On Tuesday, November 5th, the American people elected a new president. As a result, I’ve had dozens of conversations with the people I’ve been called to minister to. Most of these conversations have focused on four overarching themes. This is a difficult series to write, and one I’ve tried to avoid, but the LORD has continually asked me to.
To be perfectly clear, because I do not want my words incorrectly weaponized against me, I try very hard to have no enemies on earth. If you have different politics, morals, or faith beliefs than me, I still believe you reflect the image of God. At the same time, I feel called to speak truth even when it is difficult and to support the faith community I’ve been called to lead that is terrified and dismayed at a man who poses a threat to God’s shalom on earth. I believe it is good and right to call evil evil and to mourn with those who mourn. I believe that we are here on earth to reflect the light of Jesus to a dead and dying world. I believe desperately and profoundly that this is part of that mission.
The first thread we’ll unravel is being angry at God.
A queer friend of mine sat across from me the Friday after the election and said, “I’ve been having bad thoughts the past few days.” Concerned, I asked them to unpack what exactly “bad thoughts” meant. They got quiet but I kept pushing. “I thought about how much I hated God. If God hates me, then maybe I hate Him too. But that’s a bad thought because you can’t hate God.” Their evidence of God hating them was sourced in Mr. Trump being elected president who posed a threat to their wellbeing and quality of life. This same general premise has been echoed to me by indigenous friends, people of color, and older adults worried about what a rise in this particular power might mean for them – and angry with a God who would allow its ascension.
None of us, no matter how profound or accurate our pain, are the first to wrestle with anger at God. Job, a possibly mythic, possibly real man who lived in a land called Uz, recounts his life in one of, if not the oldest book in the bible. The book of Job wrestles with what it is to be human in the midst of God’s plan which seems exceptionally unlike what we hope and believe God, especially our good God, would do. Job suffers catastrophic loss – his entire family and their families and all of their possessions are killed and destroyed. Then, Job’s health is attacked and he is brought within a painful inch of his life. Although Job endures these tragedies while maintaining faith and worship in God, he eventually caves and experiences deep anger and grief, craving death and escape.
While Job is caught up in his anger, he is met with unhelpful rebuke by his friends and the elders of his community. When our anger goes unsatisfied, we are met with unsatisfactory non-answers sculpted from religion rather than relationship with the divine. Further, as we’ll discuss, trying to understand thoughts higher than our own ultimately ends in frustration and distress. We can never access the thoughts we can never access.
“Then Elihu son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, became angry. He was angry at Job because he justified himself rather than God; he was angry also at Job’s three friends because they had found no answer, though they had declared Job to be in the wrong.”
Job 32:2-3 NRSVUE
Indeed, when God comes to God’s own defense, God defers to this strategy. God’s defense is that wisdom belongs ultimately to God because God sees and has seen all, knows and will know all, and is looking at the whole picture all at once while we can only see a few puzzle pieces of it at once, and only then if we truly study and entrench ourselves in the Word and live for a long time. Therefore, God can do whatever God wants to because God can only act righteously and God is the only one who can truly and rightly define what righteousness is.
“Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be justified? Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his? “Deck yourself with majesty and dignity; clothe yourself with glory and splendor. Pour out the overflowings of your anger, and look on all who are proud and humble them. Look on all who are proud and bring them low; tread down the wicked where they stand. Hide them all in the dust together; bind their faces in the world below. Then I will also acknowledge to you that your own right hand can give you victory.”
Job 40:8-14 NRSVUE
Finally, Job repents. God’s answer and essay on God’s own righteousness and majesty finally satisfies Job’s bitter complaint:
“Then Job answered the Lord: “I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me that I did not know. ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me.’ I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.””
Job 42:1-6 NRSVUE
In the story of Job, I see the sin of remaining committed to our bitter anger at God. Indeed, anger can easily lead us astray. Anger can confuse the natural order of things, tricking us into thinking we and our morality are on the same level as God and God’s morality. Whereas our morality, no matter how well intentioned and well informed, can inevitably be wrong, swayed by lies of others, our own selfish ambition, and our limited scope, God can only ever be God. There is no lie that can hide God from the truth. God is the very essence of truth. God and truth cannot be separated. And God responds to that truth accurately, with mercy and justice. God’s mercy and God’s justice are both full and perfect, neither contradicting the other. (See Towzer for more).
