"Safe? 'Course he isn't safe."

This post is part of an ongoing conversation with my good friend and chess superior Ryan. The conversation began early this summer and came up again under the “Peace and Profanity” post. The conversation began with the question, “Does God suffer?” and if so, what does that say about the doctrine of immutability. And if God is changeable, how do we trust him? These are my thoughts as they exist now.

I don’t know that I would say that God changes his attributes, but I do think he changes his mind. This doesn’t make him inconstant, but it does challenge the notion of his immutability. I like to look at three judgments in the Torah. First God’s telling Noah he is going to destroy the world, then telling Abraham he’s going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, finally telling Moses he’s going to destroy the Hebrews. In the first instance, Noah says nothing. In the second, Abraham tries to bargain, but gives up. In the third case, Moses convinces God to change his course of action.

The two previous judgments show that when God has his mind set to something, he carries it out. But the final judgment suggests to me that God could (possibly) have been persuaded not to carry through on the previous judgments as well. At any rate, atop Sinai, God resolves to destroy his people, and Moses convinces him to change his mind.

The case has been made that this is anthropomorphic language. But consider what that is saying. I understand anthropomorphic language in common speech such as “long arm of the law” because I have previous experience of what the law is and know that the arm is metaphorical. To say that in scripture, references to God’s changing his mind are anthropomorphic is to claim previous knowledge of who God really is and reading his word through that lens. As Christians, our understanding of God must come from the story he tells us about himself. If the narrative says God changed his mind, I have to accept that he did.

The doctrine of immutability also becomes problematic when considering the incarnation. For all of eternity up to that point, God has not been human. At the conception of Jesus, however, he suddenly is. To make sense of this story, I have to believe that God can change, not only in form but also in nature.

The most significant change, as I see it, is God’s ability now to sympathize with the human race. In the Old Testament, God is not a sympathetic God. If we understand sympathy as Aristotle and Richard Kearney do, to sympathize means to put yourself in another's place and consider what they must be experiencing. Consider this image from Tolkien (I owe the following to conversations with my wife). The character Gollum is a pitiable character, and this pity is what leads to the success of the mission. But some characters, specifically Sam and Faramir, are unable to pity him and wish either to destroy him, or at the very least banish him from Frodo’s presence. But when Sam has the opportunity to kill him, he doesn’t. Why? Because Sam has now worn the ring himself and understands the power it has over Gollum. He is now able to put himself in Gollum’s place – to sympathize. This is the ability or, I suppose you could say, the attribute that God acquired when he became human.

Which leads to the question of whether something exists that can change God, to which I would say yes. God is in relationship with his creation, and part of relationship is vulnerability (which itself gets at the question of whether God can suffer). Throughout scripture, God interacts with humans, who sometimes anger him, sometimes call forth love from him, and sometimes hurt him. Depending on how his creatures respond to him, he changes how he relates to them. He seems to be learning what courses of action are effective (covenant) and which are less so (destroying the world in his wrath).

I agree that this takes away a certain degree of comfort which many of us are used to. But in response, I think of another Inkling. Consider this passage concerning Aslan from CS Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:
"Ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he--quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver, “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else silly.”
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Our God is wild. As Lewis says elsewhere of Aslan, he is not a tame lion. But he is the king, and he is good. As his people, we need to accept that and believe he is who he says he is. We cannot define what we think God must be like and then demand that he live up to that description. We can trust in his goodness, his faithfulness, and his love, but in the presence of the covenant God of scripture, we must work out our own faith in fear and trembling.