Claim. The family teaches universal love by training people to love the world as extensions of their own grandparents, parents, spouses, siblings, and children.
Elaboration. SMM calls the created world “a sort of training aid” for God’s children to find the ideal of love (CSG 4.3 §2, 137-59, 1985.12.18). The family is the concentrated textbook: top and bottom are parents and children, left and right are husband and wife, and front and back are siblings. The command to love one’s neighbor becomes concrete only through this training. SMM instructs believers to treat elderly people as their own grandparents, parents as their own parents, and children as their own sons and daughters. “The world is an exhibition of people,” and family love is the curriculum by which that exhibition becomes loveable. If practiced, God dwells in the midst of that love.
See also. give-and-take-action