what I'm reading: is it okay to get angry with God?

Is it really okay to express anger at God?

Last week I quoted Joni saying "yes". After all, the Psalm writers do it. When we express our anger to God, it leads us towards him, not away from him into bitterness and despair.

But I need to be careful about the spirit I bring to this. I found this quote fascinating and challenging:

We have manifold references in Scripture to believers bitterly complaining and almost accusing God of unfairness or harshness. We sometimes look at these instances and think, “Well, if Moses can do it, if Job can do it, then it must be my prerogative as a Christian to voice my bitterness and complaints.”

But we need to notice not just the complaints the biblical saints sometimes make, but the responses God gives. Let’s take Job’s complaint as an example. As Job struggled with his afflictions, he found it impossible not to grumble that God would let one as righteous as he was suffer so greatly.

Eventually, however, God answered Job’s complaints with stern words: “Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me” (Job 38:2–3).

What did Job say? Did he continue to complain? No. Instead, he declared: “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know… Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (42:3b, 6). He was severely rebuked for the attitude that he expressed to God.

Likewise, Habakkuk the prophet complained bitterly that God was not being just by allowing wickedness to go unchecked. He demanded an answer from God, and when God gave it, Habakkuk said, “My body trembled; my lips quivered at the voice; rottenness entered my bones; and I trembled in myself” (Hab. 3:16a).

It’s vital that we understand prayer in terms of the qualifications that are found throughout the Bible. By considering the scope of the Bible’s teaching on this subject, we may conclude that it is acceptable to bring all our cares to God, including matters that may move us to frustration or anger.

However, we must not come to God in a spirit of complaint or anger against Him, for it is never proper to accuse God of wrongdoing.

From RC Sproul’s The Prayer of the Lord, quoted here.

Image is by Ashley Rose from flickr.

what I'm reading: the uncomfortable issue of anger at God

Sometimes when we suffer we feel angry at God. When we feel like this we have a few choices:

• we can complain about God to others
• we can give way to bitterness and retreat into despair
• we can stuff our anger way down deep and put a brave face on it.

The problem with all of these is that they drive us (and others!) further from God. Joni gives us another option:.

When pain lumbers through the front door, squats down in the middle of your life, and makes itself at home day after day, year after year, we can choke. We can crack. We erupt in anger ...

The author of Psalm 88 abruptly stops on a note of resentment .... The words are ugly. Then again, so is life. 

God is big enough to take on anger like this. It doesn't fluster him.

First, he knows stuff happens. He himself said, "In this world you will have trouble." Secondly, he doesn't tiptoe around it ... He wrote the book on suffering. And he invited people like the one who wrote Psalm 88 to be his co-authors. In so doing he invited angry people to air their complaints. ...

We're usually scared to death to talk to God this way. Too often we repress our deep emotions about suffering. We choose the polite route, bottling up our unspeakable feelings toward God hiding behind a religious pretence as we "give it all over to the Lord" too quickly. All we've done is shove the problem to the back burner. ...The fire goes out. Our hearts become cold.

Anger keeps pushing the problems to the front burner ... 

Affliction either warms you up toward spiritual things or turns you cold ... Hate is sometimes closer to love than indifference. And lukewarmness is the only road that never goes to God. There's nothing mediocre about feelings of fury ... Much better than ho-hum half-heartedness. ...

Strong emotions open the door to asking the really hard questions.Does life make sense? Is God good? More to the point, our deep emotions reveal the spiritual direction in which we are moving. Are we moving toward the Almighty or are we moving away from him? Anger properly makes Someone the issue of our suffering rather than something. And that's moving in the right direction. ... 

After all, the people you really get angry with are the ones you trust most deeply. "I am mad as a hornet, God, and I don't understand what you are doing one bit" sounds like the dark side of trust, but it's trust, nonetheless.

Joni Eareckson Tada When God Weeps 149-152.

When God Weeps - part 3 - the "how" of suffering

I have a friend who suffers from chronic pain. She's had it most of her life, since an accident as a teenager. Of all the books she's read on suffering, the one she loves most is Joni Eareckson Tada and Stephen Estes' When God Weeps.

There's no higher recommendation than that!

Now that I've finished, what do I think of When God Weeps? I can't imagine a better book to give those who are in the middle of suffering, once they have reached a point where they are able to reflect on things again.

My friend and I agree that the best thing about When God Weeps is the way it moves between the theological and the experiential. It helps that it's written by Joni, deeply experienced in long-term suffering; and Stephen Estes, a capable theologian. Both write with great sympathy and with a colourful, lively style, and Estes writes with clear logic.

I don't agree with every sentence. I'm a bit hesitant about statements like this - "God may not initiate all our trials - but by the time they reach us, they are his will for us" (does this really express God's absolute sovereignty in all things?) - but I appreciate the tension between God's sovereignty and human responsibility that Estes is trying to uphold. And he does say, "No trial reaches us apart from God's explicit decree". So my hesitations are slight.

It was an absolute treat reading the third and final section. It's called "How can I hang on?", and it's about how to suffer well. There are four chapters, sometimes surprising in their content:

• Cry of the soul - Wise words about anger at God, how it can lead to bitterness, and where it really belongs: in honest expression to God, so that it moves us, not away from him, but towards him. Here we may not find answers, but we will find his comforting arms.
• Gaining contentment - I like Joni's "arithmetic of contentment": when we suffer, we subtract our wants so our desires equal our circumstances, and gain what is of far greater value: Christ's sufficiency in our need, the joy of knowing God, and the advancement of his kingdom.
• Suffering gone malignant - I wasn't expecting a chapter on hell in a book on suffering, yet it really does belong here. Estes reminds us why hell is necessary, because it's God's answer to both terrible injustice and the evil at the heart of "good" people. It also explains why Christians suffer, because "hell's splashover" prepares us for eternity and moves us to reach out to others.
• Suffering Gone - This was perhaps the highlight of the book for me. Every word spoke to my need. In suffering we need a future perspective (so hard when pain is present!). We need to remember that heaven is a Person, not just a place, that it is so much more than we can imagine, and that the way we bear suffering now will win us a rich reward in eternity. 

By the end of When God Weeps I was in tears. A bit embarrassing since I was in public at the time!

We will all suffer, so we all need books like When God Weeps. I recommend it highly, both for those who haven't suffered greatly yet and for those who are suffering.