Does God have needs?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I've been reading C.S.Lewis' The Problem of Pain today.  He made a statement that struck me as problematic on a number of levels.  Basically it was that God's love for Man was pure because unlike Human love, He did not need that love reciprocated. Indeed, God has no needs because he is Perfection and Goodness incarnate. Any apparent needs God might have, he has assumed for the sake of Man. (He was far more wordy, which is why no direct quote.)

Even leaving aside some issues I'm certain that some here will have an a priori definition of God as Perfect an Goodness, it seems to me there are some rather large holes in his argument.  To begin with, why should Perfection be equivalent to being without Need?   Granted, the perspectives of God and Man need not be identical, yet for Man I would definitely say that it is our Needs and how we strive to obtain them that bring us closer to Perfection. A person with no goals in life, even if it be the paradoxical goal of some Oriental religions to dispense with having goals is to me an imperfect person.  But more centrally, if God has no Need, then why creation?  Why would such a God involve himself with Man?

I don't see anyway to reconcile the idea of a Needless God with a God who exists outside creation.  It would be more tenable if one posits a God who is equivalent to creation and thus Man as a part of God is subject to his concern.  That certainly is not the traditional Abrahamic conception of the role of God. Yet even taking that position only admits of the possibility that God is without Needs but does not require that it be so.

Thoughts?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I think you answered your own question, Ernest.  Indeed, one can assume that a perfect God would suffice without anything to involve Himself with.  However, just as God has needs, He has ways to fulfill those needs.  Thus nature, man, and animal exist at His whim, testifying to God's desires.

We can look at this problem another way by taking sin into account.  God has a need, or at least a desire, for people to do good; yet God is denied that every time someone does wrong.  So God hopes for people to do good, but that desire is outweighed by His desire for people to have free will.  God is, from this perspective, making a personal sacrifice for the sake of Man.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Indeed, one can assume that a perfect God would suffice without anything to involve Himself with.

Why?  What does solitary introspection have to do with perfection?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Indeed, one can assume that a perfect God would suffice without anything to involve Himself with.

Why?  What does solitary introspection have to do with perfection?

It doesn't.  I'm only saying that it's a common assumption.  It is believed that God will simply dismiss a need or want of His, rather than seek to fulfill it, such as by creating Man.