No, kosta. It is not a big hurdle. Exactly what does being made in the image of God mean? What? Do we look like Him only? Do we smell like God? What is it?
God is a rational being. He has emotions (though He is not ruled by passions as we sometimes are). He has wrath. He has joy. He even sings. We are not making God like man when we describe Him thus. God made man similar to himself in many ways but inferior in all. God's emotions are not like our emotions. They are on a different plane that frankly, it is above our payscale to understand.
The God you describe is a feelingless robot. That is not the God of Scripture.
Rather, this is what Scripture says about God (not that one who is clearly anti-Scripture would care).
Psalm 7:11
God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.
Psalm 2:4
4He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have them in derision.
Ephesians 4:30
And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
Zephaniah 3:17
The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.
John 11:35
Jesus wept.
"I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete." John 15:11
"... I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight." Jeremiah 9:24
"You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy." Micah 7:18
Exodus 20:5
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
This issue of whether or not God has emotions given his unchanging nature is dealt with well at Spurgeon.org.http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/articles/impassib.htm
This article ends in this way which is very relevant to this discussion...
What Does Impassibility Mean, Then?
What about the charge that impassibility turns God into an iceberg? The complaint turns out to be bogus. In truth, mainstream classic theism has always denied that God is cold and remote from his creation. One of the earliest Church Fathers, Justin Martyr, said any view of God that sees Him as apathetic amounts to a kind of atheistic nominalism:
If any one disbelieves that God cares for [His creation], he will thereby either insinuate that God does not exist, or he will assert that though He exists He delights in vice, or exists like a stone, and that neither virtue nor vice are anything, but only in the opinion of men these things are reckoned good or evil. And this is the greatest profanity and wickedness.[17]
God isn't like a stone or an iceberg. His immutability is not inertia. The fact that He doesn't change His mind certainly doesn't mean He is devoid of thought. Likewise, the fact that He isn't subject to involuntary passions doesn't mean He is devoid of true affections. What it does mean is that God's mind and God's affections are not like human thoughts and passions. There's never anything involuntary, irrational, or out of control about the divine affections. Here's how J. I. Packer describes the doctrine of impassibility:
This means, not that God is impassive and unfeeling (a frequent misunderstanding), but that no created beings can inflict pain, suffering and distress on him at their own will. In so far as God enters into suffering and grief (which Scripture's many anthropopathisms, plus the fact of the cross, show that he does), it is by his own deliberate decision; he is never his creatures' hapless victim. The Christian mainstream has construed impassibility as meaning not that God is a stranger to joy and delight, but rather that his joy is permanent, clouded by no involuntary pain.[18]
Notice Packer's emphasis: God's affections are never passive and involuntary, but rather always active and deliberate. Elsewhere, Packer writes,
[Impassibility is] not impassivity, unconcern, and impersonal detachment in face of the creation; not insensitivity and indifference to the distresses of a fallen world; not inability or unwillingness to empathize with human pain and grief; but simply that God's experiences do not come upon him as ours come upon us, for his are foreknown, willed and chosen by himself, and are not involuntary surprises forced on him from outside, apart from his own decision, in the way that ours regularly are.[19]
R. L. Dabney saw the doctrine in a similar light. He described God's affections as "active principles"—to distinguish them from mere passive emotions. He wrote,
These are not passions, in the sense of fluctuations or agitations, but none the less they are affections of his will, actively distinguished from the cognitions in his intelligence. They are true optative functions of the divine Spirit [expressions of God's spiritual desires and wishes].[20] However anthropopathic may be the statements regarding God's repentings, wrath, pity, pleasure, love, jealousy, hatred, in the Scriptures, we should do violence to them if we denied that he here meant to ascribe to Himself active affections in some mode suitable to his nature.[21]
Note that both Packer and Dabney insist, and do not deny, that God has true affections. Both, however, see the divine affections as always active, never passive. God is the sovereign initiator and instigator of all His own affections—which are never uncontrolled or arbitrary. He cannot be made to emote against His will, but is always the source and author of all His affective dispositions.
