Man and Woman
There is neither vitality in life nor stimulating joy in our hearts until we have a mate whom we can love with our whole being and by whom we are truly loved.
This is why when a man and woman love one another, they feel joy and vitality.
Also, when parents have a child who reflects their whole love, they feel great joy. The human desire for joy is derived from God.
The Almighty Creator is a God of Heart, and the essential willingness of the heart is joy. How is joy produced? Joy is felt when a subject projects his inner and outer nature into a substantial object and perceives his nature in the object's response.
As long as an artist merely conceives an idea without expressing it, his joy is not fulfilled. But when his creative idea is perfectly expressed in a work, he feels great satisfaction.
Likewise, as long as the Word, Logos, the divine idea, remained with God, His ideal could not be fulfilled. But the Word became man and woman, the visible image of God.
Projecting His whole nature into His work, God produced man and woman to manifest His invisible Self in the form of a visible and tangible image.
Thus, God created man and woman to feel joy. Furthermore, joy comes from love, and love is never complete unless it is reciprocated. Love cannot be reciprocated unless there are both a subject and an object.
Therefore, God, the Subject, needs an object for the give and take of love. He wanted to express His infinite love to us and to receive our full response. Even for God, there is neither joy nor vitality in life if there is no object to love and to be loved by (Malachi 1:6).
The Divine Parent intended to live with man and woman forever in the highest joy through perpetual give and take of love. However, until we respond fully and offer joy back to God, the action of give and take cannot be complete, and God's purpose cannot be fulfilled. No subject can feel joy by itself, for the feeling must be stimulated by an object.
If humankind had not fallen, all people would be sons and daughters of God.
Human beings would then be divine in that we would perfectly resemble the Divine. We are given the nature and capacity to respond to God's love and return joy to Him.
Therefore, to develop this nature and exercise this capacity fully is the purpose of our life. We also receive the power of life and joy of love through the action of give and take with God, who is the ultimate source of life, energy, happiness, and all ideals.
Three Blessings
After God created Adam and Eve, He blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion..." (Gen. 1:28b).
In this passage, there are three blessings."
The fulfillment of the three blessings was to be founded on four positions centered on God. Of all the possible bases of the four positions, the family is the most important and is the basic unit of human society. To fulfill the first blessing, each individual must come to resemble God.
God's first blessing, be fruitful, means that the body and heart become one, centered on God. At this time, a person forms the base of four positions on the individual level, becomes one with God (John 14:20) 1, and thus can share the heart of God.
A human being, then, at last, becomes divine. (1 Cor. 3:16) In that way, man and woman become perfected individuals and substantial objects in whom God rejoices. The second blessing, multiplication, is fulfilled when man and woman perfect themselves, unite, and produce children, thus forming the base of four positions on the family level.
This base resembles God more fully and becomes the object of God's greater joy.
The third blessing pertains to human dominion over all creation. When perfect human beings have give and take with the creation, centered on God, the four positions are established and humanity attains dominion over creation as its lord.
To have dominion means that people reign over all things with God's love and power, and that all things offer beauty and service to people.
Fallen people, however, do not have true love for all things nor feel stimulating beauty from all things. Consequently, there is no true dominion of goodness, but instead, the dominion of evil has persisted. (Rom. 8:19 22)
The dominion of goodness simply means that all things supply humanity with beauty and service. Mankind, using true love and creativity in all things, thus increases production.
This forms the base of four positions. This base also resembles the image of God and offers joy to God. When God rejoices, people become happy. This is why labor is meant to be joyous and sacred.
In social interaction, people give and take with other people and form a base of four positions on the social level, which also brings joy and beauty to God.
Universe
God created the universe as a symbolic reflection of God's harmonized nature. All things resemble God, but only indirectly. Hence, God cannot feel stimulating joy from them to the same degree as from man and woman. Then why did God create the universe? Its purpose is to bring joy to people.
God feels joy in the creation through us. Since joy is produced when the object resembles the subject, God made all things after the pattern of man and woman. In the animal kingdom, from the simplest to the most complex, all structures, forms, and elements resemble human beings in various degrees.
In plants, the root, trunk, and leaves correspond to the human stomach, heart, and lungs. The cells of the human body contain mineral elements. One may even compare the structure of the Earth itself to that of the human body.
The earth's vegetation, crust, substrata, underground and surface waterways, and its core and molten lava correspond in essence to the hair, skin, musculature, blood vessels, fluids, skeleton, and bone marrow of the body.
Thus, all things were created after the model of man and woman and resemble them in structure, elements, and their subject-object relationships. In all things, we see the objective display of the inner polarity of human beings.
The give and take between subject and object in all things produces a state of oneness in which humanity feels joy. Humans care for and love the creation, and every part of it responds to us with beauty and service.
In such a way, human beings have give and take with everything in the universe and become one with creation. In this way, the creation becomes a substantial object to God and pleases Him as well. This is the base of four positions that fulfill our dominion over all things.
This resemblance to man and woman is not confined to nature but extends to human society. The organs, structure, and function of society resemble the organs, structure, and function of the human body. The entire creation is a creation of resemblance.
Nature and society resemble human beings, and human beings resemble God.
Since all creation resembles God directly or symbolically, a single person or any one part of creation is a "concrete unit of truth." 13 The purpose of each person or thing is dual: for the individual and the whole.
The purpose of the whole is causative, while the purpose of the individual is resultant. Therefore, the individual purpose depends on the purpose of the whole.
Furthermore, there is complete harmony between the purpose of each individual and that of the whole, though, in a limited view, conflicts may seem to exist. In all its movements, the universe is a unit of one purpose.
Young Oon Kim