Reversal and Restoration

Salvation is sometimes pictured as a great reversal. It looks to the day when God will act to turn the existing social and political order upside down, when the wealthy and powerful will no longer tower above the honest and god-fearing. Internally, it brings the insight that the way to God is the reverse of the way of the world. An enlightened person recognizes that he should reverse his or her orientation one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. Scripture speaks of this inner reversal as dying to self in order to live, seeking darkness in order to find the light, and abasing the self in order to become prominent.

This leads to the concept of salvation as restoration. Restoration refers to the undoing of bad habits, modes of thinking, ways of behaving, and social relations that have grown corrupt and deviated from the proper way. It is a return to the origin, aimed at restoring the original way of life according to the true principles and purposes of God. An important expression of this theme of reversion to the origin is the Buddhist doctrine of Dependent Origination (Paticcasamuppada), which is not just a law of causality but more properly the insight that all causes leading to downfall must be reversed.

Father Moon discusses this topic at length under the teaching of Restoration through Indemnity. Indemnity, broadly speaking, means to restore mistakes by taking the opposite course. It begins with a reversal of character—from self-centeredness to other-centeredness. It extends to relationships—paying restitution for a crime to making amends for a breach of trust, from the standpoint that it is my responsibility to restore harmony with my brother, even when the original problem was not my fault. It concludes with complete restoration, the reversal of the Original Sin that happened at the Human Fall.