The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Can God feel pain?

If God the Father suffers, wouldn’t the blessed souls in Heaven suffer as well? If so, what has happened to Heaven? We go from one vale of sorrows to another?

Shifting gears…

Suppose I myself suffer (whether from injury, illness, financial ruin, or whatnot). Do I want my loved ones to also suffer? Do I want sadness to invade their souls? Do I want my wife, mother, and daughter to basically say, “Well, Geof is suffering, and we love Geof. Therefore we will suffer, too.” Heaven forfend. I want them to be utterly joyful. Their suffering does not help me. I want their help, as far as they can give it; not their suffering. In fact, their suffering would probably make them less capable to help me. And would it not be a doubtful thing to hope that one’s loved ones suffer simply because one was himself suffering?

To anyone who has closely read the seven Harry Potter novels, I put forth this observation: Harry Potter suffered throughout the novels. He was like a lump of iron ore forged over seven years into God’s perfect sword to defeat Voldemort. In the last chapter we see Harry risen above all the anger, doubts, judgmentalism, and suffering that had afflicted him. All of that wasteful emotion had been purged out of him. He was serene, impassive. He calmly confronted Voldemort with truth and with an entreaty that he repent. (The movie is not faithful on this point, turning their final confrontation into the two of them blasting each other with special effects.) Precisely because Harry in this last chapter is no longer afflicted by sadness, anger, and all the rest, he was full of love and strong to save. If he had still been weepy, angry, etc., then Harry could not have defeated Voldemort.

In short, I do not think anything is to be gained by supposing God and the saints in Heaven weep, nor in hoping/expecting our loved ones to do so here on earth. Instead, much would be lost.

The Heavens are not heartless because they shout for joy. Rather, we are heartless because we do not join them.

God is omnipresent. Moreover, God’s mysterious heart is infinitely complex and cannot be grasped by our finite and limited mind. He is paradox. Take for instance the evil murder of His Son. In one sense God wasn’t pleased when innocent Christ was murdered. God doesn’t delight in torture and evil in and of itself. What He was pleased in was what Christ accomplished on the cross is showing love and grace to sinners. He feels everything at once. In heaven in the presence of His glory there is no suffering.

Geoffrey, I agree with you.

If God is love, then yes, I would say that He feels pain. Love is vulnerable, but in it there is great strength. As St. Michael has mentioned, “God’s heart is infinitely complex.” How does the church know that the Father feels no pain?

For all the riches the Church has taken from the Greeks, I dare say that contemporary western Christianity is far more beholden to the contemporary secular worldview than the Church ever was to poor old Plato.

The contemporary western world is obsessed with feelings. I do not know if I have ever read of a time or place more self-centered/solipsistic than our own. This world does not think, but feels. It has invaded epistemology, in which people feel that they can never achieve certitude, except for being certain about how they feel. It is of the utmost importance to exhaustively talk (and talk, and talk…) about our feelings. And to express them with crying, raging, sex, etc. Not to do so is supposedly “unhealthy”. If at all possible, bawl like a baby on national TV while blubbering about your feelings. The western world is awash in illicit drugs because people empty of facts seek for feelings. Western Christians divorce at the same rate as unbelievers because of their feelings. People fornicate and commit adultery because of feelings (ignoring the facts proclaimed by St. Paul that the husband is an icon of Christ, and the wife is an icon of the Church). A baby in the womb is not a baby unless her mother “feels” that she is. If the mother’s feelings are otherwise, then bad luck for the baby who isn’t a baby because of the way her mother feels. Men “marry” men and women “marry” women because they “feel” love. Love, after all, is a feeling. It has gotten so ridiculous and disgusting that now this world thinks that a grown man should use the little girls’ bathroom because he “feels” that he himself is a little girl. Etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Facts, reason, and reality have all taken a far backseat to these amorphous feelings.

And THAT secular zeitgeist, I think, is the main temptation of the western Christian world to think that God must also have feelings. After all, as defined by the zeitgeist, with no feelings there can be no love and no value.

For me, I hold the Orthodox Church’s teachings as certain. But even if I were an unbeliever, I would hold with Plato rather than with the feelings zeitgeist, which I find both preposterous and nauseating in the extreme.

(EDIT: In re-reading this post, I think I should underscore that my disgust is not directed at any of my fellows here in the forum. It is directed solely at the contemporary world.)

Another great post, G.

Perhaps God - at times - needs a little humor :exclamation: :laughing:

God designs for His higher creatures the happiness of being voluntarily united to Him and each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. ~~ C.S. Lewis

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9hm6argtJ1qchgieo1_500.png

As a young man marries a young woman,
so will your Builder marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
so will your God rejoice over you

Isaiah 62:5

The Apostle Paul was:

Uh oh! Looks like you’re going downhill, Geoffrey. Finding “feelings preposterous and nauseating in the extreme” sound a lot as if you’re feeling something!

YOU HAVE DISGUST? Another strong feeling!

It’s not feelings I was posting against. It was “the feelings zeitgeist”, the “contemporary world”. In other words, the latest version of the thing Christ says will always hate the Church (John 15:18-19).

I find it amazing that no matter the world’s current intellectual fashions or styles, the world always hates the Church. The only question seems to be, “Will the world in this particular time and place actually murder us for being Christians, or will it oppress us in less extreme ways?” I do not think that the world (at any time or any place) actually has any beliefs. It is motivated by hatred of the Church. It merely selects different sticks at different times and places with which to beat the Church.

This makes sense. George MacDonald wrote somewhere (in one of his realistic novels, perhaps?) that a man cannot believe a false thing. He can believe only a true thing. He compared it to the fact that a man cannot eat a stone, but can eat only food. Sure, a man can put a stone in his mouth and go through the motions of eating it. He may even swallow it. But he is certainly not eating it in the same, full sense that he eats bread. Same with falsehoods. The mind can go through the motions of believing them, but it is never actual belief. I wish I had the actual quotation. How I love that man!

Goecffrey said:

wow :question:

Thanks for the clarification, Geoffrey.

I, also am a George MacDonald fan. I have nearly every book he has written.

I have a book of 3000 quotations from the writings of George MacDonald. I looked under the heading “Belief/Unbelief,” but could not find it.

The closest that I found was under the heading “Faith.”

Having a heart is feeling. As the bible says: " You honor me with your lips, yet your hearts are far from Me."
If a mother felt anything for the fetus inside her womb, abortion would not be so easy. We don’t help someone because we think we should. Loving your neighbor as yourself requires putting yourself in another’s shoes. Having a relationship is more than just going through the motions-bringing flowers, buying jewelry, saying “I love you”. You’d better feel something or the relationship won’t last very long.

Nicely put LLC! :smiley: