Family strength is founded on the marriage that forms the basis of that family. Attorneys who wish to bring restorative hope to broken marriages and families often think about the core problem of marital breakdown, and how marriage serves as a picture of restoration for the family as a whole. Robin Kunikis, Regent Law Juris Doctor Candidate 2013, and current Family Law student offers this thoughtful insight. In analyzing God’s design for marriage she writes:
“The text of Genesis shares many insights into God's world, and His nature. One is that He is not alone because he says ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeliness, and let them rule.....’ If God is not alone we will see later that neither is it good for man to be alone.
However, when he creates he ‘created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him (one whole being); male and female He created them.’ This seems to represent that the unity of God is found in male and female united in one body. His perfect creation of mankind is wholeness or oneness of male and female in one body like Him, or marriage.
When God separated mankind (through Adam) into man and woman, not one but two new beings were created. It was His act of separation of those qualities in to two unique sexes. When they unite in the covenant of marriage they are fully restored to God's perfect creation that is now capable of ‘being fruitful and multiplying’ by becoming one flesh in the fulness that God designed. So it shows (to me at least) that through that covenant we are able to be like God in our ability to create life - power reserved to God, or those created to be like Him. But, it is only He who has authority to separate that complete and perfect likeliness that He created in the joining of male and female.
So the bottom line is that marriage is restoring that which God separated in the beginning. Furthermore, God is the only One who has the authority to separate the perfect creation of male and female, man and woman joined together in a marriage covenant.”
Robin Kunikis, Regent Law Candidate for Juris Doctor 2013, and current Family Law student for this thoughtful post.
Robin! Thank you so much for your thoughtful post. As a philosophy major in college, we read Plato's Symposium. In that work, Plato describes the idea of soul mates by painting a picture of people who were originally created with essentially two bodies fused as one. Zeus feared their ability to be more powerful than he, so he split them making people destined to search the world over for the person they were originally fused with and viola! the idea of ancient soul mates. While I see parallels in Plato's version and the version you've depicted, I think that the Biblical centered account is (not only true in comparison with Plato's model) significantly more hopeful and purposeful than the model that Plato offers. Men and Women are to fulfill that need for unity through marriage and work as a God-designed, complimentary team for the kingdom. It seems obvious from reading the text, but I'm not so sure I ever thought of marriage this way. Thank you so much for providing a Biblically sound, hopeful and purposeful view of marriage.
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