Good And Angry At God

God has a big ol' lightning bolt with your name on it, you naughty, naughty thing, you.

Parents always embarrass their kids by talking about them, and since I don’t have a kid of my own, I’ve decided to embarrass my niece. She’s the closest thing I have to a daughter, which makes her the perfect candidate.

She’s pissed off at God for a variety of reasons I won’t share. (I’m not THAT bad.) At 17, she has experienced more hardship in life than some senior citizens. We have a lot in common, though teenagers won’t ever admit to being anything like an old person. The trouble with teenagers is that you try to impart life lessons but always wonder if what you say will be overshadowed by a rap song, whose lyrics will undoubtedly be quoted on Facebook.

My niece is a lot like I was at her age – a troubled young girl trying to make sense of the pain in her life while trying to figure out where and if God fits into the big picture. Unless you are raised steeped in Christianity, it’s easy to think that God sits on a cloud somewhere in the sky chucking lightning bolts at people who cross Him – even if those people have accepted Christ as Savior.

I have to say my view of God was perhaps considerably worse when I was a teenager. God was the head administrator of the universe, seated at a desk piled high with paperwork. Every now and then, an angel would wander in and hand Him a paper. “This girl is being molested,” he’d say, or “This boy’s father ignores him. Which pile do you want it on?” And God would point to the appropriate stack without even looking up and save the crisis for another day, if at all. He should have been on that heavenly cloud, chucking lightning bolts at evil people, but He was too caught up in red tape to do that. And when he did venture out with bolts in hand, He only shot them at the believers who screwed up and sinned against Him.

I suspect this is my niece’s view of God at this very moment. She wants Him to answer the age-old question of “Why?” but her queries seem to be met with silence.

Reverse Theology
Apart from the death and resurrection of Christ itself, all of Christianity is based on the premise that our identity, value, and worth can be found within the pages of the Bible. When facing hardships in life, the Bible is full of promises designed to give us hope and keep us focused on the reality that earth sucks, but it’s not our eternal home. In Psalms, God promises that that He will bless the righteous and show him favor (5:12); that He will be a refuge to the hurting (9:9); that He will give His people strength and peace (29:11), and that’s just to name a few. Throughout the Bible, God promises us healing, full forgiveness of sins, and freedom.

It was always hard for me to understand a book full of promises when I lived in a world full of painful uncertainty. Obviously, I’m not alone in that. Everyone has questioned why there is pain and suffering in the world. It is a part of human nature. For a young war-torn believer, it’s hard to reconcile what seem to be blatant contradictions. 

The human brain weighs about three pounds. Did you know that? I actually learned that from a Chris Rice song years ago, but I promise I looked it up to make sure. I’ve purchased smaller bags of ground beef at the grocery store. Now compare that to the vast knowledge of God and suddenly it makes a little more sense how… none of this makes much sense. Only in the past couple of years have I realized that I’ve been trying stuff all of the wisdom of God into three pounds of gray goo. I’d have better luck trying to back my car into my laptop bag.  Can you imagine how frustrating that would be? I get irritated when I can’t get the cover on my grill. No wonder we get angry at God. 

Part of the problem, of course, is that we expect things out of God that He specifically told us not to expect. We have a sense of entitlement. We get too caught up in being human beings and believing that since we live here, we should have it all. My husband has a relative who lived in a house rent-free and when it was time to leave, he believed that meant he owned everything in the place. 

Not so!

I got a grip on my anger at God through reverse theology. You’re less likely to hear this preached from the pulpit because instead of focusing on God’s promises, I focus on the things He didn’t promise, but it gave me great perspective.

A lot of people “get saved” believing that life will be wonderful now because we have Jesus in our lives. We don’t realize that the peace and joy of God comes from what we learn from circumstances, and not the circumstances themselves. We see “good” people getting what they “don’t deserve” and it infuriates us. I watched one of my cousins slowly die of ALS over the course of five years. He was a good man who loved the Lord, had a beautiful wife, and four amazing daughters. He was a musician with a brilliant mind who once designed and published a game that was promoted by MENSA. 

According to my three pounds of brain mass, if anyone deserved to live a good, long life, it was him. But he became completely disabled and finally died in 2009. I don’t get it; I never fully will.

We can trace death and destruction back to the fall of man in the garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve decided to get uppity and directly disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit. God cursed man and said that from that point on, we would experience the things that hold us back now – shame, trouble, hardship. 

