths in shame).
According to the Principle, the only force greater than that generated by truth, and therefore capable of leading humans to disobey the laws of God, is love. God's essence is heart, and the very reason He created was to express the love of His heart. Human purpose is fulfilled when individuals reciprocate God's love, giving joy to the Creator and His creation. Therefore, nothing in the creation can be superior to love. God's laws exist to guide humankind in the perfection of love: they exist to serve love. If it were otherwise, God's intention for the creation could not be fulfilled. Thus, the only force powerful enough to tempt Adam and Eve into disobeying God's commandment was love. The force of the Principle was not as powerful as the force of love, but the force of the Principle combined with the force of faith in God's commandment was stronger than the force of love. Therefore, as long as Adam and Eve obeyed the commandment they were strong enough to overcome the temptation to misuse love.
The aim of spiritual growth is the perfection of love. Thus, the most important task of the Servant was to teach Adam and Eve how to love according to God's will. But the Servant did not do as he was instructed by God.
A scenario of what took place in the fall, seen through the Principle and corroborated by prevalent patterns of sinful behavior evident throughout history and the contemporary world, pictures the following unfolding of events.
As Adam and Eve approached maturity, they greatly developed their capacity to give and receive true love, in the process embodying the beauty of their Creator more and more. This development of their spiritual natures meant they were growing in their ability to know and communicate with God directly, thus reducing their need for the Servant as a teacher and guardian.
The Servant sensed that his guardianship was to end and that he was to take up his permanent position as a servant of Adam and Eve. This change in the Servant's relationship with Adam and Eve did not change God's love for the Servant, but, given the wrong interpretation, it did create an opportunity for the Servant to feel he was losing God's love. From God's viewpoint, the Servant would completely fulfill his purpose, and become a greater object of love by humbly serving Adam and Eve. By assisting the creation in realizing its completion, he would have received maximum benefit. But from the Servant's point of view he was confronted with a loss of position and love.
Furthermore, the Servant had to face the truth that he was not to participate in the three blessings of Adam and Eve who were receiving God's love in a special way open only to human beings. Their beauty and potential to give and receive love was a cause of jealousy to the Servant, even though he was made by God to be fulfilled according to his own characteristics and potentialities. The Servant was unable to accept that his special role as God's representative to Adam and Eve was only for a limited time and that his permanent role and eternal value were as a beloved servant rather than a beloved son.
There were two possible responses the Servant could make to the changing situation. He could share God's increasing delight in the growth of His children, or he could feel jealous of God's parental affection for Adam and Eve and seek to replace the love from God he felt he was losing. Unfortunately he chose the second course by pursuing a relationship of love with Eve. He sought her love to benefit himself rather than caring for Adam and Eve and seeing that they got what they needed to reach maturity and fulfill the three blessings. The masculine nature of the Servant inclined him towards Eve, whose femininity was particularly attractive to him. But in pursuing this relationship with Eve, the Servant was leaving his position as a guardian of God's children and usurping the position of Adam, who was created to be the spouse of Eve.
When scriptures say the Servant encouraged Eve to eat of the fruit, in fact he encouraged Eve to share her love with him, disobeying God's instruction to the contrary. There were no literal fruits created by God that were not for human beings to enjoy. All fruits were to be taken in their season and for their proper purpose. Eve's mature love was to be given fully to Adam once she had reached womanhood and was qualified to be a true wife to him. Any other use of her womanly love was contrary to God's will.
Eve was attracted to the Servant because of his superior knowledge. But by responding to the Servant's unrighteous love (by agreeing to 'eat the fruit'), Eve lost her purity and her natural ability to give and receive true love. She learned perverted love from her teacher, losing her position as God's true daughter and her qualification to be a true wife and mother. Although the Servant was only a spiritual being and Eve was a human being living on earth, the love they consummated in their spiritual union was sexual and substantial to the point of violating the laws of true love. (The fact of substantial sexual relations between spirits and people on earth is well documented in the literature on male spirits, incubi, and female spirits, succubi, who are known to engage in sexual intercourse with humans.) God could not accept or participate in the relationship between the Servant and Eve because it had nothing to do with His standard of love. The unprincipled love relationship between them caused a spiritual fall, in which the two participants cut themselves off from the true love of God. (The fall in this text means loss of unity with God. It does not have any connotation of physical position.)
