Book Three - True Love
Chapter Three - Love and Marriage
Section 1. True Marriage Engenders Love of Universal Unity

Why do we marry? We marry in order to resemble God. God exists as a unified being encompassing the dual characteristics of masculinity and femininity. Man and woman represent the divided characteristics of God. They must become one and become like a seed, thereby returning to God's original position. (138-97, 1986.1.19)

We should sing about the supreme sacredness of marriage. Married life is the path along which a man and a woman can love each other. Whom do they come to resemble through their unity? They resemble God Himself. A man and a woman must become one in order to resemble God, who created them in His image. Only then will God dwell with them. (70-76, 1974.2.8)

The man symbolizes heaven and the woman symbolizes the earth. The two must unite, creating harmony on the horizontal plane. (Blessed Family - 868)

The union of a man and a woman signifies a union of heaven and earth. (Blessed Family - 868)

The universe attains oneness through the embrace of a man and a woman in mutual adoration. This is the original image formed within God's ideal. (God's Will and the World - 27)

Why do we marry? We marry in order to learn to love the world and to gain the qualification to love all people. (37-108, 1970.12.22)

That which is called marriage refers to an appearance of love and at the same time an endowment of the right of creation and the right of dominion. (76-46, 1975.1.26)

The purpose of marriage is to join together the man's and woman's worlds of heart and to perfect the love of each of them. So to be married is to declare that you will show proof of this love. If you have perfected your love and your heart through marriage, we can say that you have realized the ideal of the family. If you have accomplished this by the time of your death, you are sure to go to the Kingdom of Heaven. (97-276, 1978.3.26)

What is marriage? Why is marriage important? It is because marriage is a path for finding love. It is a path to love and a path to creating life. It is a path for the life of a man and a woman to become one. In marriage, the lineage of the man and the woman becomes mixed. History manifests through marriage; a nation emerges and the ideal world begins. (279-251, 1996.9.15)

For whom do you marry? It is for the sake and common benefit of humankind. Thus, marriage represents the world. The man is a man representing the world, and the woman is also a woman representing the world. Then where must you start? You should start from a position of representing the world. The meaning of marriage is to serve the public will of all humankind. (75-278, 1975.1.12)

You should have the attitude that you will raise her like your younger sister, love her like your wife, and serve her like your mother. In loving her, you should start by loving her as a younger sister, and only then love her as your wife; in all, you should love her like your younger sister, elder sister, bride, and mother. Only then can we restore God's unfulfilled love, lost through the Fall. (31-88, 1970.4.20)

What do we have to love in order to love our nation? First, a man should love a woman by regarding her as a representative of all the women of this nation. Likewise, the woman, rather than thinking of the man as just one among many, should think of him as a representative of all the men in the entire world. When a man and a woman regard each other as representatives in this way and then unite and form a family, this family will be a family of the heavenly kingdom. (26-153, 1969.10.25)

True happiness for a woman is found when she meets her partner of love. (Blessed Family - 340)

Love, after all, cannot be felt when one is alone. The same is true for happiness. (145-267, 1986.5.15)

You feel true happiness only when you can feel the heart of your partner and love your partner in an equal and reciprocal relationship. (Blessed Family - 342)

Let's say that you were attracted to a man because he was handsome. Then suppose he was crippled in an accident a week after you married, and that led you to seek a divorce. This would not be true love but false love. (Blessed Family - 351)

Genuine love is absolute, unchanging, and eternal. (Blessed Family - 351)

You should have a creed that you will get married for the sake of your partner and not for your own sake. It is wrong to think that you will get a successful or beautiful person for marriage. If you have understood the principle that a human being should live for the sake of others, then you should consider that marriage also is for the sake of your partner. According to the original view of marriage, you should determine that no matter how ugly your wife may be you will love her more than a beautiful woman. (Blessed Family - 361)

