Becoming A Good Mother

Question: Seuseungnim, it is a great honor to meet you. I am currently pregnant with my first baby. Please teach me the method to become a good mother.

Answer: To become a good mother, you must first equip yourself well. If you are not equipped, you cannot be a good mother. You need knowledge. When you are well-informed, you can do it. An ignorant person cannot be a good mother. If you lack proper knowledge and try to raise a child, you can only try to be nice, and you won’t know whether you are raising them well or not.

What a child needs most as they grow is answers to the countless questions they have. The closest person to a child is their mother, and next is their father. As children grow, they continue to ask questions. But if you don’t know the answers, you cannot respond properly. You don’t understand what the child is asking, so you cannot teach them. Then where will the child go? They will seek someone else's guidance, such as a church pastor. If the pastor answers well, the child will run to that pastor, and at that moment, it will look like the child is taken away from the parents. They will stop listening to their parents and listen to the pastor instead. In this situation, can you become a good mother? No. Therefore, to be a good mother, you must be equipped. Without this, you cannot be a good mother.

A good mother raises her child as a righteous person. Only then can the child grow with good energy and knowledge. Guiding your child to live rightly in society is the correct way to raise them. Giving a lot of money does not mean the child is being raised well. You must guide them so they can live harmoniously with others. They must be raised as someone who can contribute and do what is needed in society. To raise a child well, the parent must be knowledgeable. If the parent does not know how to raise them properly, someone else will raise the child instead. The only role of a parent is to teach and guide as much as they know. But if the parent fails to fulfill this role, the child will grow up with bad behavior and become a problematic person in society. Then the parents will pay the price for the troubles their child creates.

You can raise a child only up to the level of your ability. If you lack the ability but selfishly cling to your child and try to keep them only to yourself, you may ruin their life. And if you are the one who ruins their life, there will certainly be a price you will have to pay later on. This is Nature’s gift to us. When we do something improperly, Nature gives us a chance to reflect, correct our mistakes, and make things right. Nature is not making life difficult on purpose. Nature has set this up as part of its basic operating system. If you live wrongly, life will be difficult, and if you live rightfully, life will be good. This is Nature’s default setting. But we live without knowing this.

People think, “Just believe in God and everything will be taken care of.” No. Simply believing in God is not enough. When you try to live rightly, then God helps you automatically. This is how it will work in the future. In the past, why did God help us? Because people were ignorant, uneducated, and did not know the world. Life was too hard, so those who leaned on God and prayed received help. But today, all logic and methods have already been established in society. If you refuse to learn and stubbornly insist on living trapped in your old ways, there is no way to help you.

When you try to study and improve your lacking knowledge, someone will come and help you. That person is called the savior. A savior is not someone who gives you bread. A savior is someone who teaches what you do not know. The savior who simply gave bread is a story from thousands of years ago. In modern times, you cannot be called a savior just by giving bread. If a lazy person with no motivation and bad habits is given bread for free, that is not salvation. You should actually take the bread away from such a person to let them learn. True salvation is teaching them how to earn the bread themselves. If someone receives something without any effort, they do not deserve it, and it must be taken away. Only then will they try to equip themselves.

Our concept of a savior is outdated. A true savior awakens us, helps us find our path, and teaches what we do not know. It is not someone who gives gifts while we are asleep. When old scriptures say “the blind opened their eyes,” this was not literal. It was metaphorical. People later recorded it as if a physically blind person suddenly gained sight. But that is not what it meant. When God teaches, He uses parables. Those who lacked knowledge wrote the parables as literal events. That is why many people simply believe and wait for miracles, instead of learning and understanding about life. A person who does not know the world or the direction of life is blind, even with their eyes open. Teaching someone to open their eyes means to awaken their awareness and allow them to live pleasantly through the laws of righteous living. This is enlightenment.

If we want to be good parents, we must have knowledge. Do not imagine that you can be a good mother without being equipped. There will be limits to how far you can raise your child. Up until the stage where the child does not require high-level knowledge, you can raise them. But when the child needs more advanced knowledge, send them out into society. Then others will help raise them. Do you understand?