It hurt to be subjected to such unfair treatment. The injustice was so intense that it made me angry. I wanted to shout out in rebuttal, but I did not speak out or attempt to fight. We had too much else to accomplish and had no time to waste in fighting.

       I believed that such misunderstandings and hatred would dissolve with time and that we should not use our energy to be overly concerned about them. I pretended not to hear people say, “Sun Myung Moon should be struck by lightning,” or the Christian ministers who prayed for my death.

       But instead of dying down, the rumors grew ever more outrageous with each passing day. It felt as if the whole world had united in pointing fingers of accusation at me. Even in the heat of the Heungnam fertilizer factory, I refused to let others see even my shins. Yet now rumors had it that I danced naked in our church. Soon people who came to our church for the first time looked at me with eyes that seemed to say, “Are you the one who takes off his clothes and dances?”

       I knew better than anyone that it would take time for such misunderstandings to go away, so I never tried to argue with them, saying, “I’m not like that.” We cannot know someone without meeting the person, yet there were so many who did not hesitate to curse me without ever having met me. I knew it was useless to battle against such people, so I endured in silence.