God's Needs and Human Perspective

He has emotions and needs. It is God’s will that we relate to Him this way. God does not need us; He did not need the Jews to ask the Egyptians for silver and gold vessels before the Exodus. We act and think as if He did need us to do that, as our interpretation of the human-divine relationship. When we say that God needs us we are saying more than a mere metaphor. From our point of view, He needs us, and that is the only point of view we can see because it is impossible to see from God’s point of view. It is not heretical to say that God needs us but it must be understood in a non-literal way or as merely our perspective.

I do not believe that Dr. Heschel would agree with this approach but I suspect that Dr. Fox would.