Reply #13: Does the love of parents for their children diminish [View All]

[Joe Chi Minh]

because they are overjoyed and blissfully content in respect of their own self-contained needs, so to speak? Or is it of the essence of love to overflow, to want to share the bliss, the happiness that we feel?

This would seem to be the over-arching theme of the Christian message. The parable of the Good Shepherd, leaving his flock to seek out the sheep that had wandered and become lost in the mist and darkness, that of the Prodigal Son, and that of the Good Samaritan, all in different ways (as well as others, no doubt), seem to me to inform us, even before the other messages we are told they convey, that God is a person - indeed an ultra personal person. "There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents..."/ one lost sheep who is found than those who were already safe and secure.

Furthermore, in Romans I, 2 and 3, St Paul writes: "... now at last in these times, he has spoken to us with a Son to speak for him....
... a Son who is the radiance of his Father's splendour, and the full expression of his being;"

Indeed, almost the entire thrust of Jesus Gospel teachings was that we should understand God, not to be some great, transcendental and impassible monolith (though in a sense, he certainly seems to be, as indicated by orthodox, traditional theology), but quite the reverse: as ultra-human - like a little child, such as, in his innocence, Christ Jesus personified right up to his death on the cross.

In relation to God, this appears to be contradicted by Christian theologians, who state that God needs nothing from anyone or anything, since he created everything that exists; a theme mused upon by David in the Psalms 1000 years BC, and taken up in one Gospel passage by Jesus, when he intimates to us that no-one can ever know God fully, so it is not a good idea to imagine that we can.

However, this leads us into the realm of the utterly imponderable paradoxes which lie at the very heart of the Christian faith (scarcely surprising, since the same can now be said of physics at both extremities of scale), one of which you have raised.

We know that during his ministry, Jesus, at times felt great joy, that he also wept over the sufferings of his friends Lazarus, Mary and Martha, at the venality, incorrigibity and impenitence of the Synagogue of his day, and that, though we nowhere read that he laughed, he sure had a dry and at times very bitter sense of humour (like an uncle of mine, who once got quite upset because I laughed at one of his jokes...!)