{"id":6057,"date":"2021-11-24T04:19:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-24T04:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6057"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:34:37","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:34:37","slug":"personality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6057","title":{"rendered":"PERSONALITY"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A question popped into my head today: Does God have a personality?<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think the answer is yes and I think it makes a difference to understand God as having a personality.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, his personality is mysteriously immense, multi-faceted, and composed of only good traits.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If we don&#8217;t consider God as having a personality, I think we&#8217;re in danger of missing out on his personhood altogether. We end up imagining some amorphous being who is quite one-dimensional. He might be the cosmic stick-in-the-mud. A distant cloud. The finger-wagging nag. Or the severely disappointed father.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the positive side, we might imagine God to be the Santa Claus of the universe. A colossal teddy bear. An overly permissive parent. Or the laid back admirer in the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But if he has a personality, he doesn&#8217;t really fit into any of those molds.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In John 15:15, Jesus tells his disciples, &#8220;<span style=\"background-color: white;color: #001320;text-align: justify\">I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master\u2019s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span style=\"color: #001320\"><span style=\"background-color: white\">Being friends? With Jesus? With God in the flesh?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span style=\"color: #001320\"><span style=\"background-color: white\">That&#8217;s a radical concept.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span style=\"color: #001320\"><span style=\"background-color: white\">And I don&#8217;t see how you can be friends with Someone who has no personality.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A question popped into my head today: Does God have a personality? I think the answer is yes and I think it makes a difference to understand God as having a personality. Of course, his personality is mysteriously immense, multi-faceted, and composed of only good traits.\u00a0 If we don&#8217;t consider God as having a personality, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6058,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6057\/revisions\/6058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}