Does Sin Hurt God?

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I teach PSR for seventh and eighth graders and have a question to which I can not find the answer. Specifically, can the actions of human beings (sin) hurt God? This is not something that I would normally address with middle school students. However we have a somewhat unique situation this year in that I have several high school age students in my class to prepare for Confirmation. One of these older students became very animated about this subject and I would like to be able to direct her to the correct information.

I just spent a few hours looking through the Catechism but cannot find a definitive answer.

Thanks in advance for any help
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Hi Kleary,

The pictures in the above post tell you that God is so offended by sin that only the death of His own son could make up for even one sin. Sin is refusing God’s love, the greatest gift that could exist.

If, however, you are asking whether God can suffer, the answer is no. Nothing can be added or taken away from God. He is always perfect so that nothing can hurt him.

Jesus, as God, cannot be hurt. As a human being, he could be hurt and even killed during His mortal life. But since His resurrection, he is free of all suffering as stated in Revelation for all the resurrected :
He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death; there will be no more weeping, no more cries, no more sorrow, for the old world has gone.
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Rev. 21,4

Verbum
 
Verbum said:
Hi Kleary,

If, however, you are asking whether God can suffer, the answer is no. Nothing can be added or taken away from God. He is always perfect so that nothing can hurt him.

Jesus, as God, cannot be hurt. As a human being, he could be hurt and even killed during His mortal life. But since His resurrection, he is free of all suffering as stated in Revelation for all the resurrected :

Rev. 21,4

Verbum
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I do not understand this. I was always taught that God the Son - as the Incarnate Word - Jesus Christ CAN and DID get hurt, suffer and die - yes God DIED on that cross- not just the human nature of Jesus but the entire Divine Person - God the Son - died.

I was also taught that yes indeed, the Triune God is very much hurt and offended at every single teenie tiny sin that we commit in our everyday lives. - Therefore our priests appease him by offerring Jesus Christ in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass to the Trinity **every single **day.
 
St. Paul seems to say that our sin causes God to grieve:And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. (Ephesians 4:30)
 
Our sin hurts God to the extent that it hurts us. By sinning we are removing ourselves away from Him, this is what grieves Him, this is how we hurt ourselves, and move away from our Creator.
 
Hi Kleary,

I was also taught that yes indeed, the Triune God is very much hurt and offended at every single teenie tiny sin that we commit in our everyday lives.

Can you explain to me how God can be “hurt” in the sense of “harmed” or "made to feel bad? If heaven is the enjoyment of God, then how can we remove God from heaven, that is remove Him from Himself. However, God is offended by sin in the sense that he is thwarted in His divine purpose and divine love.

As for the Passion of Christ we know that it is the Divine Person who suffered, but he suffered in his humanity and not in his divinity, just as he died in his humanity and not in his divinity. God does not die.

Verbum
 
Well, God gave us all our senses and abilities and every good thing that we have, and also gave us moral laws to live by because those laws ensure the best use of everything that he has given us.

Sin is the misuse or disrespect of those gifts. So it’s rather like your parents giving you something valuable as a gift, teaching you how to look after it and care for it properly, and you misuse it, neglect it, detroy it and otherwise sully it. Do you think this wouldn’t make them feel bad?
 
Hi Lily,

Do you think this wouldn’t make them feel bad?

Parents, unfortunately, are not God. “Feelings” are physical reactions to something unpleasant. As explained above God is offended in the sense that he is thwarted in his purpose and love.

God has no “feelings”. Jesus, as man, has feelings, and while on earth he could be hurt. But now, he enjoys eternal bliss and is supremely happy, even as a man. Evil when seen in God’s total plan takes on a good meaning.

Verbum
 
Verbum said:
Hi Lily,

Do you think this wouldn’t make them feel bad?

Parents, unfortunately, are not God. “Feelings” are physical reactions to something unpleasant. As explained above God is offended in the sense that he is thwarted in his purpose and love.

