The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Can God feel 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:

Emotions may or may not accompany love (Greek agape). Dorothy Sayers, who was an Anglo-Catholic, mentioned in a letter to C. S. Lewis that she never once in her life felt a religious emotion. She did not doubt that some other people sometimes had religious emotions because she had read about them.

“He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me.” (John 14:21)

We probably need to define “religious emotions”. The article at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, talks of many different contexts:

Emotions in the Christian Tradition

For example, the article:

Asks the question: Does religion have a single emotional center?
How do religious emotions differ from “ordinary” emotions?
The article talks about Gratitude, Contrition and Compassion. Do folks on this tread, consider them “religious emotions”?
Are religious emotions “cognitive”?

Good questions and sub-topics to consider.

Let me quote from the introduction:

Now suppose we were discussing “stink bomb” - without defining it. The common conception is probably something that blows up and stinks. But if we study the Wiki article:

Stink bomb

Things can get a whole lot deeper.

Let’s take a look at agape:

As we can see,to say love doesn’t include emotions is ridiculous. Moreover,

Do we WANT God to suffer pain?

Not a stupid question by the way - I’ve heard it stated on this forum that unless God suffers as we do, there is no point in honoring Him for anything.
Which seems to me to be…what’s that word?..ah, yes - Stupid.