The Fourth Principle: Dedicate Your Own Family to the Global Family of Humankind

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LESSON 20: Freedom and Peace

A. The ideal world is one of freedom.

1. The difference between freedom and license.

• We have both spirit and flesh, and hence dual purposes, the purpose of the spirit and the purpose of the flesh.
• Freedom means to fulfill both purposes, but in the proper order, with the spirit having priority over the flesh.
• True freedom means to follow one's conscience.
  • The conscience always guides us to live for others. Therefore, the freedom of the conscience exists within the context of the whole.
  • The conscience leads us to fulfill the purpose of life.
  • The conscience leads us to take responsibility for our lives.
  • The conscience leads us to live according to God's will.
  • To live in the context of the whole will also bring satisfaction to the self.
• License means to do whatever the flesh desires, without regard for the effect upon myself or others.
  • Taking license actually enslaves the mind, because the body's desires, by the nature of the physical world, can never be satisfied. Therefore we are constantly on the treadmill of satisfying the body's appetites.
  • Because we are violating the universal law, we suffer from a guilty and crippled conscience.
  • As St. Paul expressed, "I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do" (Rom 7:19-23). If we are "captive to the law of sin," as Paul expressed, then we are not free.

2. The precondition for true freedom is the liberation of the conscience from captivity to the body's desires.

• Liberation of the conscience which had been dragged about by the desires of the flesh, constantly complaining and regretting, but powerless to resist.
• Freedom blossoms, because it is based upon true love (life for others), and true love is always expanding.
• Therefore the scope of one's power, which is the realm of freedom, is ever-increasing. From prison, St. Paul, M. Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela changed the society, because they were there for conscience.

3. Freedom blossoms in true love.

• Bonds of family and society are not coercive, but they are the strongest of bonds, because they are based upon the power of love.
• In true love, obligations are taken on by the will obedient to the conscience.

4. Freedom cannot be sustained only within one family. It must extend to the society, nation and world.

• In history, the cry for freedom has led to political revolution.
• The state must allow both internal freedom . . .
  • Freedom of faith and worship, of thought, of conscience . . .
• . . . and external freedom:
  • Freedoms of speech, assembly, of travel, of redress of grievances, of gaining a fair hearing.
  • Freedoms of economic and political action.
  • Freedom from tyranny.

5. Freedom makes us human.

• Plants grow by natural law; animals adjust to their environment.
• Only humans control ourselves and partially create their world. Only man has freedom to co-create his own environment.
• Only humans have the desire to seek a higher joy and greater accomplishments.
• We are co-creators with God; therefore we are granted freedom by God.
• God gave us a creative nature; by co-creating ourselves in freedom, we help determine our destiny and our world.
• This is an awesome freedom from which many people flee, because they do not comprehend the love and purpose which is the root of true freedom. The notion that we are co-creators in a universe which lacks love and purpose is truly terrible.

6. By living in freedom, we display God's image, fulfilling the first purpose of creation.

7. Freedom is the first characteristic of the world of one great family.

B. Peace

1. Peace requires the absence of struggle.

• Struggle ends by removing points of conflict through mutual recognition of a higher viewpoint.
• Struggle ends by fostering harmony through the practice of sacrificial love.

2. Peace applies on many levels.

3. One level is individual peace, finding peace within.

• This means the harmony between mind and body.
  • The conscience can lead the individual when it does not have to struggle against the desires of the body.
  • True mind-body unity is not just the smooth motion of an athlete.
  • We are talking about the mind as organ of moral reason and spiritual sensibility, not the mind as physical brain
  • Mind-body unity is not the carefree life that is unexamined and carnal. Pangs of the conscience will inevitably arise in that kind of life.
  • It is not the peace of insensibility brought on by use of alcohol or drugs.
  • True peace arises by living a life of virtue.
• Peace with God.
  • This begins by removing mistrust, guilt, resentment, denial in relationship to God.
  • It arises by feeling God's gracious acceptance and support, the justification of one's existence in the cosmos.

4. Peace in the family.

• Overcoming conflict between husband and wife.
  • Practice tolerance and patience, which require maturity.
  • Honest communication (expressing what is true to one's self, not just one's selfish point of view or unreflective reactions).
  • Taking personal responsibility for the mutual problem.
  • Practice repentance to make peace.
• Parents create harmony between brothers and sisters.
• Grandparents create harmony between parents and children.

5. Peace in the community, nation, world.

• Even if the family is at peace within itself, it cannot find peace if the community is full of crime or the nation is at war. The family will inevitably be caught up into the conflict. Brothers divide in civil wars (America, Spain, Russia).
• Fields of conflict:
  • Ideology
  • Land and wealth
  • Personality
  • Race, nation or religion
• Conflicting parties must be reconciled with sacrificial love.
  • Absorb the attack and change the enemies' heart.
  • Absorbing the attack can mean just to suffer, such as the Christians enduring martyrdom in Rome and throughout the world.
  • It can also mean self-defense and counter-attack to end the enemies' power to attack.
  • World War I
  • World War II
  • "Peace through strength" leading to the downfall of communism
  • However, physical victory must be completed through superior ideology and greater sacrificial love, or it merely creates a grievance in the enemy's mind, which will one day erupt with vengeance.
  • The Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Germany.
  • The post-World War II reconstruction of Japan.

6. Creating peace, therefore, requires the action of love, namely, sacrificial love.

7. Peace is the foundation for love to blossom.

• In true love, subject partner and object partner are in harmonious give and take. This is true peace.
• Peace is completed in a dynamic state of being, a perfect balance in which development takes place according to natural law.

8. By living in peace and establishing peace in the world, we fulfill the second of God's purposes of creation: that God find a partner of love. The third and fourth characteristics of the world of one great family are unification and happiness, which are the subjects of the next lesson.

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