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J. de Venecia: One Global Family under God
Written by Hon. Jose de Venecia, Jr., Chairman, CDI-Asia Pacific
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Brothers and Sisters in Japan and delegates from around the world:
I wish you joy at this Tokyo Global Peace Festival – and may the grace you sow raise a harvest of righteousness!
The Federation – founded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon – is an interreligious peace movement guided by a vision of the whole of humankind as one global family under God. Our is a global alliance to found a unified world – in which peoples can live together in harmony, cooperation, and shared prosperity.
As we gather today, here in the outskirts of Tokyo, at about the same time, political leaders, presidents, prime ministers, kings, and religious leaders from all over the world are meeting at the United Nations to pursue a culture of peace and understanding and to prevent a clash of civilizations, which I believe is really a clash of religions and a clash of cultures.
Peace is our universal longing – but it is also our most elusive collective goal. We in East Asia may consider ourselves lucky, compared with many parts of Africa, Southern Europe, and even West Asia.
Comparatively lucky we may be – but Muslims and Buddhists are killing each other in Southern Thailand; Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka; Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir; Christians and Muslims in Eastern Indonesia; in my country’s southern island of Mindanao, although there has been much improvement there and a peace accord has been signed; and, in Burma, where soldiers brutalize Theravada monks marching against the military leaders. There are continuing politico-religious, ethnic, and communal conflicts in Russia, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and in parts of Latin America.
And our most practical and good-faith solution is our offer of inter-religious dialogue and the launching of our global peace festivals – in Paraguay, in Washington D.C., in Kenya, Africa, in Manila, Mindanao, Bangkok in Southeast Asia, South Korea, Mongolia, and now today, in the outskirts of Tokyo here in Northeast Asia, all with God’s grace, well-attended and very successful.
Japan a Center of This Longing for Peace
I must congratulate the Japanese people and the Universal Peace Federation, for no nation is doing more for global peace than Japan, whose foreign policy is focused on helping reduce poverty in the world.
Despite its own financial difficulties, Tokyo is the Number One donor of Official Development Assistance; and I know His Majesty, Emperor Akihito, this man of wisdom and great humility, to be an apostle of international understanding, as are the leaders of the ruling and opposition parties of Japan.
In America, the election of Barack Obama should open avenues for ending the conflicts in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and create new ground for managing the social disparities in the world and the great inter-civilizational divides.
Pope Benedict, and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, too, are engaged in this search for millennial peace.
There is much to do, and even everyday people like us can help. Through our testimony and our faith, we can bring to bear on global problems the moral influence of the great religions.
For, there can be no peace among nations without peace among the religions. And, there can be no peace among the religions unless there is dialogue among the religions. You and I agree that understanding among the great religions and the great civilizations has become the only basis for global peace that will endure.
That is why the Universal Peace Federation, with the Philippine government, are relentlessly pursuing our crusade for the United Nations to create a full-fledged inter-faith council as an organ of the UN to coordinate, superintend, and promote interreligious dialogues at the global, regional, national and local levels – mobilizing in the process churches, mosques, temples and the Great Books of the Faiths – the Torah, the Sermon on the Mount, the Qur’an, the Bhagavad-gita, the Discourses of the Buddha, and the Analects of Confucius.
The Common Ethical Denominator
But, there can be no dialogue between the great religions without their agreement on one ethical standard – above and beyond their surface differences in dogmas, symbols, and rituals.
And, the core of this global ethic, I believe humankind can discover in the simple but profound principle: “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” This Golden Rule could indeed become our common ethical denominator – because all the belief systems subscribe to it in strikingly similar forms. For instance:
- Buddhists express this Rule thus: “Treat all creatures as you would like to be treated.”
- Confucianists teach: “What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others.”
- Muslims say: “No one of you is a believer until you desire for your neighbor that which you desire for yourself.”
- While Jews say: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor – that is the basic law.”
- And Hindus agree: “This is the essence of morality: Do not do to others which if done to you would cause you pain.”
The Mother of Ethics for Humankind
As the "mother of ethics" for the whole of humankind, the Golden Rule could, therefore, become the core of initial agreement around which interfaith dialogue could build reconciliation, understanding, and harmony. Accepting the Golden Rule as the Global Ethic will ensure that all our nations — and all our faiths — embrace pluralism in culture and in society.
The overriding principle, as a matter of fact, the Universal Peace Federation’s first principle, is that all of us, irrespective of race or religion, belong to “one human family under God.”
No democracy, or any other governmental system, can succeed without a moral basis, without moral moorings, without a spiritual dimension, without a global ethic, without moral values. It is only through these that peace will prevail and endure.
May peace in our homes and in our hearts radiate throughout the world during this holiday season, and bring forth the thousand years of God’s peace that we long for.