God is always happy...even if a hammer falls on his head.

Posted on 4.16.2008

A backseat conversation between my two sons overheard by their mother on the way to school today:

Aidan (the youngest): "When we are in heaven is God always happy?"

Brenden (the oldest, and who also speaks with the theological authority of the Church Fathers): "Yes, God is always happy."

Aidan: "Always???"

Brenden: "In heaven God is always happy."

Aidan: "Even if a hammer fell on his head?"

Brenden (thoughtfully): "Well, since God knows everything that is going to happen before it happens, I figure He would dodge it."

Aidan: "Yeah, you're right."

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10 thoughts on “God is always happy...even if a hammer falls on his head.”

  2. Yes I know, the metaphysical snarls of this exchange are exceedingly complex...omniscience, divine impassibility, foreknowledge, theodicy, afterlife, and, well, hammers in heaven and God having a head...

  3. Topher, Richard,

    God allowed a situation to arise in which he would need to dodge a hammer so Brenden and Aiden could have a conversation about the Ineffable.

    Blessings,

    George C.

  8. I'm giving a talk tomorrow at the college fellowship where I volunteer on the problem of evil and pain in the world. One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about in giving this talk is that if God is not impassable, that is, if He is not entirely dissociated from events in the Universe, then He has most likely received more suffering and pain than any other being in the entire universe. If you read through the prophecies in the old Testament you really begin to see this. Its not thought about much but I sort of think its true.

  9. Absolutely agree - God empathetically shares the suffering of every single being ever to have existed in the universe in addition to the pain of rejection by his creation. Sucks to be God.

  10. Christ takes all the blows of the falling hammers and redeems us from the great hammer thrower. We can share his life of hammer perseverance in the certain hope that God will transform his world into a place where hammers stay where they belong.

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