Therefore, our anger at God is never justified, but our unjustified anger is not necessarily an intentional sin but rather, I believe, an inescapable sin tied to our humanity. Indeed, consider how sin first entered God’s perfect creation:
“But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.””
Genesis 3:4-5 NRSVUE
What is the underlying motivation of our anger at God? Put simply, we believe that we have equality with God. We are like God. And because we are like God, we are able to police God to ensure that God is behaving. However, although we are in some ways like God, with our access to right and wrong, we are not able to steward that responsibility and morality like God can, posing an existential threat to God’s kingdom were we to think we can:
“Then the Lord God said, “See, the humans have become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now they might reach out their hands and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent them forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which they were taken.”
Genesis 3:22-23 NRSVUE
When we are angry at God, we are deferring to this original sin of believing we have equality with God. Yet, God is still kind to us in our arrogance. With Eve and Adam, God provides them with clothes prior to punishing them. God is a father who loves us with compassion before loving us with discipline. With Job, God comes to him so that Job can hear the divine defense straight from the source. God is both capable and interested in engaging with our bitterness, even if our bitterness is ultimately rooted in sin and arrogance. And, when we repent of this anger after we calm down and have the proper order of authority reestablished, God is swift to forgive and restore to us riches and abundance. As I told my queer friend, the Devil wants to trap us in shame, but God wants freedom for us. This means that even if God gets Holy feelings hurt, even if we’re angry, God will still choose relationship with us.
Consider, as another illustration, earthly parenting. If we are healthy, unabusive parents then we know that if our child, in a moment of rage and dysregulation, says “I hate you!,” while it may wound us, even deeply, to hear, our child’s purported hatred of us does not cause us to no longer love them. When they calm down and love us again, we know with our higher level of reasoning that tiny bodies have big feelings. I think God treats us the same.
So, if your only response in this time is anger, God already knows it. Don’t further deceive yourself by trying to hide from God like Eve and Adam in the Garden. Bring your anger and your bitterness to God and see how God responds to it, and what that response from God produces in you.
Be mad at God if you need to.
But don’t stay mad at God.
Let God break it in you, and then repent and embrace God’s freedom waiting patiently and wounded for you.
Finally, I’d like to leave you with a quote on suffering from an academic much smarter than I:
It is in particular when God sends us suffering that our submission to his will is tested – or, to use the double meaning of the German term, it is only when God causes us to leiden (suffer) that our ability to leiden (submit passively or patiently) is tested. Whatever afflictions we feel, inwardly or outwardly, we should receive them with love, because God sends them to us out of the same love from which he brings forth the highest and best gifts. From all eternity, God foresaw and intended even the smallest imaginable of our pains, such as the loss of a single hair. Whenever we lose our friends, our possessions, our honor, or whatever, the experience will help to form our character and lead us to genuine peace if we can accept it properly. We should not concern ourselves with the question whether the suffering is or is not deserved; rather, we should resign ourselves gratefully to God’s will. If we do so, no suffering will be unbearable, since God himself will bear it for us, which is to say that he will give us the strength necessary to endure.
Suffer well, friends. See you back here soon to disentangle the thread of feeling alone and outcast at church due to your political beliefs.
Notes:
- The Enduring Word commentary and my theological education at Seattle Pacific University informed my discussion of Job.
- A.W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy and mentorship from Christian Youth Theater was useful in describing God’s character.
- The last quote is from An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe edited by the late Dr. Paul E. Szarmach.
- All scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Bryce Van Vleet is the #1 selling author of Tired Pages and Before We All Die Let’s Have One Last Chat by the Fireside. He also hosts the podcast Death in Dakota, sells poetry art here, and masquerades as the spoken word artist Liihey. You can support him by clicking through blog posts or donating (scroll to the bottom of the page).
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