From her fallen position, Eve could no longer understand God and His will for her. She could see that Adam was good and, feeling ashamed of her disobedience, she could clearly understand that she had been deceived by the Servant. She realized that she should have waited to be blessed in marriage with Adam, once they had reached maturity. Eve was faced with a choice. She could repent of her error and confess her sin to Adam, thereby separating herself from the Servant and his false love, and allow Adam to help her restore her relationship with God. Or she could incriminate Adam in her mistake and try to lose her sense of loss and isolation from God by drawing him into a relationship of love with her by getting him to 'eat the -fruit' as well. She chose the second course of action. Adam, even though he knew it was clearly against God's commandment, abandoned his purity and entered into a relationship of premature conjugal love with her. It was premature because he had not yet reached full mind-body unity (the first blessing), which was a precondition for blessing in marriage, and because Eve, defiled by her relationship with the Servant, was in no condition to be his spouse. God could not recognize or participate in their love relationship because it violated the principles of true love. The ideal world of the three blessings could never be fulfilled through the practice of immature love. The premature sexual relationship between Adam and Eve is called the physical fall.
Eve's seduction of Adam did not liberate her from the misery she had fallen into; it merely drew Adam down to the same fallen realm. Through the fall, both Adam and Eve lost previously close relationships with God and were cut off from His true love. Now distant from God's heart and love, they created a distorted imitation of true man-woman love, patterned after Eve's relationship with the Servant. Thus, instead of receiving God's blessing in marriage and creating a true love family, Adam and Eve established a fallen standard of love in a family that was blocked from receiving the love of God. Their impure love became the standard inherited by their children and subsequent generations of humankind.
Each had reason to blame the other for their fall. Adam could blame Eve for having deceived him into a premature love relationship; Eve could blame Adam for not protecting her from the wiles of the Servant and for responding to her affections when he should have known that they were not sanctioned by God. By harboring such resentments for each other instead of repenting and seeking forgiveness from God and each other, Adam and Eve created a home of acrimony and bitterness, a loveless environment that was a dwelling for Satan rather than God. Raised in that satanic home, the children of Adam and Eve never received the parental love they needed to grow into true men and women. Instead they inherited the patterns of unprincipled behavior which turned the Garden of Eden into hell on earth.
Evidence the Fall Was a Misuse of Love
Both religion and science confirm that the misuse of love is the root cause of evil and human suffering. Religion teaches that men and women must be responsible in the creation of families, and stipulates the harshest punishments for those who break God's commandments regarding these matters. In particular, adultery and other forms of illicit love are strictly forbidden. In many traditions, they are punishable by death.
The social sciences confirm that healthy families are the key to the creation of a healthy society. The breakdown of man-woman love results in a breakdown of the family unit, producing all societal problems, from alcohol and drug abuse to juvenile delinquency and crime. Of particular concern to psychologists and sociologists is the rise of child abuse in families with immature, unloving parents. Moral decline has been the terminal sickness of all civilizations which have passed into history. The rapid decline of morality in secularized societies today has produced a plethora of sociological problems, ranging from those of single-parent families and abused children to the growing ranks of the homeless and soaring rates of criminality and debilitating addictions.
Medical scientists and practitioners add their own corroboration of the damage caused by family breakdown through the evidence they have gathered of the harm inflicted on society by venereal diseases, which are spread primarily through illicit love relationships. In particular, the AIDS epidemic, which is the direct consequence of widespread contemporary immorality, threatens the lives of a growing percentage of humankind.
The true family is the basis for creation of a healthy society and world. Only when true love governs man-woman and parent-child relationships can there be a permanent solution to the many problems that afflict human relations, from familial disunity and social disorder to racial conflicts and wars.
Conclusion
The most powerful force in the universe is love. Thus the purpose of God's creation was shattered when the first man and woman misused love. Adam and Eve never completed their growth to maturity and failed to create a true, godly family. Consequently, they also failed to establish a loving dominion over nature. Instead they put their own wishes above those of God, in the process destroying the very means by which they could have fulfilled their deepest desires. Since the unprincipled love relationship between Eve and the Servant took place on the spiritual level, while the premature sexual relationship between Adam and Eve was both spiritual and physical, the fall of Adam and Eve occurred in two stages. When their son, Cain, killed his brother, Abel, the fall of Adam's family was complete and humanity embarked upon a history of misery and suffering, cut off from a relationship with God and the true love, life and lineage that come from Him alone.
