—Hak Ja Han Moon
There was a very popular book a few decades ago called, "The Joy of Sex". At that time, society was still phasing through the tenants of the 1960s sexual revolution, where people were still discovering different relationship styles and sex outside of marriage as acceptable.
God built marriage to help each member grow toward perfection of heart through their other-centered love.
Marriage lifts each individual spiritually and physically to the the spouse’s realm of heart. Marriage also brings the individuals in a marriage closer to God.
In this realm, the couple has the potential to grow to resemble God’s heart and love and extend this love to the world around them.
There is no relationship outside marriage that has the potential for oneness, thus it is the one relationship that demands for surrender of the self.
Therefore, through this sacrifice, marriage promotes true love which at its base is living for the sake of the other. As marital expert Judith Wallerstein said, “A marriage that commands loyalty . . .requires each partner to relinquish self-centeredness.“
Marshall Fightlin, a Catholic psychologist, asserts that it is the husband’s daily task to fight the impulses to act like a single man and to concern himself with his other half - his wife.
The blessings of marriage appear only when there is renunciation of the self in favor of the other.
The word ‘renunciation’ is familiar to those of any faith, because many worldly things must be renounced in order to embrace God wholly. Marriage is part of this process.
Marriage is the renunciation of all other romantic and sexual relationships other than with the spouse.
This means that a person’s habit and attitudes that may hinder the couple’s life together must be denied.
It is a paradox that this denial of the self in favor of the other person actually enriches and enhances the self.
Through this, joy and excitement of life is increased.
Theologian Karl Barth says, “It is always in relationship to their opposite that man and woman are what they are in themselves.”
People become whole through marriage.
The God-Centered Marriage
Marriage also brings a couple closer to God.
The rabbis taught that a union of one flesh between a man and a woman is the only full representation of the image of God.
God exists in a community of three persons, so a solitary, isolated human being without a counterpart is necessarily incomplete.
Mrs. Moon says, “We marry in order to resemble God.
God is a being of dual characteristics which are completely harmonized as One. These characteristics manifest into our world as man and woman.
At the proper time, a man and woman are like a seed which will unite to become one.
Thus, a husband and wife together return to God. Marriage resembles God because it embodies the universal attraction of yin and yang, positive and negative and masculine and feminine.
A woman represents the feminine aspects of the universe, and a man represents the masculine aspects.
A man and woman yearn to unite.
One’s spouse is a gateway to the opposite half of the universe. Therefore, the spouse has a value that is equivalent to half of the universe and is indispensable to intimately understanding the total nature of God.
Marriage is an important pivotal point in the journey toward God. Mrs. Moon, Reverend Moon’s wife, states that if we take a path other than true love in marriage, then we adversely affect the path of our eternal life.
In the process of salvation, a holy marriage centered upon God and true love is instrumental. This is why a godly marriage is the central part of Reverend and Mrs. Moon’s ministry. Marriage is so significant both temporal and eternal.
They call a God-centered marriage, “The Blessing” which is a sacrament that symbolically cuts their satanic past and engrafts them to a bright future with God.
The Blessing is not just for the couple themselves, it is very significant to save their ancestral lineage, their descendants and the role they play in human society.
The ‘Blessing’ of marriage connects a couple to the body of humanity.
This makes the Blessing a highly responsible venture to partake.
It is a marriage that is far removed from the being solely for the couple’s pleasure and goes beyond just their children.
The Blessing echoes and takes to greater heights sentiments
about marriage such as author Jo McGowan’s:
To marry, to celebrate a love and a commitment publicly . . . is to say that the meaning of one’s life can only be found in the context of a community. It is to acknowledge one’s part in the human family, to recognize that one’s life is more than one’s own, that one’s actions affect more than oneself. It is to proclaim that marriage is more than a private affair between one woman and one man . . . . [It is] to be part of the human community, to start building the kingdom of God here on earth.
In order for marriage to play such a role in society and building the Kingdom of God, Reverend Moon holds Blessing ceremonies gathering thousands of couple. These consists of newly married and those rededicating their marriages in front of God with a new, higher-standard devotion to God.
He believes marriage is not for oneself and spouse alone, but also for God and humanity.
Love that Partakes of Divinity
Author Antoine’s de Saint-Exupery’s ideal agrees, “Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction.“
This is where the idea of the trinity and community within marriage become most apparent.
When husband and wife unite in a Blessed marriage, consciously centered upon God, they form a trinity.
Through giving and receiving between God, husband and wife, the flow of love is perpetuated.
Then the couple radiates benevolence to their children, friends, acquaintances and community.
Catholicism has a similar program, “Marriage Encounter” which also sees the true love of a couple that is centered upon God as a way to salvation for the community.
Psychologist Erich Fromm authenticates this kind of love when he described that true love affects how a person relates to the world. “If I truly love one person, I love all persons, I love the world.”
One husband described such a marriage as touching the “love that includes everything and everybody, the love that’s universal . . . everything that is good about connectedness and caring for others.”
Through martial life, men and women are able to experience all the possible family relationships between them.
At times a husband may be a friend to his wife or like a brother or uncle, also a father and son.
A woman may sometimes be her husband’s sister, mother, daughter, or grandmother.
Love of husband and wife, or conjugal love, encompasses the constellation of relationship with others. This love helps couples understand various aspects of the heart of God.
A couple’s love and oneness becomes substantially and eternally embodied in the creation of a child.
God creates by reuniting elements of masculine and feminine into one and creating a new being from this unity.
In this way, we can say that marriage leads to a family which is a complete reflection of God in all His glory.
Marriage and family are the embodiment and full representation of the image of God.
Return for Tomorrow's Post: Most Successful Marriages Center on God
This post was rewritten and derived from the religious textbook, "Educating for True Love" written by a team of writers to explain Reverend Sun Myung Moon's philosophy on love, and marriage.
No comments:
Post a Comment