on rejection

This morning I read 1 Samuel 8, which recounts Israel's request for a human king. This request is tantamount to the people rejecting Samuel, who has acted as priest and prophet at God's appointment since his youth. But also, the Israelites' desire for a king is an effective rejection of God, as demonstrated by the exchanges first between Samuel and the people and then between Samuel and God:

⁴Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah ⁵and said to him, Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations. ⁶But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed to the LORD. ⁷And the LORD said to Samuel, Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.

The thing that strikes me here is how personally painful this rejection feels, especially to God, who sounds downright sad: "for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them." I know that God's emotions shouldn't surprise me, but they do. Clearly God is not a human, but God is a person and has the emotions of a person. Or I guess the better way to say it might be that since we are made in his image, we have emotions, just like he does. Maybe because of the incarnation, I think of Christ as the part of the Trinity with emotions. But I think that view of God is not nearly holistic enough (which I realize my view never will be, finite and all). Anyway, this made me feel sad for God, who was sad when his people, whom he has preserved despite their waywardness, want to be like everyone else, which means looking to a human rather than to him. It is good for me to hear his sad voice here and remember that his desire for our obedience isn't just the result of some rigid standard, but of the affection of a person who is more committed to us than we can know.