The results of the fall were catastrophic, plunging humankind into a spiritual darkness so profound that thousands of years have passed without a solution being found to human separation from God. Without the Creator's parental love and goodness planted in the hearts of His beloved children, the original value of life was lost and, consequently, human beings have known only distortions and perversions of God's ideal. Some of the most serious repercussions of the fall are discussed in the following chapter.
8. Results Of The Fall
The first human ancestors began life as a couple full of mutual resentment and accusation, each blaming the other for the predicament into which they had fallen instead of taking responsibility for their own role in the disaster. Having lost their original, intimate relationship with God, they lacked the heart and love to help each other out of the situation. With the Servant having become Satan, the unrepentant master of false love instead of a wise teacher, there was no one to show them the way back to God.
The promise of the creation was shattered by the fall, and the very fabric of human relationships based on true love, out of which the ideal world was to have been made, was torn asunder. This left only incomplete and inadequate love relationships as the foundation for human society. The result was the creation of a world ignorant of God, populated by people pursuing purposes far removed from God's purpose for them. In their ignorance, fallen men and women have struggled against each other to gain a dominion of self-centered power over other people and the world of nature. Their pursuit of unrighteous desire for selfish purposes has made the world a place of conflicts and misery instead of an environment of love and peace.
The Loss of True Love
Adam and Eve's experience of love was colored by the fall. They had never received the true love of parents because the Servant had used the authority given him by God for his own purposes, contrary to God's will and love. They had not achieved true brother-sister love (as evidenced by Adam's neglect of his sister when she entered a relationship of great jeopardy with the Servant) because the Servant had sought Eve for himself rather than educating Adam and Eve about their proper roles and relationship. Their experience of conjugal love had been completely distorted as it was based on the unprincipled relationship between the Servant and Eve. Even though they felt shame and remorse for their error and God felt parental sympathy for His fallen children, God had to abide strictly by the Principle in leading them back to their original, pure positions.
The universal experience of fallen people is frustration caused by their inability to experience the true love that every human being wants and seeks in life. The love relationships between parents and children, brothers and sisters, as well as husbands and wives have always fallen short of the ideal. This is because the patterns of human love are based on those established by the first man and woman. Imperfect love has been passed from generation to generation. Children raised with inadequate love are unable to perfect their own love and consequently on reaching adulthood are not qualified to give true love to their own children. Human love has been associated with fear and guilt instead of fulfillment and joy.
The only way this cycle of imperfect love can be broken is through the creation of a new lineage, free from Satan's domination. A true man and woman must create a true family founded on relationships of true love. This family will be the beginning point of a new, pure lineage and tradition that will fulfill the original ideal of God's creation. The central goal of history after the fall of Adam and Eve has been precisely this: the restoration of fallen men and women to the purity of Adam and Eve before the fall, through the mission of true parents. The true parents have to restore the true love, life and lineage that were lost in the fall.
The Loss of Truth
Adam and Eve lived in confusion, aware that they had made mistakes but unable to free themselves of the consequences. With their spiritual senses darkened, the God they had been growing to know and love was suddenly veiled to them. He was hidden from view behind the haze of their unprincipled lives which were dominated by the fallen love learned from the Servant. With this love God would have no relationship.
Their loss of God's love was accompanied by a loss of God's truth. Instead of gaining a clear, God-centered understanding of their purpose and how they were to fulfill it, they became fundamentally ignorant of their reason for being, of how to live a good life, create a good family and establish true dominion over nature. Thus the home of Adam and Eve became an environment of false love and ignorance instead of a dwelling place for God's love and truth. Their children were brought up knowing only distorted love and partial truths. Coming from this unprincipled home environment, Cain was raised with satanic tendencies which eventually led him to murder Abel. Thus the ignorance of Adam and Eve was inherited by their children.
