God Is Personality

February 18, 2023 by Charlie Hedges − 0 Comments

“God is mystery.” The Christian Mystics

Truly, we do not know exactly “how” God acts and we do not know God in the fullest because the mystery is just that: mystery. It is good that God cannot be defined, because if we could define God, he would no longer be God but merely a human invention.

And yet, we need some definition in order to trust and believe. So, we have the Person of the Christ as the human model of God and we have contemplation and prayer to guide us in some kind of ontological understanding of the Other, the Divine.

The “Universe” or “God”: What’s the Difference?

Perhaps that is the departing point between thinking of “The Universe” or “God” as the ultimate power and influence in the cosmos. A huge difference between the two is that the universe has no personality but God, on the other hand, is nothing but personality in perfection.

NOTE: I am considering the essence of the Christian view of the Trinity, which is an interaction fundamentally based on a divine dance of love. (See Richard Rohr’s Divine Dance.)

In thinking that God has personality leads me to ponder the ontology (or essence) of the Divine from a wholly different perspective. It is a perspective in which feelings DO matter. In our post-Enlightenment thinking paradigm, only that which can be verified by science and accepted “facts” seem to have any identifiable reality. Left brain over right brain.

However, it is a world—quickly on the mend—in which feelings are considered to be more of a distraction that the basis of a direction.

The Love and Pleasure of God

But Jesus, in the exact image of God, certainly demonstrated myriad of emotions: sadness, joy, anger, and grief come to mind quickly. Personality invites intimacy. One cannot be intimate with an inanimate essence. And intimacy is the very essential relationship that God has in mind with his creation. The Episcopalian Eucharistic prayer begins with the words, “Holy and gracious Father, in your infinite love you made us for your pleasure…”

I often think we should stop the service at the reading of those words and just ponder them for a bit. In your infinite love you made us for your pleasure—it is all about “the pleasure of eternal love.” How did we ever miss this in Sunday School or even in our church services? The Book (The Bible) is jammed pack with the feelings of God. Especially in the Old Testament where we see God as the jilted lover, pleading with his people to return. He suffers because of them, with them, and for them. (See Terrance Fretheim’s The Suffering of God.)

I, Too, Bear the Reflection of God

I am a deeply feeling individual and since I am indeed created in the image and reflection of the nature of God, then he too must be a deeply feeling Essence.