Advantages of Marriage

A man and woman will learn from each other through their union things about themselves, humanity and our Creator that can not be known in any other way.


“Man is born to meet woman and woman is born to meet man.  And man and woman together are born to combine with a higher level of love, God’s love. Neither man nor woman can touch God’s higher love by themselves.”

This means that when a man weds, his woman is a kind of savior in countless ways.  Just as a husband is like her personal messiah.  This is the where the foundation for spouses to have inexpressible gratitude for one another.

Oneness between a man and a woman is relative.  First, they have the deal with the inherited legacy of conflict between men and women.  Then there is the inherent contradiction between partner's words and their actual deeds that makes true love itself a great struggle.  This is why when masculine and feminine become one, it remains a grand challenge as uniting the mind and body.



The Rewards of Commitment

In a husband and wife relationship, research supports the power of having continual investment.  A study found that couples whose relationship was distressed that almost 8 out of 10 reported being content in their marriage after they persevered for five more years.

Those who gave up on their marriage and decided to divorce, they were not any happier the ones who stayed married in their peer group, or those who even remarried.

This information reveals the importance of sticking things through and staying commit meted.  If people remained through the ups and downs, this investment will surely yield fruit.

“One advantage of marriage,” notes author Judith Viorst, “is that when you fall out of love with each
other, it keeps you together until maybe you fall in again.”

The heartbreaks and hardships that accompany any long-term relationship can turn into an element of deep bonding.


“I did not even want to deal with all the difficulties in my marriage. It was easier just to put on a game face, have a few drinks and dive deeper into my job,” one man remembers. “But my pastor forced me to say some things to my wife that needed saying, and to face what I was doing wrong too. Now I look back at that time as a period that made us a lot closer.”

The Bible encourages couples to love each other in a proper way - as “joint heirs of the grace of life..in order that your prayers may not be hindered. (1 Peter 3.7 RSV)

The oneness between spouses is a lightning rod for divine blessing.

At the same time, when a man and woman unite in deep abiding love, the joy that is created and prosperity they share from the blessing will spread to their children, all who know them, the greater human community and the Creator Himself.


Identifying with their gender community


Societies used to have rites of initiation when a boy was transitioning into manhood aor girls into womanhood so that they youth could solidify their gender identity.

In modern society, boys and girls still participate in single-gender team sports, or clubs like the Boys and Girls Scouts, to give challenges and opportunities to win respect among their elders and peers.

The military still serves in this traditional way for young men.

Even after marriage, men and women both continue to receive empowerment and comfort when they are in the company of their same-sex friends.

When they are joking around together, this characterizes the banter of male buddies.  They give silent respect and honor one another which in turn renews them.

Likewise, the “girl talk’ between women is a reassuring reinforcement of a sense of connection and support in their lives.

This is why both sexes need to enjoy the company of same-sex company on a regular basis to ‘retreat and regroup’ to strengthen their ability to give to the opposite-sex individuals in their lives.



Unification through Marriage



The ultimate unification of masculine and feminine takes place in marriage and in making a family.


When a husband and wife hold each other, their children will understand and appreciate the opposite sex.

To the woman, her husband and sons represent masculinity in all phases of development.

Similarly, the man embraces all femininity through his love for his wife and daughters. Thus marriage and family life provide the fascinating ongoing adventure of bonding and integration between masculinity and femininity.

Marriage and family life thus makes men and women into a better mirror of the divine. 

“In the image of God he created him; male and female he created them,” the Bible reminds us; man and woman together echoes the Creator’s own “wedded” nature (Genesis
1.27).




Hindu scripture speaks of the original Self, the Creator, splitting in two to make man and woman. Thus each is “like half of a split pea” (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.3).

Such a couple is a full mirror of the Godhead. Indeed, Reverend Moon characterizes the married couple as the smallest unit of humanity, in the sense of fulfilling the purpose of human creation as God’s complete reflection and love partner.

The love between a man and woman can be uniquely edifying because they are complementary in physique and psyche.  They can feel ‘as one’.  They can feel knit together in mind, heart and body the same way same-sex friends never can.

When man and woman give into marriage in heart and body, their “humanity is rejoined and fulfilled,” in the words of philosopher Michael Novak.


The result is a certain “distinctive honesty, realism, and wisdom taught by each sex to the other.”19 A man and woman learn through their union things about themselves, humanity and the Creator that can be known no other way.

“Man is born to meet woman and woman is born to meet man,” says Reverend Moon. “And man and woman together are born to combine with a higher level of love, God’s love.

Neither man nor woman can touch God’s higher love by themselves.

In this sense, a man’s wedded woman is a kind of savior in countless ways, just as a woman’s husband is like her personal messiah. This is the basis of the inexpressible gratitude spouses often feel towards each other.


Potential for oneness

Because men and women are indeed made for each other, given sufficient time and effort, the unity of heart between a man and woman is to be expected. The magnetism between masculinity and femininity can overcome differences. Since their Origin is an integrated whole, they too can integrate into wholeness.