Adam and Eve's ignorance was the result of their inversion of the mind-body relationship. A true man or woman grows to maturity by the mind maintaining the subject position over the body. God communicates His will to the mind of human beings, so the body must obey the mind if an individual is to become fully the image of God. When the interests of the body are placed above those of the mind the basic order of creation is violated and chaos results. This is rather like a rider putting his horse in charge of following directions on a map to reach a hidden treasure. The result will not be success: horses are made to follow humans, not to lead them. Following the instinctive desires of the body, human beings are totally lost in this world, stumbling through life until they arrive at the end of their physical existence, when, on beginning life in the spirit world, they are confronted with the consequences of their ignorance: an existence in darkness and confusion far from the light and truth of God.
Good and Evil
The fundamental ignorance of human beings since the fall has been their inability to distinguish clearly between good and evil, to recognize how their lives contradict God's will. According to the Principle, the distinction between good and evil is clear. Any thought or deed that contributes to the fulfillment of a person's God-given purpose, the achievement of the three blessings, is good. Conversely, any thought or action that stands in the way of human fulfillment is evil. Put in a different way, any base that people make for God to work is good, whereas any base for Satan to work is evil.
Things in themselves are not intrinsically good or evil. The way they are employed (for or against God's will) determines their value. For example, a hammer used to build a family home is 'good', whereas the same hammer is 'evil' if used as a murder weapon. By the same token, a gun used in the defense of a nation against unrighteous attack is 'good', but used to kill an innocent person is 'evil'. The hammer and the gun are not good or evil in themselves, but their use by people is.
The Principle does not agree with classical dualism which places good and evil in the same category as night and day or black and white. Good and evil are not complementary dual characteristics of God and His creation; rather, good is the result of God-centered activity and evil the result of any activity contrary to the will of God. Since God is only good, everything He created has the original nature to do good. Evil results when created beings do not act according to the purpose for which they were created. Thus good and evil are diametrically opposite to each other and cannot be reconciled (hence the discomfort of fallen people), whereas dual characteristics are complementary aspects of creation which are mutually dependent and essential to its existence, activity and multiplication. There is no evil in God's ideal world.
The Servant's invasion and destruction of the true love relationships of Adam and Eve made him, as Satan, the great enemy of pure love. Satan was able to maintain his influence over Adam and Eve because they obeyed him instead of God, and thus voluntarily established a base within themselves that remained responsive to him. They could not clearly identify this base within themselves since they had lost the purity with which to judge the impurity of Satan's influence. Thus Adam and Eve fell under an evil influence that they could not understand.
This has been Satan's hold on the descendants of Adam and Eve. They have experienced various resentments and lusts without knowing the origin of those feelings and without the purity to recognize them clearly as foreign to their true, original natures. Satan has been like a criminal kingpin who walks freely in society, unrecognized and unprosecuted, because his crimes remain unknown.
The efforts of fallen men and women to do good are conditioned by the evil they have inherited from their ancestors, stemming from Adam and Eve. All fallen humanity has been burdened by the evil legacy of Adam and Eve, the original sin. Thus the standard of goodness of fallen humans is relative. Only the standard of goodness of a sinless person, completely free of Satan's influence, is absolute. To point to this standard, God has sent prophets and saints, revealed scriptures, and sent Christ. Without such guidance, fallen humans cannot clearly distinguish good from evil. Ultimately, true parents will replace the first ancestors and establish an absolute standard of goodness.
The original nature of man and woman is the image of God. This nature can never be completely lost, but it is smothered by fallen impulses and characteristics that became a dominant part of human nature as a result of the fall. This fallen, evil nature inclines people to follow ways opposite to their original direction and true purpose.
It is never the original nature of men or women that leads them into relationships of illicit love or inspires aggression and violence against others. Nor does it lead a man to hate his own brother or sister, or condemn a husband and wife to share a life of resentment and bitterness. It does not incite children to rebel against their parents, nor does it cause parents to neglect and abuse their children. It does not cause humans to abuse the rest of creation. Only the evil minds of fallen people produce human wrongdoing and cause human suffering by leading individuals to disobey God.
There is a continuous struggle between the evil mind and the original mind in fallen humans. These internal conflicts are the cause of conflicts between individuals and families, tribes and nations. The original mind, though faint, calls out to fallen people to unite with God's will.
