"Parental Love"
(Oyagokoro)

This term is used mainly to describe the affection and feeling behind God's intention to save all humankind. It refers to the heart of God, humankind's Parent, who loves and nurtures all human beings as God's own children.

There are no parents who do not love their children. One may say that their love for their children is unconditional and infinite. Parents try to nurture and bring up their children at any cost to themselves. Parents do not seek anything in return for their love for their children. Their love only desires to give. By using the analogy of such human parental love, God has indicated the nature of the divine heart, which desires only to save humankind.

The Ofudesaki refers to God in three ways: "God," "Tsukihi" (Moon-Sun), and "Parent." The Scripture first uses the term "God," later "Tsukihi," and later still "Parent." This fact reflects the high degree of care that God takes to help humans come to a better understanding of God. The Ofudesaki indicates that God is not merely to be revered and worshiped as God or Tsukihi. It does not conceive of God as distant, lofty, or unapproachable or as looking down from on high. God is, in fact, described as humanity's Parent, whose loving care for us is constant and without limits, who is intimately close to us, to whom we can open our hearts and fully reveal our joys and sorrows, and on whom we can depend without reservation.

The Ofudesaki says:

Think of you humans admonishing your children. The anger, too, comes from love.

V:23

Just as you humans worry about your children, I worry over your dreadful and dangerous path.

VII:9

Everyone throughout the world is a child dear to the Parent. There is no knowing what I may say out of My deep love for you.

XIV:52

We may say that parental love underlies every aspect of Tenrikyo's teaching of salvation. In the Divine Directions, we read:

[C]oncerning the twenty-sixth, the principle of the founding and that of the ending are one in truth.

Osashizu, February 29, 1896

This "principle" is explained in the following passage:

But now God has opened the portals and stepped out. Because of My love for you, My children, the Parent shortened Her life by twenty-five years to step out and save the world from now. Observe well.

Osashizu, February 18, 1887

With regard to interpersonal relations, Tenrikyo encourages us to emulate God's parental love so that our way of guiding and nurturing others can be grounded in that love.

(This article was first published in the October 2006 issue of TENRIKYO.)