2. God’s Image More Completely Reflected in the Family

World Scripture

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.
Genesis 1.27

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)

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, 576 (Christian Science)

Teachings of Sun Myung Moon

In human beings, God’s internal nature and external form are manifested separately as man and woman. When the time is ripe, they are to become a father and a mother, Parents of Heaven and Earth. Then, God dwells in their bones.
(341:239, January 2, 2001)

God is the harmonious union of the dual characteristics of masculinity and femininity. Creation occurs by the principle that God’s internal nature divides into two separate characteristics, which then re-unite in a form that resembles God’s original internal nature. Man and woman are born each resembling one of God’s characteristics. That is, the union of God’s son and God’s daughter is the union of God’s masculinity and God’s femininity. In their harmonious union they resemble God. For this reason, husband and wife are a unified body that represents God in His entirety.
(9:83, April 16, 1960)

Even secular people wish that their loved ones would live forever. They want to go through life with one partner only, and would dislike it if he or she were to change. If even fallen human beings want their beloved partners to be eternal, unchanging, absolute, and unique, how much more so would God, who is the Center of the universe? There is no possibility that God would want His beloved partners, human beings, to be changeable. Nor would God want His object partners to be limited in any way. Instead, God wants us to be absolute. God wants us to be unchanging.
(77:185, April 6, 1975)

What is God’s purpose in creating human beings? He did not create them just to watch them go about their daily lives. He did not create them to just grow old and die. God created human beings to have us build a God-centered haven of love. We are created to grow to maturity in love, communicate with each other through heart, and then build God’s Kingdom on earth. Adam, the male, represents heaven, and Eve, the female, represents earth. Therefore, when the two become one horizontally in God’s love, they bring unity to the entire cosmos, heaven and earth.
(21:44-45, September 1, 1968)

Since we human beings resemble God, by the power of God’s omniscient and almighty love we can do anything. Just as God created Adam and Eve, we human beings receive the power to create when we give birth to sons and daughters.
(57:111, May 29, 1972)

It is only when a man and woman become one that they come to resemble God, who created us male and female in His image.
(135:122)