4. Marriage Is a Sacred Partnership, Aligning Two Human Beings with the Divine Image
World Scripture
I am He, you are She;
I am Song, you are Verse,
I am Heaven, you are Earth.
We two shall here together dwell,
becoming parents of children.
Atharva Veda 14.2.71 (Hinduism)
Representing heaven and earth, I have created husband and wife. This is the beginning of the world.
Mikagura-uta (Tenrikyo)
From the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.
Mark 10.6-9
Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who created humankind in His image, in the image of the likeness of His form, and has prepared for him from His very own person an eternal building. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Creator of man…
May Thou make joyful these beloved companions, just as Thou gladdened Thy creatures in the Garden of Eden in primordial times. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who makes bridegroom and bride to rejoice.
Blessed art Thou, O Lord, King of the universe, who created mirth and joy, bridegroom and bride, gladness, jubilation, dancing and delight, love and brotherhood, peace and fellowship. Quickly, O Lord our God, may the sound of mirth and joy be heard in the streets of Judah and Jerusalem, the voice of bridegroom and bride, jubilant voices of bridegrooms from their canopies and youths from the feasts of song. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who makes the bridegroom rejoice with the bride.15
Talmud, Ketubot 8a (Judaism)
The gospel of Love… presents the unity of male and female as no longer two wedded individuals, but as two individual natures in one; and this compounded spiritual individuality reflects God as Father-Mother, not as a corporeal being. In this divinely united spiritual consciousness, there is no impediment to eternal bliss—to the perfectibility of God’s creation.
Science and Health (Christian Science)
All the souls in the world, which are the fruit of the handiwork of the Almighty, are all mystically one, but when they descend to this world they are separated into male and female, though these are still conjoined. When they first issue forth, they issue as male and female together. Subsequently, when they descend to this world they separate, one to one side and the other to the other. Afterwards God mates them—God and no other, He alone knowing the mate proper to each. Happy is the man who is upright in his works and walks in the way of truth, so that his soul may find his original mate, for then he becomes indeed perfect.
Zohar 1.85b (Judaism)
In the celestial glory there are three heavens or degrees; and in order to obtain the highest, a man must enter into this order of the priesthood (meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage); and if he does not, he cannot obtain it.
And again, verily I say unto you, if a man marry a wife by my word, which is my law, and by the new and everlasting covenant, and is sealed unto them by the Holy Spirit of promise, by him who is anointed, unto whom I have appointed this power and the keys of this priesthood; and it shall be said unto them—Ye shall come forth in the first resurrection… which glory shall be a fullness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.16
Doctrine and Covenants 131.1-3, 132.19 (Latter-day Saints)
The sacred partnership of true marriage is constituted both by the will of God and the will of man. From God comes the very institution of marriage, the ends for which it was instituted, the laws that govern it, the blessings that flow from it; while man, through generous surrender of his own person made to another for the whole span of life, becomes, with the help and cooperation of God, the author of each particular marriage, with the duties and blessings annexed hereto from divine institution…
That mutual familiar intercourse between the spouses themselves, if the blessing of conjugal faith is to shine with becoming splendor, must be distinguished by chastity so that husband and wife bear themselves in all things with the law of God and of nature, and endeavor always to follow the will of their most wise and holy Creator with the greatest reverence towards the work of God…
The love of which We are speaking is not that based on the passing lust of the moment, nor does it consist in pleasing words only, but in the deep attachment of the heart which is expressed in action, since love is proved by deeds. This outward expression of love in the home demands not only mutual help but must go further; must have as its primary purpose that man and wife help each other day by day in forming and perfecting themselves in the interior life, so that through their partnership in life they may advance ever more and more in virtue, and above all that they may grow in true love towards God and their neighbor.
Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubi (Christianity)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
We can solve the fundamental problems of family life by strengthening marriage. Although some religious people regard marriage as sinful, we proclaim it the holiest of states. God instituted marriage as the only proper way for a man and a woman to love each other. Furthermore, when a man and a woman become one in marriage, whom do they come to resemble? They resemble God. Indeed, it is only when a man and woman unite in matrimony that they can fully resemble God, who created us in His image male and female. Only then can God dwell with us.
(70:76, February 8, 1974)
If you only love as a single person, and do not embark on the path of loving as a husband and wife, your life will end in ruin. Love among single people inevitably breaks apart. It is a lifestyle that damages society and even the world.
(111:257, February 22, 1981)
Commonly people think that love is what a man and a woman enjoy together. Yet that kind of love has no root in the past or outlook toward the future; it is merely a phenomenon with no direction. It is selfish love. Selfish love cannot be the source of peace, the basis of unity or the basis for freedom. How can there be peace, unity or freedom where people love each other one day and separate the next? There is no happiness there, only regret; no freedom there, only more obstacles; no unity there, only loneliness. That kind of love leads only to destruction. I want you to understand that Satan employs such love as a weapon to destroy the ideals of human life. Using this kind of love as a weapon, Satan is robbing us of true freedom, true peace and true unity. From this perspective, the satanic expression of love is truly God’s adversary. It is a most dreadful sin, a most hated enemy.
(104:141, April 29, 1979)
Why do we marry? It is to resemble God. God is the harmonious being of dual characteristics. Man and woman are the divided manifestations of God’s dual characteristics. They have to unite as one body, becoming like a seed, in order to enter God’s original dwelling place. To yield good seed, you have to go the way of love. This means that you must be born in love, set love as your goal while growing, make love your aim in life, and walk the path of love. Then you will return to love.