The Influence of Good and Evil Spirits
The struggle between the original mind and the evil mind is greatly exacerbated by the intervention of spirit men and women in the affairs of people on earth. Good spirits, that is those close to God, have a beneficial influence on the spirits of men and women on earth. However, evil spirits, who are close to Satan in character and direction, have a bad influence on the spirits of people on earth. Because of the dislocation of spirit and body brought about by the fall, fallen individuals are generally unaware of the influence of good and evil spirits in their lives. They tend to attribute fallen spiritual influences to their own moods, sentiments and inspirations.
Whenever the spirit of a fallen man or woman unites with the thoughts or activities of evil spirits he or she multiplies the power of Satan and evil in the world. Satan's power will end only when people cease to interact with his ideas and activities. By encouraging faith and obedience to God, religions have enabled people to cast off their relationships with evil spirits and strengthen their relationships with good (guardian) spirits and angels. As with Adam and Eve, it is each person's individual responsibility to choose either the path of faith in God or the way of the world with its negative spiritual influences.
Fallen Nature
Due to the fall, the original good human nature became twisted into fallen nature. Careful analysis of the fallen nature of humankind reveals that it has four major components that derive from four fundamental errors at the time of the fall.
First, fallen humans fail to see people and situations as God sees them. Because of disbelief and distrust, they do not appreciate the value of their circumstances and those of others, leading to erroneous concepts and actions. All human sins (thoughts and actions which alienate human beings from God) are the result of individuals taking positions contrary to God's point of view. This tendency is inherited from the Servant's failure to see Adam and Eve as God saw them. While God loved Adam and Eve as His children and wanted them to grow to fulfill the three blessings, the Servant came to want a relationship with them for his own benefit. The Servant was willing to sacrifice Adam and Eve for his own pleasure. This self-centered rather than God-centered point of view led the Servant to act in error, destroying God's ideal. The Servant's disbelief and distrust of God led to his outright rebellion against God. This faithlessness was passed on to Adam and Eve and their descendants as the most fundamental aspect of fallen nature.
Second, fallen people, lacking God's perspective, have a tendency to misjudge their own value, to be arrogant and to go their own way in seeking power and prestige at the cost of the fulfillment of God's will. They are not satisfied with what they have and seek to gain for themselves what belongs to others. This fallen nature comes from the Servant's dissatisfaction with his position as the teacher and servant of Adam and Eve. Failing to recognize his own value and special role in the creation, the Servant aspired to stand above his God-given position and thirsted for the position of Adam as the first son of God and spouse of Eve, a role specifically forbidden to him. This type of arrogance blocks the human path to God and is the root of adultery.
Third, as a result of the second fallen nature, human beings tend to dominate those whom they should follow. This reversal of dominion causes chaos in human relations. For example, the prophets and saints sent by God typically have been rejected and persecuted by the very people they tried to assist, bringing disaster to those people. This aspect of fallen nature is inherited from the Servant who inverted the natural order of God's creation by claiming a position over Adam and Eve. Adam was to have been in the subject position to Eve, and both of them were to have been subject over the Servant. In effect, the Servant usurped God's position as Adam and Eve's parent and lord. In life one frequently sees unrighteous usurpation of position, with resultant chaos and suffering; as when the proud lord it over the meek, unrighteous people kill prophets, students rebel against their teachers, or sailors raise a mutiny. On a national scale, violent revolutions typically lead to widespread misery and bloodshed.
Fourth, fallen humans tend to seek others to share in their wrongdoing rather than taking responsibility to correct it themselves. They justify their evil deeds and try to win approval and participation from others. This multiplication of evil is responsible for the fallen culture in which widespread complicity in unprincipled behavior prevents its eradication. This nature comes from Eve, who, under the Servant's influence, wanted to rid herself of the guilt and shame she felt after her relationship with him but, instead of repenting, repeated an unprincipled act of love with Adam, thus multiplying evil instead of reversing it. In fallen society it is common for people to want to minimize their sense of guilt by including others in what they know to be wrongdoing. This behavior is precisely the opposite of taking responsibility for your own and others' mistakes. Irresponsible action causes the multiplication of evil.
