Does God Feel Gratitude? Although we start each of our Sunday-afternoon circles with a particular topic, one can never be certain what we will end up talking about. For instance, we once got sidetracked when one of our members asked, “Does God feel gratitude?” How do you answer a question like that? First, what do we mean by “God”? Second, even if we could define that ultimate entity, how can we understand its experiences? After all, we don’t know that the Divine has emotions, at least as we understand them, and gratitude, as I am defining it, is an emotion. Which brings us to our third question: what is gratitude,…
-
-
Promises We Make, Break, and Renew
The First Covenant Some scholars argue that the first covenant God made was with Adam. This was not a joint covenant, like most modern marriages in Western cultures. Before my husband and I got married, for instance, we collaborated on our vows, considering together the promises we would make. God, however, did not consult with Adam before deciding on the rules of the covenant. Instead, he decreed that Adam should till the garden and keep it, and that he — and Eve, once she was created — must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Should they do so, they would die. As the story goes,…
-
Mystery, Metaphor, and the Story of the Flood
When Good Turns Evil There is, within the Hebrew Bible, a tendency for that which starts out as good to become bad. God creates the world and sees it is good, but it doesn’t stay that way. He creates humans in His likeness, so can how can we be other than good, if God is good? Yet, somehow we learn to sin. There was the trickery of a serpent, the jealousy of a brother. Over and over, we humans made mistakes. As time passed and generations were born, things just got worse. The wickedness and violence of humans increased until “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only…