Even though such an idea is hard to reconcile with popular notions of romance, it is the ordinary experience of the millions of couples over countless generations who were strangers when married and who grew to deeply love each other.

This is captured in the memorable lyrics of the song from “Fiddler on the Roof,” when Tevye reminisces about his arranged marriage to Golde, his wife, and says to her,

But my father and my mother said we’d learn to love each other

And now I’m asking, Golde, ‘Do you love me?’

After protesting that for “Twenty-five years my bed is his; If that’s not love, what is?,” she concedes that indeed she does.

And so between two people who may not have been attracted to each other at first.

Recalls Ann Meara, half of the long-married comedy team, Stiller and Meara, “Was it love at first sight? It wasn’t then—but it sure is now.”23 This may not be the self-conscious and passionate ardor of young lovers, but it is a deeply rooted, comfortable kind of caring and unity not unlike the attachment a person has to his or her own arm.


Continual Devotion

For this reason, a sixth principle for true love is Investing towards Oneness.

Ultimately the Creator represents the highest and original purpose. Those who center their relationship upon God invite Him to manifest Himself and His beauty, truth and goodness in the partnership and its fruits.

Examples are endless, since this is the dynamic behind all productive
relationships, even in the inanimate world.

Protons and electrons have opposite charges that attract each other. They interact
as subject and object partners, driven by atomic law that contains a higher purpose, and create a new existence, a hydrogen atom.

A professor as the subject partner engages in give and take with her students as object partners, based on the curriculum as their shared purpose, resulting in an enriching learning experience for all.

A band comes together to express their common vision of music, and the members interact with one another in lead and backup roles.

Their degree of unity is directly reflected in their music. A coffee shop manager in the leader position hires counter help in the supportive role.

The manager treats the workers well and the counter servers are diligent and loyal, resulting in a productive business that realizes the shared goal of profits and service to the community.

A pastor prays with his youth ministry staff as his helpers and together they craft a marriage preparation ministry that leads many young people through purity into matrimony and a deeper commitment to God.

Implicit in this observation is that whenever any relationship is unfruitful—or destructive, as is possible in the case of human relations—certainly there is a problem with the nature of the urpose or the interaction or both.

“My high school football team was undefeated in our state,” one young man recalls. “But sorry to say, the victories went to our heads.

We lost our focus on doing our best and got complacent.

At the same time, a lot of us starting worrying about showing off for the college scouts and we forgot about the team.

When we got to the regionals, we blew every game.”

In other words, the team lost its vertical purpose and the horizontal interactions also deteriorated.



Return for Tomorrow's Post:

This post was rewritten and derived from the religious textbook “Educating for True Love” written by a team of writers to explain the philosophy of Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

The Way of True Freedom

When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things which you are now ashamed?  

Those things result in death!  But now that you have been set free from sin and you have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.

Romans 6:20-22


Necessity of the Proper Conception of Freedom


There is a limit.


Everyone speaks about wanting peace, happiness and freedom, but on a deeper level, what actually is freedom that regular people call freedom?  We can say that freedom is doing whatever you want.  But how far does doing whatever you want go?

It has a limit.

We can only live a little beyond one hundred years.  Is it freedom if an individual just lives their whole life doing things their own way even against the law?  If God didn't give us freedom to do whatever we wished within His principles, what kind of freedom would we have?

A human being cannot live much longer than one hundred years. Is it freedom if I spend that one hundred years going my own way living however I want to my minds desires? If there were no law and freedom to do whatever one wished, what kind of freedom is that? Today, the world of civilized culture has expanded greatly, so is it easy or difficult to do research and study?

Here's an example.

 Is it freedom or restriction to to study all day if you do not like to study?  Being stuck in a study room all day when you rather be somewhere else is confinement.   The question is, even though there are imposed restrictions, we have to see why we have the desire to do it?  The problem has been our understanding of the concept of freedom.

Freedom is not doing whatever one wishes.   

Then, what does freedom mean to a woman? What does freedom mean to a man? What is freedom for any person?

What is freedom for a family? For a society? For a nation? That is the issue. Can we, as individuals, do whatever we wish?  Isn't this how society is being led in our times?  People living how ever they want based on their own desires without care for any other individual feelings have led to disastrous results and multiplied throughout history.

If it is freedom to do whatever you want, then when you say you don't want to eat another meal, you will die no matter what because your body lives by a standard of needing food.

That is the reason Western society is perishing. They do not know the definition of freedom.

Do we obtain freedom from our happiness or do we get happiness from experiencing freedom?  Which would you whether have?  Freedom in happiness.  We might think that happiness is in freedom, but we have not been aware that this is not the case.  Freedom desires to live within happiness not the other way around.

Therefore, freedom is an action with a directional characteristic. It cannot be a decisive action.

Since freedom wishes to dwell within happiness, it is secondary not primary.

2) The Three Great Principles Freedom Must Have

Freedom cannot exist outside of the Principle or the law and everything has been analyzed and the rules have already been set.

There is no freedom outside of the Principle.

