Detachment and Christianity

We had a discussion in our Wednesday night group (CHOW) about God and emotion. Basically the question was does God act on reason or logic. One in our group said that God has a plan and he basically sticks to it. That God does not act on his emotions.

Bonhoeffer says a similar thing in Life Together, "God is not a God of the emotions but a God of truth."

So according to this line of thinking, God is like Spock. Which then makes God more of a machine than a living being. Yet throughout Scripture it says that God is angry, frustrated, jealous, compassionate, and tender. Are these just anthropomorphisms that help us to empathize with what it would be like to be God and thus motivate us to worship? Is God so wholly other than us that he cannot have feeling like we do?

No..if God is an emotionally detached diety than all of faith decends into functional Buddhism. Our goal would be detachment. Yet a primary metaphor of the Christian faith is to be immersed into it. And although our emotions need correcting, God does not call us to be Stoics. God calls us to love him with "all" of our everything, and that includes both our hearts and our minds.

Although in the past I have tried to live a detached Christianity, I now believe that the only way I can live the Christian life is with my heart on my sleeve. The Christian faith is not meant to be lived with detachment, but with complete and utter abandon and passion. At least that is my journey....