God

If we assume the universe has a creator, it’s reasonable to ask, what he/she/it is like. If we can’t meet him/her/it directly, what else can we do to inquire about the creator’s characteristics?

The Principle states that certain aspects about a creator can be concluded from the structure of the created objects. Unless they are broken, they are a reflect of the creator’s character and intention.

A TV and its instruction manual, for example, testifies to the fact that some people want a wireless, one way, incoming  audio and video connection with some other people elsewhere. The design of the device also implies that somebody with an engineering background has been involved in the process. However, one has to be careful not to assume too much. It would be a wild guess, for example, that the folks who manufactured the device went to high school.

The movement’s teaching uses a similar approach in analyzing the universe. It observes two sets of complementary (dual) characteristics. One is the polarity of negative and positive (a.k.a. plus and minus). In the living world these are referred to as male and female.

The other dual characteristic is the polarity between an internal aspect, like the human mind or an animal’s instinct, and an outer aspect, like the body. The teaching goes on to observe, that the internal aspect determines largely the behavior of the outer aspect and considers this a subject-object-relationship. The subject is the dominating aspect while the object basically follows.

The book applies the subject-object principle also to the first set of characteristics by assuming that the positive is in the subject and the negative in the object position. That appears clear when looking at a proton ( plus ) and an electron ( minus ) or the earth ( big = subject ) and the moon ( small = object ).

However, positions are increasingly interchangeable when moving to higher levels up to the human realm.

Marriage and family is a central institution for the movement. In his speeches Sun Myung Moon clearly associates men with the subject and women with the object position, but he doesn’t apply the subject-object-rule to the higher levels in a roundabout way. Neither does the majority of the movement – at least not the enlightened world.

After observing the two sets of complementary  characteristics - positive / negative and internal / external and applying the subject-object-relationship to all components of the universe, the Principle assumes that these are reflections of the creator’s character: God has male and female aspects and he/she has something like a mind that determines the direction of its energy and force.

The final conclusion is that God is a person – outside of time and space and that God has both male and female characteristics. In one word, according to the teaching, God is a parent.