Masochist or Impassive?

That is the question that a person must answer if they believe God knows the future exhaustively and definitively. If that is the case, then before the world was ever created, God decided that humans would sin. He decided that some would continue to sin daily, and that some would live such reprehensible lives that even their best deeds would make church-goers blush. He decided that they would go to eternal torment never having tasted the goodness of the holy God.

So, if God is love, as the epistle from John says, then surely God would feel great pain at the suffering of his creation. But if that is the way God designed and planned it, then God must like pain. Or God simply does not experience pain and regret. If that is the case, then there are parts of the scripture that seem to be less than honest. Places that say that God is sorrowful of the choices people make, places that seem to indicate that God is sad over the destruction of the world through the flood.

So, it comes back to the question, Divine Masochist or simply Impassive? I choose neither. The concept of God being impassive is an import from Greek philosophy and is not mentioned in my bible. The idea that God is a masochist is pretty much stupid and incredibly foreign to the scriptures, so there has to be some third option.

I believe that inherent in a loving relationship is the risk of hurt. Anytime a person opens himself up to love another, he risks the fact that the other might break his heart. If God ordained everything, then he rendered the fact that he had heartbreak on the way certain. But if God left the future open, then he left heartbreak as only a possibility. I just can't believe that God enjoys suffering. I love only a shadow compared to his love, and suffering is incredibly... painful. And the God I find in the bible relates, loves and expresses hurt and joy. I believe he left open the possiblity he could be hurt because that was the only way to have a true loving relationship. This seems to me the closest to the biblical model of the God presented there.