Ah, that’s the part we missed. We missed the section at the front of the book where God said life would be hard. We miss John 16:33 where Jesus says that in the world we will have trouble. We just want the good stuff. We feel like we are owed it. 

The first part of my life was inexplicably hard. I spent nearly the next half being angry about it because I felt like I didn’t deserve it. Whether you blame Adam and Eve or not, however, none of us deserve anything good, if only because we expect God to deliver our goods with no hassle, like a child demanding money from a parent. 

It would be one thing if God honestly promised an easy, problem-free life and then all around us, the world was crumbling, our bills weren’t getting paid, and people were taking advantage of us, but that’s not really the case.  In reality, we do stupid things on a daily basis, and it’s astounding just how cruel humans can be to one another. Maybe you never killed anyone. Good for you. Me neither. But have you ever thought something nasty about someone? Flipped someone the bird in traffic? Yelled at an authority figure? If you answered no, you’re still a sinner because you’re lying.

For me, it was much easier to stop being angry at God once I realized I wasn’t being duped.

Choices, Choices
Go to any church or Bible study and you will hear about how life is all about choosing to accept the good things God has for us, including those promises. I say you also have to choose to accept the things God never said, or the things He said that you didn’t like.

You can’t really accept Jesus as Savior until you’ve figured out that you need Him. It’s about more than not wanting to go to Hell. You have to understand that you do ungodly things on a regular basis and that Jesus died on the cross to pay for what you’ve done. In a huge, supernatural way, it’s like paying for an item somebody shoplifted to keep the guilty party out of jail. A good parent will love their child unconditionally; this is what God does for us.

It’s also about understanding that God cannot stand to be around unholiness – hence, Satan got kicked out of Heaven. When Adam and Eve screwed up, God got angry and gave mankind consequences. But like a good parent, He also wanted to see His kids restored, so He sent Jesus to die for us.

So we face a choice, and often make the wrong one. We have the option of loving God and thanking Him for His unconditional love and desire to make us whole again, or staying mad at Him because sometimes our actions have consequences, and the actions of others sometimes affect us. We have to decide what is more important to us – our earthly circumstances, or what God is capable of doing in our spirit.

We react out of hurt, and we hurt others. Think about it. A drug addict becomes a drug addict because they were neglected, abused, or unloved. That drug addict then turns around and steals from law-abiding citizens to fund his habit, and destroys the people who love him the most. The drug addict can blame God for his painful history without ever realizing how he is hurting others. There are no truly innocent people in this world, even if we don’t harm others deliberately.

We can’t go to God for a new life until we realize the life we’ve been living has at some point harmed others, the least of which is God himself.

Keepin’ It Real
For years I was unable to have a fruitful spiritual life because of my anger with God. I tried to out-think it and I believed in the Bible’s promises, but anger was like a little cobweb that got stuck in my brain and even when it wasn’t a dominant emotion, it was always in the background. I have two dear friends in my life who have served as mentors to me for years, and they constantly encouraged me to discuss my feelings with God, but I rejected the idea. It seemed like a terrible sin to feel anger, let alone talk about it. 

In retrospect, it was out of character for me not to discuss how I felt. I am not obnoxious, but I am the type of person to always voice my opinion and speak up when I think it matters. If I have an issue with my husband or a friend, I confront it and try to discuss it to clear it up. God was different, though. I didn’t want Him to chuck a lightning bolt at me.

Through a support group and godly counsel, I began to realize that being honest with God was not only important, but also encouraged and modeled in scripture. I recently started the “Search for Significance” Bible study by Robert S. McGhee. The very first chapter of the book provides verses that demonstrate how David – whom the Bible describes as “a man after God’s own heart” – was very blunt with God throughout his life.

In Psalm 42:9, David questions his own pain a

nd God’s motives.
“I say to God my Rock, 
   “Why have you forgotten me? 
Why must I go about mourning, 
   oppressed by the enemy?”

In Psalm 58:6-9, David tells God how angry he is with others.
 “Break the teeth in their mouths, O God; 
   LORD, tear out the fangs of those lions! 
Let them vanish like water that flows away; 
   when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short. 
May they be like a slug that melts away as it moves along, 
   like a stillborn child that never sees the sun.
 Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns— 
   whether they be green or dry—the wicked will be swept away.”

More than once, David got frustrated with God and His timing, such as in Psalm 13:1-2.
 How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? 
   How long will you hide your face from me? 
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts 
   and day after day have sorrow in my heart? 
   How long will my enemy triumph over me?

