What If God Needed Us?

Or, Is God Lonely?

Asking “Is God lonely” is also to ask “Does God need us?” The short answer is:

God is not lonely and can therefore love us unconditionally. Why?

A needy God?

Have you ever felt controlled or manipulated by a really needy person, someone who was constantly seeking your approval or demanding all your time? Someone questioning whether you really loved them and smothering you with calls and texts?

Isn’t that awful.

Now imagine if that person was God?

If God is lonely, if God is all alone, then God is needy like this. And if God is needy, then God will satisfy the need. And then — at least for us — God is dangerous.

God is dangerous because then we become the means for alleviating God’s neediness, fulfilling what is lacking within God. And if God has all the power and resources to do whatever, then God can made humanity fulfill the loneliness within God.

And if we are made to fulfill something lacking in God, then aren’t we just puppets of God’s whim, fulfilling a role within God’s cosmic social therapy.

And many ancient myths viewed humanity in just this way: We are here to serve the gods, and the gods are a feckless bunch.

As a kid I answered…

As a kid someone asked me why God created humanity, created the world. I answered that God was lonely.

It seems like an innocent thing to say.

It might sound romantic or sentimental to say God created humanity because God wanted someone to love and be with. Isn’t that what all of us want? Someone to love and be with.

What we actually want…

But what we actually want is to be with an emotionally stable, fulfilled personwho can love and accept us out of their abundant emotional resources.

Don’t we all want to know that someone is with us because they want to be with us, not because they need to be with us? Not because we are fulfilling some secret need in them?

The Trinity

Many religious traditions speak of the God or the gods as having angelic hosts in heaven and all of that, saying that God is not alone.

But Christianity takes it a step further. The one God is also three Persons: Father, Son, and Spirit. They are all co-equal God (not 3 Gods), equal and fully mutual in all things, but also separate persons in perfect unity and love.

And out of this love God creates all thing — not because God is lacking in any way. But out of the fullness of God’s abundant community of love.

And out of this love God welcomes us into community — not because God is lonely and needs a friend. But because God is love, the fullness of love between the Father, Son, and Spirit.

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If this resonates with you, then you might like my answer to “Does God Even Like Me?”, the good news of God’s presence (a short, free ebook).