Human beings are special, of higher dignity and worth than other animals, because they're created in God's own image and likeness. It's actually true humanism.

The Bible portrays God as entering into covenants with people which, when broken, causes him grief and sorrow. The biblical prophet Hosea and God's using him as an illustration of how much Israel's idolatry costs God emotionally points to God's vulnerability. But also the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ who, even as God the Son, suffered for our sins, points to God's vulnerability.

If the biblical writers were writing today they might spell out some things more clearly, given how easily even Christians fall into thinking in ways alien and foreign to the biblical story of God and creation.

Today we cannot assume people, even all Christians, understand the Bible's implicit, underlying view of reality. We have to dig it out and show it to people, including Christians, and ask them to "see reality as this" rather than "as that" - where "that" refers to any number of unbiblical ideas about reality.

Scripture is our norming norm and tradition is our normed norm and that in a doctrinal controversy Scripture alone has absolute veto power while The Great Tradition (orthodox doctrine) has a vote but not a veto.

To some of us, raised and trained in allowing the Bible to absorb the world (that is, to "see" all of reality through the biblical story), the Bible is quite clear about all really important matters.

As the perfect parent, God suffers emotional pain when his creatures, created in his own image and likeness, rebel against him and do evil instead of good.