Living for Others

The spiritual life that begins with faith and devotion to God finds its completion in deeds of loving-kindness and service to others: “We love, because he first loved us.” (1 John 4.19) Living for the sake of others is love’s fundamental ethic.

Living for others is a natural expression of a loving heart that flows spontaneously from a person’s inner being. This is because human beings take after God, who from the moment of creation has continually been living for the sake of His creatures. Nevertheless, due to the fall, human nature became corrupted. Misunderstanding love as a matter of personal pleasure disconnected from the divine source, our minds, attitudes and habits became self-centered. Hence many people find it quite an effort to serve others without the expectation of some sort of payback. We have created a society of takers, not givers, leading inevitably to inequality, resentment and crime.

Passages from all the world’s faiths recommend service and living to benefit others as the supreme way of life in this world. Jesus identifies service as the most authentic way of leadership, and exemplified it in his own life as one who came “not to be served, but to serve.” Moreover, some texts, notably the Bhagavad-Gita and the Tao Te Ching, identify it as the fundamental principle by which God creates and sustains the universe. Every selfless act in the service of others is an act born of God. Father Moon has much to say on this topic, affirming the life of living for the sake of others as the lifestyle of the Kingdom.