Tag: compassion

Can God Care Without Emotions?

If God doesn’t have emotions, can He care about you and me? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday, I was browsing Facebook and I saw someone make a post asking how God can care about us if He has no emotions? This idea has been known as impassibility where God has no emotions. It has been the teaching of Christians, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox, up until around the 1800’s.

If you want to respond and say “But look at this text where it says God was moved with compassion or was angry or XYZ!”, then I will tell you “Look at this text where it talks about the hand of God or the eyes of the Lord or any other number of bodily references? Most of us know that those bodily references are not to a real physical body, but they are describing God in ways we can understand. I do the same with the passages about emotions.

How about Jesus? Jesus had emotions in the text! Surely you’re not suggesting that those are just figures of speech are you?

Not at all! Jesus definitely has emotions and had them in his earthly journey and I contend He still has them today. However, if you want to say that means God has emotions, then you have the same problem again. Jesus still has a body and if you want to go this route, then you need to say that God has a body as well. If you want to say because of Jesus, God has emotions, but not a body, then you’re just picking and choosing.

Yet the question still remains. If we accept this, how can we say God cares about us or God loves us? It sounds like a difficult question until we do consider that we regularly do the same thing without emotions.

If you are married and think that the degree to which you love your spouse is dependent on your emotions, then you are going to be in for a hard time. There could be times you have a great degree of negative emotions towards them, such as in an argument, and when you do, you can still say that you love them. When you make a promise to love until death do you part, you do not make a promise to have an emotion. No one can make themselves have an emotion or else we would all make ourselves happy all the time. We can make ourselves act, even when a part of us doesn’t want to. Many of us do that when we get out of bed in the morning.

Too often, we start this also with ourselves. “When I have love, I can have emotion. Why not God?” It’s a mistake to look at us and say “God is like that.” God is not really like anything at all. As Scripture says “To whom can you compare me?” No one. It is really that we are like God. God is said to be the Father from whom all fatherhood comes. It’s not that a man can say “I am a father and I can see God is like that.” It’s really “God is a Father, and I am somewhat like Him.”

God loves us and God cares for us and that is not because He has an emotion, but because that is who He is. God is not loving, but rather God is love. God does not act and then develop an emotion, as if He was a changeable being in time. God consistently acts out of His nature.

We can say all day long “I don’t understand how that works,” but why should that matter? We can go to our churches and say that we believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. Is anyone going to stand up and say that you understand entirely how that works? If we think we understand God, then we have a really small God, hardly one worthy of worship.

Also, if one wants to question impassibility and simplicity and other doctrines, that is fine, but we have to ask why. If there is a consistent line that goes from the early church to modern times accepted by all three branches, what did we discover that they did not know? Before we take down a fence, we should see why it was put up in the first place.

God can have love towards us and have compassion towards us without emotion. Is that hard for me to understand? Of course, but what of God is easy to understand?

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Calling In On Abortion

Can you kill your child? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday I am at work going on my lunch break and driving to a local pizzeria. I turn on the radio and hear the local talk radio show talking about the abortion debate. On my way there, I hear a lady call in saying that she is a Trump conservative and agrees with many conservative policies, but is different on abortion. Now to be sure, whether you hate or love Trump is irrelevant to this point. This is just a woman giving credibility to what she’s saying.

On abortion, she thinks it is a terrible and horrible thing. She would never abort her own child. So far, so good. However, who is she to judge the other women out there? She doesn’t know their stories. She doesn’t know what’s going on in the lives of these other women or their health or financial situation. How can she ban that from them?

I realize she’s trying to pull emotional heartstrings and I’m sure with a lot of people, it works. It sounds so kind and loving and tolerant. You’re just looking out for other women. You’re not celebrating abortion or anything. You agree that it’s horrible, but what about those other women?

But I have to get lunch so I go in and enjoy my meal and get back and turn on the radio again and hear a lady calling in saying pretty much the same thing. She also adds that she doesn’t want the judgment on this left to men. At this, I figure while I’m heading back, I might as well call in. So I call in and get on and say I want to say something in response to those women calling with that kind of story.

“I think killing an infant is terrible and horrible. I would never ever kill my own infant. However, who am I to tell another woman what she can’t do in this situation? Who am I to pass that judgment? I don’t know their story or situation and what she does in her own privacy is her judgment and not mine.”

The host was a bit taken aback and asked me to say that again. When I did, then he realized what I was doing. I might listen back today to see if anything was said after I called in as I had to clock in. Before I left though, I also added that if you don’t want topics like this decided by men, that’s fine, but keep in mind Roe V. Wade was decided by a court of nine men.

These women calling in were wanting to be compassionate, but they weren’t. Compassion extends to the least of these, which especially means children. So-called compassion that ends in the killing of innocent children is not compassion. The best way to really help these women is by supporting them in their pregnancy and then in the raising of the child. Fortunately, there are several crisis pregnancy centers that do that.

In this debate, it’s easy to have your heartstrings pulled sometimes, but remember what is at stake, a human life.

It’s not compassionate to kill it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)