Just because you have the freedom to choose to stop eating and you decide to do so just because you have chose - this is not freedom.  You will become hungry and your body will start to show ill effects and eventually you will die.

When we look at it this way, all the workings of the universe exercise the power of freedom.

The greatest freedom is that the earth revolves on its axis once a day. Also, the moon goes around the earth once a month, and, of course, the earth goes around the sun based on a 360-day cycle.

What if the earth all of the sudden decided that it didn't want to rotate.  This means the value of the whole in which it serves would be lost.  The logical conclusion is that there is no freedom apart from the Principle.  Every entity exists in this way.

When we pursue freedom in a world that forgoes its principles and laws will eventually fail.  An elderly person must follow the rules for the elderly.  Is it suitable for a 80 year old to date a 20 year old?  Everyone would laugh at such a relationship and spit on them when they see them in public.  Everything has to coincide with the Principle.


With Freedom Comes Responsibility

Have you noticed that with freedom comes responsibility?  You have heard this in the famous comics in reference to power.  When we act in a position of responsibility, we should do it for something good and not take responsibility for something bad.  All of creation will respect you when you take responsibility for your actions.  Also, where you have acted based on responsibility, good results will be left behind.

Aren't these the three great fundamental rules?

Someone might wonder what kind of freedom is there when you have to follow the rules and while catering to responsibility.  A teen might not want to be dominated by their parents. They want to to do whatever they wish so they can assert that as freedom.

Let's compare this analogy with the branches and twigs.  Does a twig say that it does not want to have anything to do with the branch?  Without the branch, the twig would not have protection and cannot manage by itself.

Can anything manage alone? The north, south, east and west have to join in four directions. 

If there is a tree-branch facing the east, then there will inevitably be branches facing west, south and north. There must also be buds and roots. It is in such a case that freedom can be guaranteed.

Without this principle, the tree does not grow upright and it will be out of shape.  Is the growth of a tree an example of freedom?  It is its purpose...to grow.  Therefore, there is not freedom outside the Principle - the fundamental rules of the Principle.  There also, is no freedom without responsibility.  When we act, good results must inevitably come about.


3) The Devil's Easy-Going Freedom

When we look at the behavior of students these days destroying school equipment, breaking things, they can be called villains.  They are satan's dogmatists.  This is self-indulgence - not freedom as they may think.  They may believe that doing whatever they want including harming property as long as they do whatever they feel like doing is freedom.  This selfish way of life can only decrease.  One only can prosper with the aid of everything in creation. Isn't this true?

As in the world of nature, each of us must absorb nutrients in order for our bodies to grow healthy. But if we deny our bodies the proper nourishment thinking this is freedom, our health will go down and all is lost.  That is a big painful problem.

"You must know this: there is definitely no freedom outside the Principle. When fathers and mothers give birth to sons and daughters, those sons and daughters cannot deny the principle of being born as children of their parents, can they?"

Only doing what I want to do and prefer is satan's easy going way of freedom.  It is a free action which is based on untruth, unprincipled things and will lead to failure.  It is outside the principle.

A person has to accept their father and mother are their origin and must come into harmony with them in order to do so.  They must care for each other and not just care for only themselves.  To be good to ones mother and father and yourself is freedom.

4) Women's Freedom



Should it be acceptable for a woman to say because of freedom, she will do everything a man does even though she was born as a woman.  As a woman she was not born with a beard so how can she claim freedom to grow a beard as a man?

Is this the way of the principle for those born as a woman.

Can a woman who has a monthly period, just claim that it is too annoying and she will just give up.  Can she just give up this responsibility just because she feels like it.

Each one of us has to adapt to the fundamental principles of womanhood.  A woman hast to take responsibility for being born a a woman.  She takes responsibility of bearing and raising the children as her breasts get large.

This is freedom. Giving birth and raising children is the highest freedom. 

A woman who does not give birth feels that she is only half a woman and is not counted as a woman.

Even if a chestnut burr is big and good, if it does not ripen properly then it will decay.  It will not be able to ripen and open and the whole part will fall off and rot.  The burr is attached firmly so the chestnut must not decay.

However, the chestnut burrs bearing chestnuts will come to fruition in the autumn. If the burr is carrying a chestnut, the nut should drop off. Before the chestnuts drop, the burr opens up automatically. No matter how big they are, those that don't have fruit will drop off the tree and decay.

When autumn arrives, the ones that are ripe open their mouths and have the responsibility to protect the fruit. It is the Principle. It is Principle based reasoning. There is no freedom outside of this logic. Do you understand?

The American concept of freedom has led to its decay.

We each have to take responsibility in all facets of life.  Why?  If we give birth to a child we would never say, "Hey, you're free.  Grow in any way you wish, do whatever you want."  this is a collective responsibility.  Because my parents raised me with responsibility, I must do the same for my children.

That is where freedom is.


Return for Tomorrow's Post: Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide

This post was rewritten and taken from the Textbook: The Way for a True Child, Chapter, The Way of True Freedom