(138:99, January 19, 1986)
Why do you have to marry? It is because God exists with dual characteristics. A man and a woman each reflect one of these aspects of divinity.
Therefore, they must come together and unite to manifest the fullness of God’s image. That is why marriage is the essential condition for your complete growth in the ideal of human love.
Marriage blends men and women into the semblance of the divine unity, so that human beings might fully become the image of God.
God created human beings and all things for the purpose of consummating His love. Where do you consummate that love? It is while you live on earth, in the relationship between husband and wife, in the family. That is why your wedding day is the most joyful day in your lives.
(123:217, January 2, 1983)
We do not marry for ourselves, but for the sake of another. What do I mean in saying that marriage is for the other rather than for ourselves? Heaven and earth abide in a relationship between subject and object. By this principle, marriage between a man and a woman participates in the joining of heaven and earth.
With the man on the right side and the woman on the left side, their marriage symbolizes the fulfillment of all the horizontal relationships in the universe. Since the man as the subject partner is above, and the woman as the object partner is below, their marriage represents the fulfillment of the vertical relationship between God and human beings. Therefore, marriage is not mainly for the man, nor mainly for the woman. It is rather to accord with heavenly law. This is also the reason why men and women were created differently; they were born to accord with heavenly law.
(101:38-39, October 28, 1978)
When a man and a woman embrace in perfect love, they bring perfection to the universe. Were their love to shatter, it would shatter the order of the universe and bring chaos to the vertical world.
(118:32, April 26, 1982)
Look at this world: The mineral kingdom has positive and negative ions, the plant kingdom has stamen and pistil, and the animal kingdom has male and female. Scientists have found that even germs are male and female. God created all things so that they can become one at their particular level centering on love. Seeing this universe of pairs, we understand that they are that way so that all can be linked to the love of a man and a woman, who come together representing heaven and earth. Thus all things celebrate the love of human beings.
Just as we lay a foundation before building a house, God created the entire pair system as the foundation for human beings to love. Doesn’t human love have many qualities in common with the love of animals? For instance, if a male and female are going along together and the female is attacked, the male will risk its life to defend the female. When they have offspring, they will risk their lives to defend them. Human love is that way because the foundation on which it was created is that way.
(222:123, October 28, 1991)
Marriage is the union of all virtues of heaven and earth. Encompassing vertical and horizontal, left and right, and front and back, it is the completion of the whole. Marriage is where we perfect the ideals of children, siblings, husband and wife, and parents. For this reason, had Adam and Eve become a true husband and wife, they would have been the parents most beloved of God. They would have stood in the position of the second creators, inheriting everything that God experienced as the First Creator. Through raising their children, they would have developed the heart of love as God’s representatives. After attaining that heart through direct experience, they would profoundly understand and empathize with their children as they in turn traversed the positions of children, siblings, husbands and wives, and parents.
Their marriage and conjugal love as husband and wife was to be the origin and starting-point of God’s love, life and lineage in human beings. It was to be the starting-point for fulfilling God’s ideal, the Kingdom of God on earth and in heaven.
God is the root of love, root of life, root of lineage, and the root of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and in heaven. At the marriage of Adam and Eve, God would enter into their hearts and experience with them the love of their conjugal union. Then God would be the vertical True Parent, and Adam and Eve the horizontal True Parents. Because each of us would be born with the blood and flesh of these two sets of parents, our minds would be aligned with the vertical and our bodies with the horizontal.17
This would form the realm of the harmonious oneness of God and human beings in love. In that realm, people who perfect their love both in mind and body would become God’s sons and daughters. We would enter into a parent-child relationship with God, become God’s princes and princesses, and inherit the entirety of His world. Then, when we perfect husband-wife unity centering on true love, we would form a family that lives in attendance to God. Our family would be the base of peace and of God’s ideal. As man and woman, each being a half of the whole, we would come together to form one body; and as God’s partners we would perfect the ideal of divine love.
(254:106, February 1, 1994)
The first union of love between Adam and Eve was to have signified the perfection of God’s own love. It was to have been a continual feast of happiness where God, Adam and Eve, and all creatures in the universe would be intoxicated with joy and blessings. Their marriage would most certainly have been the joyful ceremony to establish the originating point of God’s love, life, and lineage among human beings. This was Adam and Eve’s original destiny. Yet instead they covered their lower parts, hid themselves among the trees, and trembled in fear, because they had formed an immoral relationship that set the origin for false love, false life, and false lineage contrary to the heavenly way.
(288:127, November 26, 1997)
The issue here is that God’s true love and human beings’ love must start out from the same point and become one as subject and object partners.
Otherwise, human love will have different directions and purposes than God’s true love. It then becomes impossible to establish the absolute ideal world that both God and human beings desire.
This purpose of God—to start God’s true love and human true love from the same point—was interrupted and blocked by the Fall. False parents came into being as a result of Satan’s love, and human beings as descendants of those false parents inherited false love, false life, and false lineage. These false elements take them to hell.
(275:55, October 31, 1995)
The International Holy Blessing Ceremony is the ceremony of resurrection that enables us to uproot and restore completely all that was defiled in our families because of the Fall, especially the false love, false life and false lineage we received from the false parents… Through the Blessing Ceremony we receive the enormous grace of being engrafted with the seeds of true love, true life and true lineage, by which God and human beings can become one through love. I sincerely hope that all humanity throughout the world will receive this enormous blessing, change to become heavenly families, and be registered in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
(275:59, October 31, 1995)