A Wonder of Anger
I am SO ANGRY right now, I can’t believe it. Why is this happening to me? Why did they do this? This isn’t fair. This is unjust. I don’t understand. Eeeerrrrrrr! I’m just so angry!
Anger hates being misunderstood. It’s always happening to it. Written off with, “Oh, don’t be so angry,” and “It’s not good to be angry,” anger retreats deeper into us as it pushes away from those who said such things and pushes away from a God who seemingly wags his finger at us and tells us that we shouldn’t be angry.
When it comes to anger, God can seem like one of the least understanding. Our urge is to push God far away. Why? Maybe it’s because we don’t need someone else to be disappointed in us right now or to tell us to stop being angry when it’s the only thing we can feel right now. Maybe it’s because when we don’t understand something we find it easiest and most logical to blame the one who can’t be fully understood. Maybe it’s because ultimately this “good” God allowed this bad thing to happen and seems to have left us alone in it… and that’s not ok.
But rather than our anger pushing us away from God or leading us to claim that he must not exist, does our anger actually give proof to God not only existing, but being in it with us and a part of seeking justice and restoration both in our heart and in our suffering world?
Anger is often misunderstood.
There is a wonder to anger just as there is a wonder to a wave. A wave has the ability to build and build into a mighty, towering force that crashes down and churns up the ocean floor. With its power this wave can wreak havoc and destroy both itself and everything in its path – people and whole towns included. Likewise, anger stirs up emotions, actions and the past that hides within us. It can wreak havoc on ourselves and others. Yet, if we take time to acknowledge the complexity of our anger or another’s, we might find it stirring up something deep inside of us – something in us that is not ok with what happened; something urging us to yearn or fight for justice in light of hurt, selfishness, death, cruelty, suffering, or oppression.
This anger is good, very good, and very much like the heart of another.
C.S. Lewis, an atheist who found faith in Christianity through wonderful, logical thought, wrote,
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got the idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe to when I called it unjust?”
God is often misunderstood.
Especially when it comes to justice. There have been countless unjust acts done in his name and the name of justice and many claiming to follow him have remained apathetic in light of injustice. Maybe you have even been hurt by a Christian. This is a sad and unjust reality. But rather than judge God solely based on a broken image through broken people, are we able to see if God is angry or if he is justice as Lewis wondered?
“But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” –
Amos 5:24
Martin Luther King, Jr., known as a man to stand up and fight for justice during the Civil Rights era, famously quoted this verse in both I Have a Dream and Letter from a Birmingham Jail. He knew the heart of God and his heart for justice and knew how to sort through the complexity of his anger. King’s attorney and speech-writer, Clarence Jones, said of him,
“From Dr. King’s standpoint, anger is part of a process that includes anger, forgiveness, redemption and love. Because if you only have anger, the anger will paralyze you. You cannot do anything constructive.”
In the Bible passage of Amos, this very verse quoted above is surrounded by anger – God’s right anger. In the verses before, God says through the prophet:
I hate, I despise your religious festivals; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll…
Amos 5:21-24
Have you ever had someone do something wrong to you and then not truly acknowledge it or say sorry and just try to suck up to you or be fake?! Ya, that’s angering to both you and God. He did not want their fake actions in light of the unjust things the Israelites had done to each other, those around them and ultimately toward himself. The following chapter in my Bible is even titled, The Lord Abhors the Pride of Israel. Wow, abhor, that is definitely angry. But what is the center of his anger?
JUSTICE.
That’s why that verse, “Let justice roll down like waters…” is the climatic point of chapter five! And let’s talk about that pride God abhors – take an honest tally of yourself and you will see that your pride has most definitely hurt others. You’ve acted unjustly. And it is likely that you’d describe the person you’re angry at right now as prideful.
For us, anger gets tricky when it is centered on ourselves (pride). As we untangle our anger, it is that self-centered part of it where an evil hatred and vengeance flow out – the ugly part of anger in us. We were never meant to be centered around ourselves but around the Center of the Universe – God. That’s why the self-centeredness of others hurts us and our own self-centeredness hurts others and ourselves. It’s at the point where a mighty wave starts to curl in on itself that it crashes down, destroying everything around it and itself.
You see, God isn’t self-centered. He is others-centered.
