God and Human Qualities
Does God have human qualities? Can God really get angry? Can God smile? Does God cry when things are going poorly on planet earth?
I suppose at one time I believed that God could in fact exhibit these emotions. Now, the concept of God displaying human traits doesn’t make sense to me.
I realize that the Bible contains numerous examples of God having human traits. There are references to God’s jealousy, anger or willingness to get revenge. If you take this to be proof of God’s human qualities, I respect your right to believe that.
Consider this: God created everything that appears in the universe. God is All-Knowing, All-Loving, All-Powerful. Thus, God knows everything that will happen before it unfolds. If life contains no surprises for God, what could cause God to be angry or happy?
Let’s assume you are the writer and director of a movie. You wrote the story and you know what each character will say and do as the plot unfolds. Can you possibly get angry or have a desire for revenge when one of the characters does something that is not nice? The person who writes and directs the movie does not have an emotional investment in the plot.
Yet the mind tries to convince us that God does have an emotional attachment to life as it presents itself.
Those who believe God has human emotions will point out that God gave us free will, and we are free to make choices. Yet all religions believe that God is omniscient, All-Knowing, so there are no surprises for God. We keep coming back to this conclusion: God knows exactly what choices we will make. How emotionally attached can you be if you know every outcome in advance?
If you watch a sporting event, you go through many ups and downs as you root for your favorite team. Your team is playing well and you’re happy. The next moment the other team scores and you’re disappointed. Of course, you don’t know how the game will turn out.
However, if you knew — before the game started — every play that would happen in the course of the game, how could you possibly get excited when your team scores and disappointed when the other team scores? What is happening is what you KNEW was going to happen. You wouldn’t experience a roller coaster of emotions in that situation.
Many spiritual traditions view God as the unchanging, still, loving background in which all life appears. In these traditions, God is not seen as laughing, crying or out for revenge. These are human qualities, but not qualities of God.
Believe as you wish. Just because my mind generates emotions such as happiness, fear, and anger doesn’t convince me that God is subject to these same qualities.
Finally, we have to consider the nature of God. If you take God to be an old, wise man in the sky, perhaps such a being could smile or cry. Yet most of us would consider God to be a non-physical Being. How can an entity that is not a “thing” smile, cry or get angry?
The mind can’t fathom an entity that is “no-thing” and that is infinite. That’s why your mind will never be able to figure out God and the attributes of God. The mind may entertain you for a while with its theories, but whatever answers you end up with will not be the truth.
Perhaps what the mind is doing here is creating God in the mind’s image.
– Jeff Keller
© 2008