MARTIN CAREY
Have you ever been angry with God? Most of us have, for many different reasons. According to researcher Julie Exline, 62% of all adults have reported feeling angry at God some time in their lives. She found that even atheists who vigorously deny God’s existence reported more anger at God than believers (cited by D.W. Eckstrand, “Dealing With Anger Towards God,” http://www.thetransformedsoul.com/additional-studies/spiritual-life-studies/dealing-with-anger-toward-god).
If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that none of us are far from a real test of faith. Hard trials and deep grief will test our trust in God’s management of our lives. Does anger at God reveal a moral failure or a lack of faith? Or, is anger at God natural to being human and part of an honest relationship with Him? How should we express our anger to God? Most important, what does the Bible have to say about our anger at God? We need wisdom here, so let’s look at one of Scripture’s angry men, that rebel Jonah.
Jonah had a severe spiritual crisis on the ship to Tarsus when, during the severe storm, the ship’s sailors cast lots and discovered that Jonah was the problem. He demanded to be thrown overboard, despite the entreaties of the kind pagan sailors who were trying to appease God’s anger and still the storm. Jonah became the sacrifice:
“The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever” (Jonah 2:5-6).
Jonah sank down, down, towards that place of no hope, into the realm of the dead. While sinking beneath the waves with seaweed wrapping around him, Jonah cried out to God for help, and his cry was heard. What was God’s answer? A huge, gaping mouth came to devour him. God had “appointed” a rescuer in the form of a “great fish.” We don’t know what this creature was, but it was big and hungry for Jonah. There are lessons here for us. No matter how deeply you have descended into trouble, you can cry out to God for help. And, when you cry out to Him, you can expect that help will arrive in unexpected forms. Inside the belly of that monster, dark, smelly, and claustrophobic, Jonah was grateful to be alive. He gasped out a heartfelt prayer of thanks, and his prayer came up to God:
“Yet you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple” (Jonah 2:6).
Jonah remained in that dark prison for three days, but he knew that God had heard his prayer. He rejoiced in God’s mercy, sure that he had been rescued from an appointment with Sheol. Indeed, centuries later, Jesus told the unbelieving Pharisees that Jonah was a sign of the Messiah:
“An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:39-4).
Jonah’s time in the belly of the great fish pointed forward to the Messiah going to the “heart of the earth” for three days and nights. It is also significant that both Jonah and Jesus referred to entering into Sheol, the place of the dead. The heart of the earth is a Biblical expression referring to Sheol, or Hades, where the dead are kept. Job also compares Sheol with the bottom of the sea where one is exiled from God’s presence (Job 26:5). Jesus knew He would actually spend time in Sheol, although He would not be abandoned there (Acts 2:27).
Jonah was never abandoned by God, for “the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land” (Jonah 2:10).
Jonah was never abandoned by God, for “the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land” (Jonah 2:10). Now he was finally ready to deliver God’s message to his enemies, the Ninevites. And soon after, he would sink into his greatest spiritual crisis. Jonah was the prophet selected by God for this exact assignment. He was a real, historical figure, known in Israel for prophesying that Israel would restore its boundaries during the reign of King Jeroboam (2 Kings 14:25). Jonah was from the town of Gath-Hepher in Galilee, a town that had often been the victim of foreign invasions by their brutal enemy, Assyria. Jonah had seen firsthand and remembered the oppression of their enemies. He had reason to be angry at Nineveh.
So, when God commanded him to deliver the warning to evil Nineveh, the capitol of Assyria, he rebelled and fled in the opposite direction. We can shake our heads at the folly of Jonah in trying to run away from God’s commands. We can also learn from a man who was very much like us.
When Jonah walked through the gates of Nineveh, his message was simple, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” It is possible that he told them of God’s command and his ordeal at sea. His harrowing tale was a sign to them. The Ninevites heard him and did the unthinkable (Jonah 3:5):
“And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.”
The king proclaimed, “Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows, God may turn and relent” (Jonah 3:5,8,9). They repented, and Jonah’s merciful God heard them and relented from sending disaster.
But Jonah was not pleased. God’s mercy to the Ninevites was a “great evil” to Jonah (Jonah 4:1, literal Hebrew), and he was very angry at God. Where was God’s justice? Such wicked people did not deserve God’s mercy, for how could their repentance be genuine? Jonah resented God’s apparent injustice. His fears about God had been realized:
“O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live” (Jonah 4:2-3).