God has no “feelings”. Jesus, as man, has feelings, and while on earth he could be hurt. But now, he enjoys eternal bliss and is supremely happy, even as a man. Evil when seen in God’s total plan takes on a good meaning.

Verbum
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God is different to us in the area of emotions to be sure. In the sense that both his emotions and his understanding of events are greater beyond our comprehension, not in the sense that he has no emotions at all. For heaven’s sake, the Father is even quoted in the Ten Commandments themselves as saying ‘I the Lord am a jealous God’.

God is also quoted directly in Isaiah as saying these exact words - ‘even if a mother should forget her baby or a woman the child within her womb I will never forget you. I will hold you in the palm of my hand’.

That means God the Father (not Jesus) has the SAME emotions as a mother towards her children, but in an infinitely GREATER degree. God the Father is not an emotionless robot or an automaton, or Dr Spock from Star Trek for that matter.
 
LilyM said:
God is different to us in the area of emotions to be sure. In the sense that both his emotions and his understanding of events are greater beyond our comprehension, not in the sense that he has no emotions at all. For heaven’s sake, the Father is even quoted in the Ten Commandments themselves as saying ‘I the Lord am a jealous God’.

God is also quoted directly in Isaiah as saying these exact words - ‘even if a mother should forget her baby or a woman the child within her womb I will never forget you. I will hold you in the palm of my hand’.

That means God the Father (not Jesus) has the SAME emotions as a mother towards her children, but in an infinitely GREATER degree. God the Father is not an emotionless robot or an automaton, or Dr Spock from Star Trek for that matter.
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I totally agree with Lily. I think it hurts God when we do sin, much as it hurts us when our children do. Also…remember that God exists in all times…at all times he is creating the earth, at all times he is sending his Son to die for our salvation and at every moment Jesus is upon the cross suffering for our sins… I would have to say Yes, sin hurts God! How can we not believe this?
 
Hi Lily,

God is different to us in the area of emotions to be sure. In the sense that both his emotions and his understanding of events are greater beyond our comprehension, not in the sense that he has no emotions at all. For heaven’s sake, the Father is even quoted in the Ten Commandments themselves as saying ‘I the Lord am a jealous God’.

The Bible speaks of God in human terms. God cannot be jealous. God not only loves us he IS LOVE. A mother’s love compared to God’s love is only as a picture seemed dimly in a dirty mirror.

If you want to think of God as having emotions, no big problem. As you say, the Bible uses that terminology. But please don’t say that God suffers or is hurt. That would be contrary to the definition of heaven. I don’t want to go to heaven, if there is suffering there. Do you?

Verbum
 
It’s not just my conception, it’s not just even the human bible writers saying that God is jealous - they’re quoting God’s very own words, as spoken to (and written with his own finger for) Moses in the ten commandments!

And if God IS love, then of course he is hurt when that love is rejected - anyone who loves IS open to that sort of hurt. Does that necessarily mean that we hurt along with him when we’re in heaven? Certainly He has promised to wipe away every tear, has he not, so it’s possible if not probable that we won’t.
 
kleary said:
I do not understand this. I was always taught that God the Son - as the Incarnate Word - Jesus Christ CAN and DID get hurt, suffer and die - yes God DIED on that cross- not just the human nature of Jesus but the entire Divine Person - God the Son - died.

I was also taught that yes indeed, the Triune God is very much hurt and offended at every single teenie tiny sin that we commit in our everyday lives. - Therefore our priests appease him by offerring Jesus Christ in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass to the Trinity **every single **day.
Click to expand...
Hi Kleary,
You are getting yourself into a logical mess here.
God cannot be hurt, and God cannot be killed.
God is IMMORTAL
God can however experience pain,
and God can experience death.
Jesus Himself tells us that we, that is our IMMORTAL souls cannot be killed by Man.
Yes Christ died on the Cross, but that was the human body. The Word experienced that death, but DID NOT and DOES NOT DIE.
 
