Good Object Partners for the Joy of God

To understand more precisely the issues concerning God’s purpose of creation, let us first examine how joy is produced. Joy is not produced by an individual alone.

Joy arises when we have an object partner in which our internal nature and external form are reflected and developed. Our object partner helps us to feel our own internal nature and external form through the stimulation it gives. This object partner may be intangible or it may be substantial.

For example, an artist’s object partner may be an idea in his mind, or the finished painting or sculpture which substantiates that idea. When he visualizes his idea or beholds his work, he is stimulated to feel his own internal nature and external form reflected in it and feels joy and satisfaction.

When his idea alone is the object partner, it is not as stimulating, nor is the joy that it brings as profound, as that from a finished work. This nature of human beings originates in God’s nature. In like manner, God feels the fullness of joy when He is stimulated by His substantial object partners to feel His original internal nature and original external form through them.

It was explained earlier that when the Kingdom of Heaven is realized – through the fulfillment of the three great blessings and the establishment of the four position foundation – it becomes the good object partner that gives joy to God. Let us investigate how the Kingdom becomes God’s good object partner.

The key to God’s first blessing is the perfection of individual character. An individual’s mind and body are discrete projections and object partners of God’s dual characteristics. In order for an individual to perfect his character, he must form a four-position foundation within himself whereby his mind and body become one through give and take action with God as their center. Such individuals become the temples of God, (I Cor. 3:16) achieve complete oneness with Him, (John 14:20) and acquire a divine nature. They experience the Heart of God as if it were their own.

Hence, they understand His Will and live fully attuned to it. When a person abides in the state of individual perfection, he lives as the substantial object partner to his mind. Because the center of his mind is God, he also lives as the substantial object partner to God. Both the mind and God rejoice as they experience their internal nature and external form through the stimulation which their object partners give them.

Accordingly, when people realize God’s first blessing, they become God’s beloved who inspire Him with joy. Sharing all the feelings of God as their own, they would never commit any sinful acts that would cause God grief. This means they would never fall.

God’s second blessing was to be fulfilled by Adam and Eve after they had achieved individual perfection as object partners to God, each manifesting an aspect of God’s dual characteristics. In order to construct the four-position foundation in their family, Adam and Eve should have joined in loving oneness as husband and wife and raised children.

This would have been the fulfillment of the second blessing. A family or society that has formed the four-position foundation in line with God’s ideal is patterned after the image of a perfect individual. It thus becomes the substantial object partner to the individual who lives in oneness with God, and consequently, it also becomes the substantial object partner to God. The individual feels joy, and likewise God feels joy, when each perceives in this family or community the manifestation of his own internal nature and external form. When God’s second blessing is fulfilled, this family or community also becomes a good object partner giving joy to God.

Before we examine how a person upon attaining the third blessing, establishes a good object partner giving joy to God, we must first investigate the relationship between human beings and the creation from the viewpoint of internal nature and external form.

Prior to creating human beings, God created the natural world by expressing partial reflections of the internal nature and external form He had conceived for human beings. Consequently, a human being contains within himself the sum total of the essences of all things. This is the reason he is called the microcosm of the cosmos.

When God created living things, He began with creatures of a lower order. Over the course of time, He created animals of a higher order with more complex biological functions, culminating with human beings at the highest level.

Therefore, human beings contain all the elements, structures and qualities found in animals. For example, human vocal cords are so versatile that they can imitate virtually any animal sound. Because the human body contains all the beautiful curves and lines of the creation, an artist hones his skills by drawing nude models.

Although human beings and plants have different structures and functions, they are similar in that they both are composed of cells. All the elements, structures and characteristics of plants can be found in human beings. For example, a plant’s leaf corresponds to the human lung in appearance and function. As leaves absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the human lung absorbs oxygen. Branches and stems of plants correspond to the human circulatory system, which distributes nourishment to the entire body; the xylem and phloem correspond to human arteries and veins. The roots of a plant correspond to the human stomach and intestines, which absorb nutrients.

Human beings were fashioned from clay, water and air; consequently they contain elements of the mineral kingdom. Moreover, the earth displays a similarity to the structure of the human body: the earth’s crust is covered with plants, its underground waterways exist inside the substrata, and beneath it all lies a molten core surrounded by a rocky mantle. This resembles the structure of the human body, which has skin covered with hair, blood vessels running inside the musculature, and marrow lying deeper still within the bones.

The meaning of God’s third blessing is the perfection of a human being’s dominion over the natural world. To fulfill this blessing, the four-position foundation of dominion must be established centered on God. Human beings and the natural world, which are the substantial object partners of God at the level of image and symbol respectively, must share love and beauty to become completely one (cf. Creation 5.2.3).

The natural world is an object partner which exhibits human internal nature and external form in diverse ways. Hence, ideal human beings receive stimulation from the world of nature. Sensing their own internal nature and external form displayed throughout the creation, they feel immense joy. God also delights when He experiences the stimulation of His original internal nature and original external form from the universe; this is possible when it becomes His third object partner through the harmonious union of human beings and the natural world. Therefore, when human beings realize God’s third blessing, the entire universe becomes yet another good object partner giving joy to God.

Had God’s purpose of creation been realized in this way, an ideal world without even a trace of sin would have been established on the earth. We call this world the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. When life in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth comes to a close, people are to enter the spirit world and naturally enjoy eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven there.

Based on the discussion thus far, we can understand that the Kingdom of Heaven resembles a person who has achieved individual perfection, taking after God’s original internal nature and external form. In an individual, the mind’s command is transmitted to the whole body through the central nervous system, causing the body to act with one purpose. Likewise, in the Kingdom of Heaven, God’s direction will be conveyed to all His children through the True Parents of humankind, guiding everyone to live as one.