Theology of the heart

We are creatures with a heart as well as a head. God has preprogrammed us to feel a certain way towards certain people—indeed, to feel differently about different sorts of people. Men feel a certain way towards women, and vice versa. A normal man doesn’t look at a woman the same way he looks at another man.

Children are programmed to love their parents, and parents their children. Sons have an emotional bond with mother and father alike, but it’s not the same emotional bond in each case. Children get different things from mother and father.

Fathers have an emotional bond with son and daughter alike, but it’s not the same sort of bond in each case; Mothers have an emotional bond with son and daughter alike, but it’s not the same sort of bond in each case.

Little boys think little girls are yucky, but that has been known to undergo a noticeable change with the onset of adolescence.

Unlike the animal world, the emotional bond between parent and child remains much the same throughout life—for better or worse.

There are two or three reasons for this divine programming. Such feelings are necessary for the perpetuation of the human race. It brings men and women together, keeps them together, produces more men and women, and raises them within a supportive environment.

God is also in the business of fostering love. And there is, indeed, some analogy between divine and human relationships.

At the same time, we also know that, in a fallen world, feelings can get out of hand, or become misdirected. Love is a powerful emotion, and unrestrained, love can be divisive as well as unitive, destructive as well as constructive.

This is obvious in the case of romantic love, with its potential for evil as well as good--for broken homes and homicidal jealousy. We all know couples who come to hate each other, and hate each other due to the intensity of their former love and sense of love betrayed. The power of disillusionment.

We all know suicidal lovers when love goes unrequited. The power of longing.

We all know parents who totally identify with their kids. They will break any law, tell any lie, cross any line to protect a their precious kids—even grown children--out of a twisted sense of parental duty and unilateral loyalty. Parents who sue the school if it expels their daughter for assaulting a teacher. Parents who buy a plane ticket if their son kills a girl in a date-rape gone bad.

There are men who are attracted to another men and repelled by women. Natural affection becomes inverted and perverted.

Our emotional preconditioning can easily condition our theology as well. Universalism is pure emotionalism, nothing more and nothing less. The appeal of universalism is the appeal of a half-truth. It has erected an entire theological edifice upon the fickle foundation of how we feel about our loved ones, and the extension of that feeling to perfect strangers.

The obvious flaw in this scenario is the projection of our feelings onto God—as if God should feel the same way about our loved-ones as we do. But this is very anthropomorphic and frankly childish. One may well say that God should look at a woman the same a man would look at a woman. God doesn’t—for the simple reason that God is not a man.

God’s assessment of human beings isn’t beclouded by all of our natural conflicted feelings and urgings and yeanings. God simply sees things the way they are, according to truth. He is not a smitten lover, blinded by infatuation. He is a doting, indulgent, self-indulgent father or mother who is so emotionally invested in the child that the child can do no wrong.

This spills over into the question of universal infant salvation. We’re naturally programmed to have a soft spot for the young. To love our babies. To find little kids cute.

And this carries over into kids who are not our own. When we see a face below a certain age, it is only normal for an adult to feel a bit protective towards the youngster. This is a natural extension of the parental instinct. And that’s one reason we have children of our own.

There’s a certain natural envy in wanting to have what the other has. Singles are envious of couples. Childless couples are envious of parents with children.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. It’s an incentive to marry and beget.

And there’s nothing wrong with having an affectionate and protective feeling about the young. For they need the affection and protection of grown-ups. That’s a major reason that God gave us those feelings.

But, as with universalism, it is a mistake to build a doctrine of universal infant salvation on feeling alone. It is a mistake, and a rather obvious mistake at that, to project our instinctive feelings onto God—feelings which are adapted to human frailties and codependencies.

There is a point of analogy, but a disanalogy as well. We’ve all heard of the classic retort to hell: “How could a loving God consign his children to hell.”

“Children”. Yes, that loaded word again. But this is imposing on God a whole bundle of emotions associated with dating and mating, bonding and begetting, maturation and mutual dependency.

This is suited to creatures--creatures growing out of each other, growing up, and growing back into each other, to reproduce the life-cycle.

Yahweh is a husband to Israel. Christ is a husband to the church. That’s a point of analogy with human affairs, but--just as clearly--a very limited analogy. God is a father to his people, but that, too, is a limited analogy.

We have so many different emotions tugging at us all the time and pulling us in different directions. That is part of being human, and part of being fallen, but no part of being God.

Our Triune Creator is, in some measure, the model of human society. But human society is not the model of our Triune Creator.

God is a father, but God is also a judge. If the kids of a human judge were brought into his courtroom, he’d have to recuse himself. He’s in no position to mete out a fair sentence to his own flesh-and-blood.

That’s is why judges are supposed to be impartial. To have no vested interest in the case. In our human system of justice, this often breaks down.

But God is, indeed, an impartial judge—a disinterested jurist. Unjust judges are a common complaint of the OT prophets. But before the bar of God, the scales of justice are level, for God is no respecter of persons.

We will be judged, not by who we are, in and of ourselves, but by who we are in relation to Christ. And who we are in Christ, or who we are outside of Christ, is unrelated to who we are in and of ourselves.

Let us rejoice in our God-given humanity and lowliness and creatureliness. And let us also rejoice in a God who is not a scaled up version of ourselves.