True Family Values
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
True Family Values is a moral viewpoint and a movement to support it, largely based in the United States and primarily associated with the Unification Church.
[edit] External Links
- True Family Values - Engrafting into the Love, the Life and the Lineage of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit - Dr. Tyler Hendricks, President, True Family Values Ministry
- True Family Values - article by Joong Hyun Pak and Andrew Wilson who co-authored a book of the same name
- Meaningful Encounters
- Articles on True Family Values
- Amazon.com entry for Rev. Pak & Dr. Wilson's book
 |
This article is uncategorized.
Please help improve this article by adding it to one or more categories, so it may be associated with related articles (how?). Please remove this tag after categorizing, but not before. |
The Family is the School of Love
Only by strengthening our families can we hope to have a prosperous, safe, and healthy society. But how do we strengthen the family? The crucial question, one that is rarely asked is this: Does the family exist only for itself, or does it exist for a higher purpose? When we conceive of the family as an end in itself, our efforts to buttress it will inevitably fall short. The secret to reviving the family is to discover its relationship to the larger wholes of society, the nation, the world, and God-its significance as a microcosm of universal love. We must understand the dynamics of a well-functioning family that is truly, as Martin Luther termed it, a "school of love."
Almost the entirety of human life is lived in the context of a family. From birth until we are teenagers, we live in our parents' home. A few years later we marry and start families of our own. Though modern society with its extended schooling has stretched the period during which people experience single life, traditionally most people do not remain single for very long. In the family we have our first experiences of love from our parents. This love molds our character. No matter what-the position we achieve in society, our level of education, wealth or fame, how healthy we become or happy we become-through all the ups and downs of life, the family we are born into and the family we later create should form a permanent set of relationships to care for us and challenge us to grow from within. The family is the school of love. The family is also the school of ethics and morality, and the source of our most deeply-held values.
We hear much these days about family values and strengthening the family. Yet in fact, most families are far from ideal. As one reporter quipped, "Everybody talks about traditional family values. But nobody knows what they're talking about.2 Many people remember their families as a source of pain and suffering as much as a place of love and joy. Why? The quality of love in the family is not as it should be. Can there be an ideal family? What would it look like? We have the examples of our parents, but were they adequate models? The traumatized American family is often a school of neurosis, dysfunction, hatred and bitterness-nurturing criminals rather than good citizens. To become a school of love, the American family needs an infusion of life and strength and goodness which can only come through values which have stood the test of time and have proven to be universally true and good. We must find true family values.
