What is God? How do we understand God? Should we praise God? All these questions were being posed by humanity countless times throughout history. And there indeed always were more answer than questions. Some said that God is omnipotent, transcendent entity, others told that God is the reason for everything, the third suggested that God watches all of us, rewards the good and punishes the bad. And that is only a tiny bit of the explanations offered by different individuals, teaching, and religions. Indeed, such variety may be troublesome because it makes the task of deciding the true explanation. The question of whether God exists is perhaps the most debated of them. However, the existence or nonexistence of God makes no significant difference if there are no noticeable practical consequences distinct to each of the opposing positions. This pushes us to a by far more important question: “Can God judge us, disapprove of our actions, or make any adjustments to our lives?” In this essay, I will argue that God can neither feel any disapproval, sorrow, or frustration about our actions nor is affected in any way by any of them.
God by definition is omnipotent, omniscient, all-good, omnipresent, independent of all and unlimited by anything except for itself. I will further use the pronoun it for God, not as a sign of disrespect, but because, in my opinion, it would be wrong to attribute any sex to God. The entity conforming to the definition stated above definitely does not have such characteristic as sex, so it would be correct to use "it." Given the definition stated above, it is possible to draw certain conclusions about the nature of God and how it perceives the universe (if we might call it perception). God’s omnipresence and absoluteness and unlimitedness by anything except for itself implies that God exists outside of temporal continuum and is timeless. Indeed, the entity present everywhere must be able to be present in all points of time. However, if it is not limited by anything, even time, than God is present in all the time points of time ay once and, at the same time, in none of them. These points can coexist only if God is non-temporal and, as Ganssle explains, experiences the universe in "one timeless now." Evidently, if God's disapproval, sorrow, and frustration take place, they must follow our actions (presumably bad). But as there is no before or after for God, consequently there can be no sorrow, disapproval, or frustration in God.
The second consequence that flows out of the presented definition is God’s impassability. If God is timeless, omnipotent, and independent of all, then it cannot be affected by anything happening in the universe, or impassable. To react in some way to our actions and thoughts (and be able to have sorrow, disapproval, or frustration about us), God has to know about their occurrence. However, such knowledge in our common understanding isn’t pertinent to God. The act of knowledge, in our regular understanding, causes the change in the one who gets to know. The subject is modified by acquiring the knowledge of the object. If we apply this concept to God, we might see that it is essentially inapplicable, as God cannot be changed by us. Consequently, it cannot have knowledge, in common sense, about us (Wainwright) and, thus, have any feelings described above. God’s knowledge, i.e. omniscience is totally different from our concept of knowledge and will presumably never be grasped by human beings.
The strongest argument supporting my point, however, comes directly from the definition of God as an all-good and morally perfect entity. What do we mean when we assert these words? Obviously, this is at least our understanding of morality raised to the absolute. It is rather difficult to give definition to morality in the context of God, however, some moral norms can be accounted for. Many philosophers agree that the notion of morality incorporates at least prevention of harm, purity, and, to some extent, sanctity (Gert and Gert). It can generally be agreed that sorrow, disapproval, and frustration are essentially negative emotions. This is true also about the actions originating from them. So if we raise to the absolute the prevention of harm, purity, and sanctity, it will result in an entity totally free of everything negative. Such entity will be good in all of its manifestation and inner states; it can be characterized as infinite love. And if, as mentioned above, sorrow, disapproval, and frustration are negative, there is no place for them in God. The similar conclusion might be derived when observing individuals who are said to be the closest to God. Such persons are told to be the founders of religions. For this purpose, we might consider Christ and Buddha. The common traits pertinent to them should surely be exhibited by God in a much fuller extent. What is similar about these two individuals is, obviously, not their origin or education, but their moral position, teachings, and behavior. The attributes they share are, at least, infinite love, compassion, and acceptance. Then these traits must be pertinent to God in a much fuller and stronger extent. The total acceptance consists in perceiving external world, other persons, events, and objects as they are without any judgment. The sorrow, disapproval, and frustration, however, need a certain amount of judgment to originate from. It then follows that they are incompatible with God's moral nature.
The God will always stay ungrasped and unknown to humanity because of its timelessness, impassability, and infinite and unlimited nature. What, however, we may infer from it is that such human feelings as disapproval, sorrow, and frustration are in no way experienced by God. The notions of its timelessness, impassability, and its fully perfect moral nature make it impossible for God to have such feelings.
References
Ganssle, Gregory. "God And Time". Iep.utm.edu. N.p., 2016. Web. 16 May 2016.
Gert, Bernard and Joshua Gert. "The Definition Of Morality". Plato.stanford.edu. N.p., 2002. Web. 16 May 2016.
Wainwright, William. "Concepts Of God". Plato.stanford.edu. N.p., 2006. Web. 16 May 2016.
