The First Fairy Tale
by
Dale K. Brown
CHAPTER 26
"THE MOONIES"
As the sixties and early seventies slid by, it soon became apparent to anyone who gave the matter any thought that as a nation we weren't very religious any more. No stocks or pillories, no ducking stools or debtor's prisons; why, the condemned weren't even executed in a humanely religious fashion anymore. Its was as if contemporary society had zinc plated the golden age of puritanical virtue. No public whippings or stonings, no burning heretics at the stake to save their souls from hell. It was no wonder people began turning to television for their entertainment.
In looking back there can be little doubt that American freedoms were responsible for many of these national deficiencies, especially freedom of speech. For where blasphemy is no longer a crime, the gentle remonstrances of Christianity languish. Many beliefs have found a way around the inconvenience of freedom, though, for if sanctions cannot be imposed from without, they most certainly can be from within.
Cults are notoriously hard line in this regard and the more apocalyptic the cult, the harder their line. The world is always coming to a horrifying but hardly undeserved end in the view of adherents, at which time all heretics who formerly scoffed at the plain truth of God as revealed to the world by his faithful servant, the holy prophet so and so, will burn, roast, sizzle, and fry and that will be the end of them...and who cares?
It is not the message which defines a cult however, but rather the size of the organization. Religion, when viewed as a collective entity, has instituted a very real caste system. If you belong to a faith with less than a few million members, no matter what the belief, it's a cult. If such selective paranoia has afflicted several times that number, it is one of the world's biggies. And if you live in a nation where everyone believes, or else, you live in Iran! Large or small though, they all share a common goal: the subjugation of the entire world.
Sun Myung Moon was born in North Korea in 1920. Like many a hapless prophet before him, "God" began paying him unsolicited nocturnal visits when the lad was in his teens. The true meaning of the Bible was revealed in the course of their discussions. Things had not been going very well for God at this time and who better to reveal his frustrations to than a North Korean?
God's original plans for humanity, according to the soon to be Reverend Moon, had gone horribly wrong. It had all started in that infernal garden where he put Adam and Eve. (Their names might have been different in Korean.) There they were, two naked humans, male and female, alone in a warm, quiet woodland with their freshly minted hormones flowing. The plan was that God would perform the wedding ceremony, after which the joyous couple would embark on their honeymoon, presumably at the far end of the garden, and in the course of true love, produce perfect and sinless offspring.
But an undefined celestial emergency arose somewhere in the cosmos. Immediate supernatural intervention was required! God rode to the rescue. Meanwhile, back in the garden that wily serpent, Satan the devil, induced Adam and Eve to "garden up", unite unlawfully without benefit of clergy or the blessing of God. How much induction was required under the prevailing circumstances, it being spring time and them being naked, is anybody's guess. But, as a result of this reprehensible conduct, they and their descendants became the literal children of Satan.
God, however, was not to let his failures deter him. He was determined to save human beings, no matter what the cost. So he sent his son to earth. The idea was for Jesus to grow up down here, get married, and be husband and father to a perfect physical family. But this plan also miscarried. Jesus, it seemed, was not up to the task.
In the course of his tenure here, he had failed to cultivate the favor of the politically powerful. As a matter of fact, he had even gone so far as to offend the rich and famous by suggesting that they should be neither. Moreover, the Lord of all the earth just couldn't connect with females. The guy was a confirmed bachelor. On top of all this, he had the maddening habit of speaking riddles. This was a real turn off to the ladies.
As a result of these deficiencies, his mission was doomed. He produced no template family for others to emulate, the politically powerful were after his hide and, at the critical moment just when he needed them most, his followers deserted him. Without public support, he was crucified and returned to the heavens whence he came.
God was in a quandary, but he was resolute. For reasons known only to him, humanity must be saved! And it finally was, for unto all the world was born, on January 6, 1920, a Korean lad dressed in swaddling clothes, in North Pyongan Province.
Where God and Jesus had failed, the boy would not. He was raised a Presbyterian and sent to Japan to study electrical engineering. But before he could make a career of it, God revealed to the teenager his true purpose in life. The now Reverend Moon was to be the promised Messiah.
This information might have shocked lesser men, but not so Mr. Moon. With the help of the Lord, he formulated the "Divine Principals." Within a few years, he began disseminating them in his home town. Alas, he had either never heard, or else he had totally forgotten, that a prophet is without honor among his kindred and in his own country, especially if his country is a communist dictatorship. He was sent to a labor camp and there remained until he was liberated by U.S. Armed Forces during the Korean War.
He began preaching once more, this time south of the thirtieth parallel but he ran into more opposition, not from godless communists, but South Korean Christians. His message that both God and Christ had muffed it, and that he had been chosen to succeed where they had failed, was not at all well received.
But as God's chosen servant, he persisted and eventually a core of believers gathered round and his gospel began to be preached, via missionaries, to the outside world.
He made his first tour of America in 1972 and amassed a sizable fortune in real estate holdings and corporations. (All in the name of the Unification Church, of course!) Like most evangelistic millionaires, on paper he is a pauper. His primary residence at the time was a modest $850,000 cottage in Tarrytown, New York. From there, he directed his growing empire until his conviction for income tax evasion.
It wasn't so much a case of his unwillingness to render unto Caesar that which was Caesar's, but rather, a dispute about who Caesar was. In this case, Reverend Moon thought it must be him. The state of New York and kindly old Uncle Sam disagreed however, and arrangements were made for the Messiah to spend some time with them on the hard rock pile!
Naturally, this was presented to the Unification Church and the press as religious persecution most blatant. The House Sub-Committee, which convened to investigate the reverend's financial antics, saw things differently, however. To their obviously unconverted minds, "the systematic violation of tax, immigration, banking, and currency statutes" were activities incompatible with Christianity as they knew it.
Persecuted and convicted Messiahs are nothing new to the world. When viewed in their proper context, it's almost a rite of passage. Meanwhile, the church continued to grow and prosper to the extent that, if size and filthy lucre were the determining factors, they could no longer be considered a cult.
Chapter Twentyfive
Chapter Twentyseven
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