I can somewhat make the connection. I think about that times I have hurt others, I know I have hurt them by being uncharitable, for example, therefore I sin. How does the sin that I inflicted on another human, “hurt” God, Jesus? God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, all three make up the trinity, therefore, we also “hurt” the Holy Spirit when we sin, which adds to another question for me.
 
Snippits from something I read a few months ago
  • Christ is simultaneously and perfectly conscious of every human act, internal as well as external, of every human being, past, present, and future. Therefore, from the moment of His conception in Mary’s womb, this all-embracing consciousness conditions His entire public ministry: His recorded words, emotional responses, and internal and external acts.
  • From this first Christological premise, we see that in the Gospels, all of Christ’s words and deeds are “conditioned” and “influenced” by the full existential complex of my own needs and my own human personal response. In other words, I am in His mind. He sees me. He addresses me. The Gospels are, indeed, an* historical* record of the past, but in this manner, a connatural encounter is effected here and now. Christ, in His historical agony, for instance, is affected by* me*, both as an individual and as a member of His Body, either toward consolation by my sympathy, my conversion, and my adherence, or toward a sharpening of His agony by my indifference, my sin.
  • Gethsemane may well illustrate what is meant. The mental agony of Jesus simultaneously registered in His consciousness the love and hatred, the fidelity and apostasy, the salvation *and *damnation of *every *soul from Adam to the parousia.(which includes me,so now "I am “living” in the Garden)
  • The same dimension of awareness enters into *every *word and act of Jesus the Gospels record. I say “act,” because an act is also dramatically and efficiently a “word.” Therefore, my whole existential situation and being share in prompting and formulating each word of Christ in its final Gospel expression. Thus, *I *am actively involved in this “word” that never passes away. I live in and act upon the pages of Scripture. And what we label “I” here embraces every “I” of *every *human soul, created or yet to be created, however *ignored *or *unappreciated *by history that soul may be.
    • Christ transcends time. In the divine hypostasis of Christ, there is no past or future, only an eternal all-comprehensive now*.* If our first premise moves us “backward” toward an engagement with the past, this premise moves those same historical events “forward” to our own moment in time.
**I now live in the Garden!
.
**
 
An alternative solution to this problem is that perhaps God suffers, but not as we understand suffering in time. Since God is eternal (outside of time), and knows every sin we might commit, the offense of our sin against his very nature (from which we derived even the physical and spiritual ability to choose sin) eternally “suffers.” Suffering implies change. But if this change is eternal, it becomes not a change, but rather an incorporation into God’s very nature. Maybe there is a “aspect” of God that is able to eternally respond to acts in time like sins and good works.

This reasoning is similar to Boetheus and Lewis’s ideas that God eternally knows our prayers and thus disposes graces and miracles with this in mind.

The next logical question is: What in God’s nature might our sin eternally affect?

Perhaps God eternally derives happiness from our good works, as part of the happiness of his very nature, proceeding from his very existence.

We know that God lacks nothing. Sin is in essence nothingness. So can “nothingness” affect “somethingness”. Of course not. However, since the existing good of human nature is corrupted by each sins, God may be eternally offended by this lack, which thus profits no happiness into this “aspect” of God’s unchanging nature that allows eternal “lacking” or eternal “benefiting.”

Perhaps I am drifting into heresy here contradicting the doctrine of the simplicity of God by making aspect like a part. Can it be that God is unchanging and have aspects that know and respond eternally to change in time? It seems like there may be a solution

Any corrections or additional thoughts are greatly appreciated.
 
Well I would hope that this God is hurt by the killing of innocents each day. But, perhaps he is not hurt enough or hurt at all about it.

Maybe the few hours on the cross was all the emotion he could spare for all humanity’s sufferings.:confused:

The more I read about this God, the more I don’t see him being anything worthy of worship.
 
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