The four aspects of fallen nature became deeply rooted in the first family, from which they were passed down to subsequent generations as inherited fallen nature. The reality of this inheritance was made fully evident by the behavior of Cain, the first child of Adam and Eve: he failed to recognize God's special love for Abel; he refused to accept his position as having made a sacrifice inferior to Abel's; he dominated his younger brother by killing him; and he multiplied evil by committing murder in imitation of Satan's spiritual murder of Adam and Eve.
Human beings must rid themselves of all four aspects of fallen nature if they are to become free to unite with God. As the root of the human tree, the behavior of Adam and Eve affected all their descendants. The tree itself is intrinsically good, but it is suffering from an ailment that has spread from the roots to the leaves. Fallen nature is something that all men and women inherit, and it affects their lives, whether they are aware of it or not. All religions have teachings which help humans overcome the various aspects of fallen nature, and the best of humanistic philosophies also teach such ethics. It is an essential part of every person's responsibility to strive continuously to resist these fallen tendencies and to live by true moral and ethical standards.
Why God Did Not Prevent the Fall
Considering the world of evils that sprang from the fallen lineage of Adam and Eve, one might well wonder why God did not intervene to prevent the fall. The answer lies in human responsibility. Since Adam, Eve and the Servant all had free will, they were free to obey or disobey God. They had been created by God with free will because He wanted them to love Him out of their own volition. There is no true love other than that given freely.
If God had intervened to prevent Adam and Eve from falling when He saw them deviating from their true path, He would have violated His own principles, which require human beings to fulfill their own portion of responsibility in order to grow to maturity. The implication would have been that God had erred when he made human beings, and that He then had to act to ft the mistake. But God had not made a mistake. Human beings had to have free will to fulfill their purpose. Only through exercising their free will with responsibility could Adam and Eve fulfill their purpose for existence.
In sum, then, God did not prevent the fall because, according to His perfect principles, the purpose of creation can only be fulfilled when humans fulfill their own portion of responsibility.
Why Humankind Needs True Parents
The fall of Adam and Eve meant the postponement of God's will until such time as a new Adam and new Eve could take their place and fulfill the three blessings. It also meant that fulfilling humanity's original purpose became nothing more than a hope for fallen people, a promised Kingdom of Heaven instead of a reality from the beginning of human existence.
In the fallen world, false relationships and institutions prevail, and every initiative from God's side has to fight against the tide of fallen humanity. Children are born with contradictory natures that are both inclined to goodness and burdened by the legacy of fallen behavior inherited from their ancestors. This legacy tempts them to violate God's laws and makes them susceptible to the false love that dominates the fallen world.
God has sent special persons and groups to teach and enlighten confused people in the fallen realm. The history of religion is the history of these representatives of God and the efforts they have made to challenge the fallen status quo with God's love and truth. They have always been met with hostility and suffered persecution because the dominion of evil is most threatened by men and women who devote their lives to God and the service of humankind.
The struggle for God and against Satan begins within the individual. Unless the mind gains dominion over the body, the original nature over the fallen nature, one cannot succeed in subjugating the evil of the outside world. This has been understood, practiced and taught by all the great figures in God's providence, from Noah to Mohammed, as well as the saints of modem times.
As long as people are born into the fallen lineage of Adam and Eve, the sinful legacy prevents them from completely separating from evil and becoming one with God. Thus the whole object of human history, seen from God's viewpoint, has been to create a new first family so that a new, pure lineage can be established in the midst of the fallen world. This new lineage will eventually supplant the lineage dominated by fallen nature. A new Adam and Eve will be true parents who restore love, life and lineage to God's dominion and who thereby create the God-centered families, tribes, nations and world that God has always wanted and for which virtuous human nature has always yearned.
Conclusion
The fall resulted in the creation of human relations devoid of true love. Instead of the first ancestors establishing a model family to be emulated by their descendants, they created a world in which people are alienated from God and do not know themselves or how to establish true relationships of love with other people and nature. Realizing the three blessings became a remote ideal as men and women burdened by a legacy of sin and ignorance have struggled with themselves and one another, as individuals and groups. History has been shaped by this sad condition of humanity.
To end the dominion of evil and create a world of true love centered on God, true parents must come to restore fallen love, life and lineage to God. This purpose has been the central thrust of history. Part III of this book, which follows, examines the principles and historical processes related to the coming of true parents.