And in case you’re quick to believe that God only listened to David’s emotional prayers because he was an all-around good guy, take into account the fact that David committed a number of serious offenses, including an affair with Bathsheba that got her pregnant, which David later tried to cover up. God did not listen to David because he had all of life figured out. In fact, the life of David would have made a good Lifetime Original movie.
God’s love is unconditional, which means He always has an ear for us. Anyone willing to talk to God in an honest way shows an open heart that is willing to be changed by Him. That’s really all He asks of us.

I stopped covering up my anger towards God for a number of reasons. One, it is very exhausting and damaging to carry around anger for a long time without making an attempt to resolve it. What I found was that you really can’t cover up anger. You can pile all the crap you want on top of it, but it’s going to dig its way through again.
Two, my anger was greatly alleviated once I realized that God never promised me an easy life and understood that I didn’t deserve one anymore than the next person.

Three, I took a look at my personal relationships and realized that a relationship wasn’t a deep one unless there was honesty. I don’t like shallow friendships. I want to get to know the people in my life on a deeper level, and a few of those people I hold extremely close to me. Our friendship is close and intimate because I allow myself to be totally forthcoming with those people. If we want to stop seeing God as an administrator or some sort of tattle tale, we need to form the same kind of intimacy with him, which includes confronting the things that need to be confronted.

We have to choose to believe that the God who created the universe, who loved us enough to restore us, is big enough and capable enough of handling even the very worst of us. If David could tell God off and still be a “man after his own heart,” why can’t we? 

I think we submit our prayers to God a lot like we put quarters in a soda machine. In goes the money, out comes the prize. That’s how we think God should work. But prayer is a conversation, right? For years I couldn’t understand the purpose of prayer. It seemed pointless to me to ask God for things without ever really knowing if you’re going to get them. You pray for safe travels for a bus full of youth group kids, and then it goes over a cliff. I’m sure you’ve heard that God always answers prayer, but not always the way you want Him to. I don’t know if I buy into that. Sometimes God doesn’t answer prayer because it’s not His will, plain and simple. Does that mean you shouldn’t ask for things like protection or favor, or the healing of a terminally ill relative? 

The character and promises of God don’t change, but that doesn’t mind God can’t or doesn’t change His mind. In Jonah 3:1-10, Jonah goes into the city of Nineveh with a message from God to change their evil ways, or else. Nineveh heeds the warning and because of their repentance, God “relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.” (vs. 10) 

We also have to keep in mind that our actions have consequences, and our actions affect each other. A friend of ours had a nasty porn habit that broke his wife’s heart and kept the atmosphere in their home tense. After many second chances and years of counseling, his wife found out he had never addressed the issue in therapy and discovered more pornography that crossed the line into child porn. He may have prayed at that point for God to fix his marriage, but his wife had had enough, and rightly so. They separated and are now planning to divorce.

Our response to God, our willingness or unwillingness to honor Him with our lives, and the actions of others directly impact God’s answers to our prayers. God is unchanging. He will not break His promises, He will not contradict Himself, and above all He will always love His people unconditionally. We may not know how or if a prayer will be answered, but we should always remind ourselves and that God is good…all the time.

When you really stop and think about it, telling God how angry you are isn’t just confronting an issue so you can hopefully get past it. We are asking God for something – we are asking God to be the person He promised to be, even though we can’t acknowledge it at the time.  If you’re angry at God, I think it should be a comfort to you, because that means you believe in Him, and that’s the first step in the right direction. 

One of my favorite authors, Donald Miller, talks about an encounter he had with God in his book, Believing in God Knows What. What started as an angry confrontation with his Creator turned into a moment of reflection and, for us readers, humor. He told God He didn’t believe in Him anymore, only to realize that, unless you’re schizophrenic or on drugs, you don’t tell off someone who isn’t there. 

Being angry at God was a miserable feeling for me. It took many years before I finally broke down and told Him what I really thought of the things He allowed to happen in my life. But it made me realize that even though I was good and pissed, I still believed…a little bit. In Luke 17:15, the apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith. In Matthew 17:20, Jesus said that even faith as small as a mustard seed could move mountains. Even the original 12 got it. I was not alone. And Jesus reassured them that even a little goes a long way.

I’m hoping my niece can go from seeing God as a cloud-dwelling lightning bolt-chucker to a confidant who can take whatever she dishes out. He seems to think we’re worth the hassle. That’s enough to grow your faith right there.

