What has been your experience of the emotion of God?
Has your experience changed at over time?
This is going to answer both questions, even without design. I don’t like to think God is emotional. I don’t want to follow and mirror and worship a God that can be so swayed by fleeting and flawed, even out of control, human-like function. And then I realize how hopelessly human that response really is. This week, Jesus meets the needs of the 5000, even without them asking. He doesn’t wait for the people to become starving or desperate. He doesn’t ask for them to voice the need or the pain. He just anticipates and becomes provider. We humans call this co dependence, and we are right about that… when it’s our human efforts trying to meet needs. Because we are flawed in motive. We can’t possibly do it all, and we can’t possibly do it right. But, this same flaw doesn’t apply to Jesus. What’s misguided and weak... destructive in us, is perfected in God.
And so, are emotions the same? I only assign weakness and vanity to emotions because it’s the only form I’ve ever seen and known in myself? What if emotions are not merely human, but divine? That must mean God is emotional. And it must also mean that these emotions are totally other than ours and also completely the same. It seems the only things I'm consistently sure of, about God, are born from my understanding of the image of God in us and the work of God in creation. So, if we are created adequate, even pleasing, or perfect and are merely distorted and clouded and diluted by sin, what we posses inside is of God, created and purposeful. God must be an emotional being. For God is love. And what do we know of love but what’s affected and promoted by emotion? God is justice. What do we know of justice but what’s driven and compelled by our emotions and affections? So I think that while my own weaken state of being, often condemns emotion to the same weak state, God is not bound by that weakness.