Given that he was born as a human being, if a man cannot embrace the notion that he will love his wife as he loves God and humankind itself and more than anyone else in this world, then he will not be able to return to the heavenly kingdom. As a man, if he does not know how to love a woman, he cannot love God and humankind. (97-319, 1978.4.1)

I would say that marriage is a ceremony to open and enter the gate of the palace of happiness. It is for this reason that marriage is a great event of human affairs. Love is the greatest thing in human affairs, for it transcends time and space, and marriage is a ceremony to reveal and confirm such love. (Blessed Family - 356)

In getting married, you should not think that you will be a husband to a beauty. Rather, you should think that you will be someone who can wed an ugly woman and still live better than anyone else. This way, you should be a husband who can be revered by any beautiful woman in the world. If you have this kind of viewpoint, you should have no trouble relating to any kind of woman. (26-332, 1969.10.3)

What kind of husband or wife do you want to meet and be married to? You should make it a principle, before you embark on your married life, that you will love even the most insignificant man as a devoted wife. You should know this. The higher the power of your love, the freer you can operate on the stage of the infinite universe. (Blessed Family - 636)

For humankind, love is an eternal thing -- it is one, not two. When a man and a woman become joined through love, they are to grow old together for a hundred years on earth and live together eternally after death. Although the bodies are two, they join as one and rotate, thereby becoming one body. When the two bodies become one, God comes to rotate together with them, thus forming a four position foundation of love. This is love's ideal setting. False love cannot invade it, and only true love comes to dwell in it. (Blessed Family - 344)

The true ideal is realized when, after achieving perfect maturity as an individual and after perfecting your partner, you receive recognition because of your love centered on God. (19-314, 1968.3.17)

The bride and bridegroom should become one body through God's original love, not through money, political power, or fame. (Blessed Family - 880)

If a beautiful man and a beautiful woman, each created as God's greatest work of art, were to make love centering on God, this would be a sublime expression of the highest, most transcendental love, rather than worldly love. This love is the most beautiful and representative love, the kind of love that will shine for all of eternity. (26-153, 1969.10.25)

To receive a taste of true love, you must have a realm of the ideal, and for this a man needs a woman and a woman absolutely needs a man. You should know that for the sake of true love, an absolute man and woman join together through the efforts of their united heart. When an absolute man and woman have been joined as one, God will come and dwell in their midst. (Blessed Family - 340)

International marriage is the quickest way for the different races of the world to be one. There is no other way. A man and a woman chosen from two utterly different cultural realms and environments must become one through God's love. This is complete harmony and unification. In order to accomplish such a great task, we must draw from the immense power of love, for only the highest love can transcend national boundaries, racial boundaries, cultural boundaries, and the boundaries of knowledge. (God's Will and the World - 499)

God's love and human love are essentially the same. Love is an effort to become one. The reason a man and a woman long for each other is that the man can possess God only through the woman, and the woman can do so only through the man. Love means to like each other. (Blessed Family - 334)

Single people will never be able to go to the heavenly kingdom. For singles, the heavenly kingdom is a land of despair. Although there is at least hope in a land where one is lonely, a land of despair means a state of hopelessness. (10-143, 1978.10.28)

A man is born for the sake of a woman, and a woman for the sake of a man. There is an original rule that whenever you assert yourself, God is absent, and whenever you respect others, God is with you. The fact that we walk with two feet itself reflects a thinking that is in accordance with this original rule and the principle. (God's Will and the World - 543)

Is it not true that a woman is born in order to meet a man, and a man is born in order to meet a woman? This is the highest truth. Therefore, we must be gaining the right of Blessing in accordance with such a rule, for to deviate from the highest truth is the highest evil. (21-201, 1968.11.20)

In a traditional marriage, the bride and bridegroom bow deeply to each other. Do you know why they bow deeply? It is to express a promise to live for the sake of each other. If they do not live for each other's sake, love will run away. (Blessed Family - 361)

The civil law of Korea prohibits the marriage of people with the same family name and origin, and encourages marriages between different clans. This is because Koreans are a people that long for unification. (19-305, 1968.3.10)