LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
The Pain of God's Heart (1)
A little more than two thousand years of history were enough for humanity, after its creation, to reach such an extreme of depravity that God felt sorry for having created it. The Bible adds: "And it grieved him to the heart" (Gen. 6:6).
God created man in his own image and likeness; he created an idyllic environment for him to develop his full potential. However, shortly thereafter, man fell and sin crept in. God placed in man, and around him, everything he needed to be happy; however, man perverted all that, and ruined it.
It did not take long for sin to dominate man. There were not too many generations that lived - if we consider that the first ones were very long-lived, almost a thousand years old. Having lost the source of his happiness -communion with God- man looked in the wrong places for his lost happiness. The soul and the body were the failed sources. Not having, in addition, the Spirit of God dwelling in him, nor a code of norms to help him find his bearings, man definitively lost his way.
Thus we come to Genesis chapter 6. Here is this sad statement: "And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (v. 5). When God looked at the earth, He did not see only the beautiful blue of the oceans with the whitish clouds. No. He saw beyond, the man abandoned to his lusts, degraded in his original dignity, lost in the twists and turns of lust and licentiousness. And then, says the Scripture: "It grieved him to the heart".
Is there in God the capacity to feel pain? If so, what is the pain of God's heart like? The Bible says that love is suffering. When you love, you suffer for the one you love. It is enough to see how a young woman, vain, unbelieving and superficial, changes when she becomes a mother. The love for her child, even the mere thought that something bad could happen to him, mixes that love with painful pangs of pain.
The Bible says: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son..." (Jn. 3:16). God created the world with love; and he designed for it the noblest plans and purposes. So, when he sees how far things have come, he cannot but feel that pain which is proper to love.
We tend to associate pain exclusively as a feature of the human condition. We are pained by our own pain, and also by the pain of those who suffer beside us. However, this passage from Genesis shows us that, since man is made in the likeness of God, God is the first and greatest sufferer.
But who thinks of God's pain? Who shares that pain with him? Man seeks pleasure and flees from pain. But God, who day after day beholds the earth plunged in derangement and apostasy, cannot escape it. If you look around you, you will probably come to the same conclusion: Like yesterday, God is surely suffering today.