The Foundation of Substance and the Cain-Abel Relationship

Some level of good / evil separation on the side of the ‘central figure’, getting out of the midway position, is step one. The Foundation of Faith established by that person is step two. Step three is the separation from Satan through the Cain-Abel relationship.

The Principle’s explanations concerning the Cain-Abel relationship are not only important to understand the Principle’s analysis of history. Because of the fact that a successful accomplishment of this foundation results in the foundation to receive the messiah, for members of the movement it is something like the purpose of life even though, according to the teaching, the messiah has already arrived.

Historically, certain individuals were selected as representatives of mankind. They had to create a limited realm of goodness as a starting base for the messiah to come. However, the task the messiah is enable everybody to enter heaven. His mission is not limited to one religion or any subset of mankind. According to the Principle in the end every single individual that ever lived will ultimately enter heaven.

That means that after his arrival the foundation of faith and substance have to be established again and again, on many different levels and by every individual so that that individual can come (again) before God. Receiving the messiah thus  means to successfully establish the foundation of faith and substance on an individual level, then family level and further up.

The central event for an individual to leave the realm of Satan is the Blessing given by Sun Myung Moon and his wife. It usually takes the form of mass weddings. In the past, fulfillment of certain conditions of faith and substance were a requirement for participation. These requirements were for example to have worked fulltime in the movement for a number of years and having brought some result in outreach activities. Requirements became less demanding over time, however the basic principle is still the same. To reconnect to God people have to demonstrate faith for a certain time and act on it, bringing results (substance).

The willingness to accept the marriage partner selected by Sun Myung Moon’, was one of the requirements in terms of faith in the past. The Blessing given to couples that had been married before, was an exception – but there were not many candidates.

Some people say that a divorce was mandatory in that case in order to receive the blessing. But that is not true. I know several couples that were married and joined the church together. Some of them had children when they joined. They have been blessed by Sun Myung Moon. The mission requirements at that time did put a strain on the family, though. If both partners became active in the movement, lengthy periods of separation, also from the children, were involved and there are not only success stories here.

For a member of the movement the Cain-Abel relationship is daily reality. It is more than an issue of leadership and management. Working in a Cain position and having to be accepted by an ‘Abel’ was a religious requirement in order to reach God. That was how the separation from Satan was accomplished.

It is obvious that we are looking at a source of problems here – the Abel position tempts the position holder to require his ‘Cains’ to accept and carry out, whatever Abel requests, just to gain his acceptance and thus separate from Satan. There is also the thinking, originating from Sun Myung Moon’s speeches, that God will take over once a certain amount of effort has been extended on Cain ‘uniting’ with Abel. That has resulted in excesses, but these still were the exception, rather than the rule. The teaching usually puts a lid on what an Abel can expect a Cain to do. However, the statement of Sun Myung Moon, that a leader has to respect the human rights of his followers makes me wonder, how far some of these exceptions have strayed from the right path.

One overall result of the teaching on Cain-Abel is the emergence of what could be called a ‘Cain-Abel culture’ – an entirely undesirable and unintended development, which is the cause of many formidable train crashes.

Some of the pages in the section ‘Movement’ go into some more detail.