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Self Evident Truth #4
There is a purpose to life: Loving Marriage and Happy Families
 The “purpose to life” can be considered in the context of the most essential human institution – the family. We will examine the premise that “the family is the school of love and peace.” And when we consider the “direction to history”, we see the underlying spiritual dynamic at play. In fact we recognize that history is the providence of God to realize “one family under God.”
First we will consider the family as the school of love and peace. The family is the most important human institution. Without it we would not exist. Through it we transmit language, culture, ethics, core values - even religion. As the most essential institution of human experience, the family is regarded as sacred by the world’s religions. Faith traditions stress the importance of honoring family values:
In Hinduism:
When the family declines, ancient traditions are destroyed. With them are lost the spiritual foundation for life, and the family loses its sense of unity.
In Judaism:
When a man honors his father and mother, God says, “I regard it as though I had dwelt among them and they had honored me.”
In the Tenrikyo faith:
Representing heaven and earth I have created husband and wife. This is the beginning of the world.
From the Christian faith:
The sacred partnership of true marriage is constituted both by the will of God and the will of man.
The starting point of a new family is the marriage of a man and woman. That relationship of husband and wife is also the foundation of parenthood, of creating new life. Thus the institution of marriage is also vital to the strength and sanctity of the family.
Marriage joins the life of one woman and the life of one man. In time, through children, it joins the lineage of the man and the lineage of the woman. It thus begins a history, a nation, the world and the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.
Self Evident Truth #5
There is a direction to History: God has a Will for nations and the World
 Human society is not just composed of families, but also communities, nations which comprise the world. God has a Will and purpose for all of those dimensions of human social structure. Thus, God must also have a destiny for the world.
Many religions have left their mark on history. Among them, the religions with the greatest influence formed cultural spheres. In recorded history, between 20 to 30 major cultural spheres have existed at various times With the ebb and flow of history, lesser cultural spheres were absorbed by, or merged into, the more advanced spheres. Through the evolution of cultural spheres, as they were buffeted by the rise and fall of nations, four great cultural spheres have survived to the present day: the East Asian sphere, the Hindu sphere, the Islamic sphere, and the Judeo-Christian sphere.
Our world today has become an inter-connected global community. If this trend of consolidation is to continue; if we were to project forward to speculate the events of the near future, Would we not conclude that humanity can anticipate one of two outcomes:
- The pressure of rapid consolidation and intercultural engagement foments a destructive reaction; a massive, catastrophic clash of cultures, with weapons of mass destruction and casualty levels in the millions, or
- These four cultural spheres, upon a cultural consensus of values, form the basis of a unified world of peace centering on a common God-centered spiritual ethos.
This historical development is evidence that each cultural sphere has, as its final mission, the accomplishment of the goals of all religions which have sought the ideal of goodness. The history of the development of cultural spheres, each with its stages of expansion, decline and convergence, is ultimately aimed at constituting one global family and cultural sphere based on common principles and a common ethos. This demonstrates that the essence of human history has been the restoration of one family under God.
We are one global family because we come from the same source. We believe that the principles forged in this country are an important first step toward a world of peace girded by immutable self-evident truths.
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