Cain and Abel Revisited

On Monday I said we would talk about the tradition. Underlying holy days, sacraments and ceremonies, what is the essential tradition?

The essential tradition is to offer the private resources for the public purpose, the smaller for the larger, to God through True Parents. (As an aside, this is exactly Hyo Jeong.)

The model for this is a child’s offering to their parent. In the model, the victorious younger son stands in the position of parent to the elder son, who takes the position of child. The younger has the “office” of parent. Occupying that office, the younger mediates the elder’s offering to God.

In the providence of restoration, the reason the authority of parents goes to an office is that the actual parents are not True Parents.

Once there are True Parents, their authority still is distributed to offices. This is because, due to demographics, they can personally mediate the offerings of only a few.

So whether in the original creation or restoration providence, the parents’ authority is delegated to offices. The office holder is responsible to carry out the parents’ mission to a family or tribe, whether as literal parents (the original model) or as an elder son in the position of parents (the restoration model).

True Father explained this in a speech entitled “Heavenly Tradition.” He said, “Let us put Adam and Eve, respectively, one in the position of first-born, and the other in the position of second-born. Cain and Abel’s relationship is something like that between Adam and Eve.”

Abel, the second-born, reverses the act of Eve: “Eve caused the Fall of Adam by force, by tempting him—by forcing him to do the same as she did; but …Abel cannot [force] his elder brother, …[instead, he should] move his heart. …Then Cain [can obey] Abel to be restored.”

The office of True Parents functions on this model: “Likewise, in restoring ourselves, we have to obey the central figure [Abel, in the position of parent], while the central figure is going to move our hearts to obey him. …Cain [in the position of child] must keep the position here and …must move towards Abel. So Abel is trying to move our hearts, enlighten our hearts to the truth, but we in the position of Cain must be obedient and willing to join him.”

We’ll continue this discussion on Friday.

(Citations: “Heavenly Tradition,” January 20, 1973, Belvedere https://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon73/SM730120.htm.)