Even in his desire for us to center our lives on him and glorify him, he is others-centered. Tim Keller describes this extensively and beautifully in his book, The Reason for God:
What does the term “glorify” mean? To glorify something or someone is to praise, enjoy, and delight in them. When something is useful you are attracted to it for what it can bring you or do for you. But if it is beautiful, then you enjoy it simply for what it is. Just being in its presence is its own reward. To glorify someone is also to serve or defer to him or her, Instead of sacrificing their interests to make yourself happy, you sacrifice your interests to make them happy. Why? Your ultimate joy is to see them in joy…
… according to the Bible, this world was not created by a God who is only an individual, nor is it the emanation of an impersonal force. It is not the product of power struggles between personal deities nor of random, violent, accidental natural forces. Christians reject these other creation accounts, which refuse to give love primacy. We believe the world was made by a God who is a community of persons who have loved each other for all eternity. You were made for mutually self-giving, other-directed love. Self-centeredness destroys the fabric of what God has made..
But what if the person we are angry at right now is God? Do we have a right to be?
It seems that this joy-giving, others-centered God actually takes away joy by what he has allowed to happen to us or in our world. It is very hard to ask the question, “Why would a good God allow suffering?” And yet, it is very good to ask that question and to ask it directly to God. I believe that is the only place we do find any reasonable answers to this question. Again in The Reason for God, Keller puts it this way:
In short, the problem of tragedy, suffering and injustice is a problem for everyone. It is at least as big of a problem for nonbelief as it is for belief. It is therefore a mistake, though an understandable one, to think that if you abandon belief in God it somehow makes the problem of evil easier to handle.
This doesn’t mean we can’t be angry at God.
Technically we do have the freedom to be angry at God. He gave us free will to make our own choices and one of those choices is who to be angry at. Yet, are we logically right to be angry at God? Can we find him at fault for what we are angry over – for not stopping suffering or evil when and how we believe it should be stopped?
In his book Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case, Frank Turek addresses this question:
The answer might be that if God stopped all evil, he might start with you… and me because we both do evil every day. Why do we always think of other people doing evil but never ourselves? For God to end evil on earth, he would have to take away our free will. But if he takes away our free will, then he takes away our ability to love as well. God didn’t want robots. So free will, while it allows the possibility of evil, is the only way for us to love and achieve our ultimate good.
You are not alone.
Some of the things I have been the most angry at God about have woven into some of the most beneficial things for who I am in my character and also into greater joys than the one I thought I lost out on. But that’s too easy to say for all scenarios. And there are still a number of things within evil and suffering that I don’t understand fully. I can’t logically wrap my mind around God’s purposes even when in my search I find Christianity to have the best logical answers. Anger is an emotion and emotion cannot be fully answered or responded to with logic, but must be met with emotion. (Take note of this for your next argument with a loved one.)
Ultimately, that’s why God’s anger is a greater wonder and the greatest response to our question.
God’s emotion of anger responds to our emotion of anger. It connects us. He knows all the logic in the world cannot heal deep emotional and personal wounds left by evil and suffering. He made us to be this deep, complex way because he is deep and complex.
The wonder of God’s anger cries out for justice and seeks complete and final justice – for you, for me, for your loved one, for your community, for the world.
The wonder of God’s anger takes action against injustice, it is not apathetic. The wonder of God’s anger comes to enter into his suffering creation tainted with evil, and instead of ending the evil by ending you and me, he ended himself by dying on a cross to fulfill his wrath – the ultimate anger – against all evil.
That is what gets me. God’s response to our anger and to his own is himself.
All of himself. Jesus, who calmed the waves with, “Peace! Be Still!” dives into the churning waves of our anger – all of it, and where it is ugly anger and selfish anger and hateful anger, he gave himself over to it, dying under it, dying under the terrifying wave of God’s wrath over sin so that we could have forgiveness, peace with God, life. This was an agonizing thing for him. Jesus showed the most severe signs of stress leading up to his death on the cross. He sweat blood, he asked his Father if there was any other way, he cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” as he was separated from the love and communion with the Father and the Spirit that he had been in for all eternity before. Can you imagine the agony of that?
Thinking of it starts to make me angry., I can’t believe it. Why did this happen him? Why did they do this? This isn’t fair. I don’t understand. EEeeerrrrrrr! I’m just so angry!
Exactly. Why did this happen to him and not me? Why did we do this? It isn’t fair. It’s hard to understand. It’s grace. It’s mercy. It’s love. It’s anger. It’s God’s anger completely satisfied in his Son – justice rolling down like waters. It’s God’s anger found in you and me, a powerful, wonderful, justice-seeking, others-centered, God-glorifying anger.
A wonder.
A Wonder of Anger.