He also feared for his prophetic reputation being questioned because his prophecy against Nineveh did not come to pass. When the entire city was fasting and repenting, Jonah left and found himself a vantage point to see what would become of Nineveh. It was miserably hot, and Jonah tried to build a shelter for shade. God grew a plant to shade him, possibly a gourd or castor bean plant. The plant briefly comforted Jonah, until God “appointed” a hungry little worm to eat Jonah’s shade, and it died. “When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, ‘It is better for me to die than to live.’ But God said to Jonah, ‘Do you do well to be angry for the plant?’ And he said, ‘Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.’” Jonah 4:8-9
Scripture reveals Jonah’s angry prayer to God, and 2700 years later, we can evaluate his anger from the comfort of our homes. Indeed, Jonah’s behavior, including his famous sulk against God, reveals a very faulty, rather unlikeable man. Yes, he was stating his real feelings to God, but was he, in any way, right to feel anger at God? Let’s be honest with ourselves. Many of us felt, during terrible pain and losses, that we had real reasons to be angry at God, better reasons than cranky Jonah. While Jonah was vengeful, vain and petty, God treated him better than he deserved. How could he be angry with God, after being rescued, after witnessing God’s amazing mercy? We would do well to ask the same question of ourselves.
We might enjoy God’s dealings with Jonah’s behavior without seeing the mirror God is placing in front of our faces.
Another barrier to our seeing ourselves in Jonah is our modern tendency to look at some Bible stories as parables. “Jonah and the whale,” is read as a moral parable, an amusing story for children, so it cannot speak to our own “adult” hearts. We might enjoy God’s dealings with Jonah’s behavior without seeing the mirror God is placing in front of our faces. We need to look deeper into Jonah’s story.
Is it acceptable to be angry at God? We’re not talking about cursing God or even questioning His basic goodness. The question is, is it acceptable to have angry feelings towards God? In our modern therapeutic age it is considered common sense that our feelings and emotions are not, in themselves, good or bad. Emotions are just bodily responses to external events, natural reactions that just spring up from inside us. Feelings are considered morally neutral. You can’t judge feelings, the common wisdom goes, because we don’t choose to have them; they just pop up, triggered by circumstances.
Scripture has much to say about the morality of our emotions. God has asked us to be joyful always, not to be anxious for anything but to bring our concerns to Him with thanksgiving. His peace will guard our hearts (Philippians 4:5-7). We are to worship God with joy and pleasure, as David says in Psalm 100,
“Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth! Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into his presence with singing” (Psalm 100:1-2).
Through David, we are commanded to joyfully praise and serve God, to express those emotions with singing and shouting. These are feelings and actions that are very pleasing to God. True worship comes from the heart, including our deepest feelings and desires, worship that is “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23).
Our desire to worship God should include not only our choices and physical behaviors, but all of our mental and emotional capacities—our hearts, souls and minds. David says in Psalm 63:1:
“O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”
Worship is earnestly thirsting for God! It is cognitive, spiritual, and emotional. We are to worship God in all our thoughts, choices, desires, and deepest feelings. God must be worshiped with our entire souls. In Isaiah 29:13, God describes how His “people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me.” What we worship springs from what we love. What did Jesus say is the great commandment?
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).
Our emotions are not morally neutral, for they come out of the “treasure” of the heart, either good or evil, as Jesus told us (Luke 6:43-45). Our emotions and feelings will reflect what we treasure or despise.
When we are angry with God, what does this say about the state of our hearts towards Him? When God showed mercy to the Ninevites, Jonah felt in his heart that this was a “great evil.” In his heart, Jonah felt that God was committing injustice in failing to punish Nineveh. When we are angry at God, are we not taking a position of disapproval against God’s management of our lives? Anger is the soul’s stance of strong disapproval, resistance, and rejection towards someone’s actions.
The apostle Paul describes a person who objects to the doctrine of God’s sovereign election (Romans 9:19-20), and questions Him:
“You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?’ But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’”
Clearly, if merely questioning God’s justice is unacceptable, then our angry, judgmental feelings towards God will dishonor Him more. Instead of staying angry at God, we can honor Him with some very honest prayer. There is no use in avoiding speaking to Him of your anger, for He already knows all about it! He knows all the disappointments and hurts that you are suffering. If you belong to Him, He never, ever abandons you. Loving God with our entire souls drives us to our knees, telling the truth to Him who searches our hearts. We bring all our dirt and bad feelings, laying ourselves bare:
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1Peter 5:6-7).
When Jonah was holding all that anger towards God, he was not punished, but gently rebuked, and reminded of God’s mercy. “You had pity on the plant that shaded you,” God told him, “but you have no pity for 120,000 people that don’t know right from wrong!” Jonah had forgotten how much he needed God’s grace. Like Jonah, we forget His goodness, while He keeps pursuing, rescuing, and rebuking us, as often as needed. That’s how He rolls.
When we are suffering and angry, we need His grace to help us remember that all His ways are just and true. He never does us wrong, and no sparrow can fall without Him, no hair fall can from our heads without Him. No matter what you are going through, He is working everything quietly and powerfully for your good (Romans 8:28). We can take that anger to Him, lay down our resentments, and pour out our troubles. Let us go to Him in truth, holding nothing back. David said,
“With my voice I cry out to the LORD; with my voice I plead for mercy to the LORD. I pour out my complaint before him; I tell my trouble before him. When my spirit faints within me, you know my way” (Psalm 142:1-3).
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