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Resentment, Anger, Fear, and God

Life is a choice. Bummer, huh? It takes me ten minutes to figure out what I want on the Taco Bell menu. It's a thousand times harder when I have to decide something important. It's easier not having to decide. Sometimes when I send my husband to the grocery store (eh hem, I would not suggest this), he calls me and asks me what kind of ice cream I want. "I trust your judgment," I tell him. Don't read the flavors to me if you don't want to drain your cell phone battery.

Making decisions about spiritual issues makes Taco Bell seem like nuthin'. The funny thing about spiritual matters is, the decisions are usually pretty obvious. If somebody held up an ice cream cone and a salt lick, you wouldn't have a hard time deciding which one to grab. Spirituality is a lot like that, at least from my perspective. You can either do what God says and have a happy life, or NOT do what God says and struggle. But being the person that I am, I have to lick both the ice cream and the salt a few times first.

I have always believed IN God, but have had a hard time BELIEVING God. I know He's there. I believe He created the universe and the color pink and my cat's wet little nose. No problem. I just haven't always believed He would take care of me. My childhood was miserable but I don't resent any of the players involved anymore. It's just...gone. Those issues completely disappeared with no help from me. The only person left to resent was God, who allowed those things to happen.

When I was little, one of my brothers and I used to put a towel on the stairs and go sliding down as fast as we could. It was all fun and games until I smashed my face on a piece of furniture at the bottom of the stairs. After that, I didn't want to go stair-surfing anymore. I have always felt that my relationship with God was similar. He let go; I got hurt; Let's not do that again.

Then try having an illness that makes you feel depressed, angry, and hopeless against your will, all while the Bible says that Christians are supposed to be the opposite. Where is God in that?

But God says He keeps His promises, which means He either means it, or He's a liar. And so I have been looking into the things God promises, and the things He does not. For one thing, He doesn't promise a problem-free life. If anything, He promises that things here are going to be rough. John 16:33 says:

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

Going through life expecting a problem-free existence is foolish and not at all what Jesus told us to expect. So getting angry at God because we have pain doesn't make sense... especially considering we make a lot of our own pain.

God HAS promised the following:

-God will meet our needs
Needs... not to be confused with luxuries. (Phil. 4:19)

And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.

-God promises that His grace is sufficient for us.
In other words, God's grace is all you need. (2 Cor. 12:9)

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

-God will always provide a way out of temptation.
I think this should be called "the teenager verse" because it reminds of what my parents used to say when I was a teen: "If you're ever in a bad situation, call us and we'll pick you up, no questions asked." God works the same way. (1 Cor. 10:13)

No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

-God has promised us victory over death. 
The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ sealed eternity for believers. We don't end at the grave. (1 Cor. 15:3-4)

 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

-God promises that all things work together for the good of people who love and service Him.
This is the hardest one to grasp because it's not easy to see why God allows people to die young, in terrible ways, etc. (Romans 8:28)

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.  

 Nope. Nothing in there about having a trouble-free existence. Bummer.

But has He kept His promises to me? Has He met my needs? Has his grace been sufficient for me? Have I seen good come out of my darkest days? I can answer all of that with a confident "yes." So I've decided it's time to drop my defenses and believe God. It might not be an overnight process; it may take a good bit of work. But I see how God has taken care of me, I have seen that He is real, and I want more of Him. That means being honest about how I feel and admitting that I've been angry and resentful towards him.

I started this morning off by reading a bit of Praying God's Word by Beth Moore. This caught my attention:

God applies the same power to our need that He exerted when He raised Christ from the dead. Does your stronghold require more power than it takes to raise the dead?  Neither does mine! God can do it, fellow believer. I know because He says so. And I know because He's done it for me. Believe Him...and when you don't, cry out earnestly, "Help me overcome my unbelief!"

Read that also leads me to believe that the same God who put up with the antics of Thomas and who watched His own son suffer and die on the cross is strong enough to hear my anger and fear. He's big enough. When we don't give those things to God, we're basically saying we don't think He can handle it.

HELLO. HE'S GOD.

I'm not carrying this around anymore. Gimme the ice cream cone. The choice is obvious, at least from where I sit. I want to try some of God's goodness because I've been a tired girl and I don't think I can get through another day without the sweetness of God's grace.

It seems like a lot to lift off my shoulders, but it's nothing to God.

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