Edwards made another helpful distinction. He wrote,
The affections and passions are frequently spoken of as the same; and yet, in the more common use of speech, there is in some respect a difference. Affection is a word that, in its ordinary signification, seems to be something more extensive than passion, being used for all vigorous lively actings of the will or inclination; but passion for those that are more sudden, and whose effects on the animal spirits are more violent, and the mind more overpowered, and less in its own command.[22]
Edwards was suggesting that passions are involuntary and non-rational; whereas affections are volitions and dispositions that are under the control of the rational senses.
Given such a distinction, it seems perfectly appropriate to say that whereas God is "without passions," He is surely not "without affections." In fact, His joy, His wrath, His sorrow, His pity, His compassion, His delight, His love, his hatred—and all the other divine affections—epitomize the very perfection of all the heartfelt affections we know (albeit imperfectly) as humans. His affections are absent the ebb and flow of changeableness that we experience with human emotions, but they are real and powerful feelings nonetheless. To suggest that God is unfeeling is to mangle the intent of the doctrine of impassibility.
So a proper understanding of impassibility should not lead us to think God is unfeeling. But His "feelings" are never passive. They don't come and go or change and fluctuate. They are active, sovereignly-directed dispositions rather than passive reactions to external stimuli. They differ in this way from human passions.
Furthermore, God's hatred and His love, His pleasure and his grief over sin—are as fixed and immutable as any other aspect of the divine character (Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29; Malachi 3:6; James 1:17).[23] If God appears to change moods in the biblical narrative—or in the outworking of His Providence—it is only because from time to time in His dealings with His people, He brings these various dispositions more or less to the forefront, showing us all the aspects of His character. But His love is never overwhelmed by His wrath, or vice versa. In fact, there is no real change in Him at all.
How can that be? We don't know. As humans we can no more imagine how God's affections can be eternally free from change than we can comprehend infinity itself. In Dabney's words, "Can we picture an adequate conception of [God's affections]? No; 'it is high; we cannot attain to it.' But this is the consistent understanding of revelation, and the only apprehension of God which does not both transcend and violate man's reason."[24] God's affections, like every other aspect of His character, simply cannot be understood in purely human terms. And that is why Scripture employs anthropopathic expressions.
Dabney also gave a wise word of caution about the danger of brushing aside the meaning of biblical figures of speech. While he acknowledged the widespread use of anthropopathism in Scripture, he was not willing to evacuate such metaphors of their common-sense implications. These may be figurative expressions, Dabney argued, but they are not devoid of meaning. Citing some verses that speak of God's delight and His wrath, Dabney asked, "Is all this so anthropopathic as not even to mean that God's active principles here have an objective? Why not let the Scriptures mean what they so plainly strive to declare?"[25]
Unlike the modern open theists, Dabney saw clearly both sides of what the Scriptures strive to declare: God is unchanging and unchangeable, but He is not devoid of affection for His creation. His impassibility should never be set against His affections. His immutability does not rule out personal involvement with His creatures. Transcendence isn't incompatible with immanence.
God is not a metaphysical iceberg. While He is never at the mercy of His creatures, neither is He detached from them. His wrath against sin is real and powerful. His compassion for sinners is also sincere and indefatigable. His mercies are truly over all His works. And above all, His eternal love for His people is more real, more powerful, and more enduring than any earthly emotion that ever bore the label "love." Unlike human love, God's love is unfailing, unwavering, and eternally constant. That fact alone ought to convince us that God's affections are not like human passions.
In fact, isn't that a basic principle of Christianity itself? Anyone who imagines the divine affections as fluid, vacillating passions has no biblical understanding of the steadfastness and faithfulness of our God. That is why I object so strongly to open theism's denial of God's impassibility. In the name of making God more "relational," they have undermined the constancy of His love; they have divested Him of yet another of His incommunicable attributes, and they have taken another giant step further toward refashioning Him in the image of His creatures. Who can tell where the campaign to humanize God will end?